You’ve just returned from shooting some of your best photos ever. You can’t wait until you can download them and see them on your big 21″ monitor. When you turn on your camera to get a quick peek at your prize winning shots you get a “Card Error” message. Or you get the dreaded “Card not formatted. Format Now?” Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!

The first thing to do is stop crying. There’s still hope. All you need is your trusty USB card reader and some software. If you bought a Sandisk Ultra or a Lexar WA card you’re all set. These both come with image recovery software. And they both work really well.

Fortunately, there’s another data recovery software available (for free). I’ve used it a number of times with great success. It’s called PC Inspector™ Smart Recovery and is produced by a German company. Using this software you can most likely save that corrupt card full of images.

Although it’s fairly rare for a card to go bad, there are things you can do to mess up your memory card. Keep it clean and dry. And don’t turn the camera off too quickly after shooting pics. Most cameras will finish a card write before powering off, but some won’t.

Hopefully, you won’t experience this kind of panic. If you do just remember that there are ways to get back lost images. This software also works on deleted files and (sometimes) on accidentally Formatted memory cards.

** MAC Photo Recovery Software is available for the Apple clan for $39.