How to Recover Accidentally Deleted Photos of Your Kids

How to Recover Accidentally Deleted Photos of Your Kids

For years, you’ve been capturing the most important events and everyday moments in your children’s lives – from your little one’s first smile and first steps to birthdays, school performances and family celebrations. And then one accidental tap, and the photos are gone.

At first, it may seem as though these precious memories are lost forever. Fortunately, they are not! Even if the photos were deleted from your phone, computer, camera, you can still restore them. We’ll show you some simple ways to get deleted photos back.

Easy Methods to Recover Deleted Photos of Kids

You don’t need to try every recovery method. Let’s first figure out how and where the photos were deleted, and then decide what’s best in each situation.

If you deleted the photos from your phone or computer and haven’t emptied the recycle bin, start with Method 1. If you’ve already emptied those folders but have a local backup or a cloud backup, such as iCloud, Google Photos, or OneDrive, move on to Method 2. But, if you deleted the photos directly from your camera, or you’ve already emptied every recycle bin and don’t have any backups, go straight to Method 3 for DIY data recovery with software.

Method 1. Check the Bin

If you’ve recently deleted some photos, the easiest way to recover them is via your device’s recycle bin. This is because phones and computers move and store them there rather than wiping them out permanently.

Option 1. Recover Deleted Photos on Your Phone

Here’s how to find recently deleted photos on the phone. Just remember that photos don’t stay in the recycle bin forever. Most phones automatically remove them after 30 days.

On Android:

1. Open Gallery app.
2. Find Recycle bin.
3. Select the photos.
4. Tap Restore. 
5. Photos will be returned to the gallery.

On an iPhone:

1. Open Photos app.
2. Scroll down to the Utilities section. 
3. Tap on Recently Deleted.
4. Pick the photos you want.
5. Tap Recover button. Then Recover Photo.
6. Photos will be returned back.

Note: If you want to remove inappropriate content from a child’s phone, you don’t need to restore it. You can either clear the entire bin or select all the inappropriate items and permanently delete them from the bin.

Option 2. Recover Deleted Photos from PC

If you didn’t use Shift + Delete on Windows or Option + Command + Delete on Mac (these shortcuts permanently delete photos instead of moving them to the Recycle Bin or Bin), recover recently deleted photos from your computer by following these steps.

On Windows:

1. Open the Recycle Bin on your Desktop.
2. Choose the deleted photos.
3. Right-click them.
4. Select Restore.

On Mac:

1. Open Bin from the Dock.
2. Select the deleted photos.
3. Right-click them.
4. Choose Put Back.

Method 2. Recover Deleted Photos From Backups

If you had automatic backups turned on before the photos were deleted, you may still be able to get them back even after emptying the recycle bin. On your phone, photos can be available in iCloud, Google Photos, or OneDrive. If you copied the photos to your computer and had local backups or automatic cloud backups enabled, you can restore them from there as well.

Option 1. Get Deleted Photos Back With File History or Time Machine

Both Windows and macOS include built-in backup tools. File History is available on Windows, while Time Machine is on macOS. Follow these steps to recover deleted photos.

On Windows:

1. Connect the external drive that contains your File History backup.
2. Open Control Panel.
3. Go to System and Security > File History.
4. Click Restore personal files from the left sidebar.
5. Go to the folder where the photos were originally stored.
6. View the available backup versions.
7. Choose the photos you want to restore.
8. Click the green Restore button.

On macOS:

1. Connect your Time Machine backup drive.
2. Open the folder where the deleted photos were originally stored. For example, if they were in your Pictures folder, open Finder > Pictures.
3. Click the Time Machine icon in the menu bar and select Browse Time Machine Backups. If the icon isn’t visible, open System Settings > Menu Bar. Scroll down to Time Machine, then click the checkbox next to the Time Machine icon.
4. Use the timeline on the right side of the screen or the arrows to view older backups until you find a date when the photos were still available.
5. Choose photos you want to recover.
6. Click Restore.

Option 2. Check Cloud Storage

If you use iCloud, Google Photos, OneDrive, or another cloud storage service, or you’ve set your phone or computer to automatically save your photos there, you may have a backup that you can restore.

To check your cloud storage:

1. Open your cloud storage service and sign in to your account.
2. Look for the missing photos by browsing your folders or using the search bar.
3. If you still can’t find them, check the recycle bin.
4. Select the photos you want to get back.
5. Click Restore to put them back in your account, or Download to save them to your device.

Method 3. Recover Deleted Photos Using Software

Don’t worry if you’ve already emptied the recycle bin, used permanent delete shortcuts on your computer, deleted the photos directly from your camera’s SD card, and don’t have any backups. In many cases, photo recovery is still possible and easy to follow. The only thing you’ll need is the right data recovery tool.

We understand how stressful it can be to use something you’ve never seen before, which is why we recommend Disk Drill for this. It’s easy to use, safe and has an intuitive interface. It’s available on both Windows and macOS. You can recover data that was deleted directly from your computer, or connect an SD card, USB flash drive, mobile phone or other external device to recover data from there. An important feature is that you can preview photos and recover only the ones you need. On Windows, you can restore up to 100 MB of files for free, while on macOS you can scan and preview files without any limits.

One important thing to keep in mind is that no recovery software can restore photos that have already been permanently erased by the storage device itself. Most modern SSDs use a feature called TRIM, which automatically clears deleted data to improve performance. The same can happen with some cameras and SD cards. Certain models support SD ERASE commands (CMD32, CMD33, and CMD38), which work in a similar way to TRIM.

Recover photos with Disk Drill:

1. Download and install Disk Drill from the official website. 
2. Once the installation is complete, connect your SD card, USB flash drive, phone, or any other external storage device if that’s where your photos were deleted from. 
3. Open Disk Drill and choose the device you want to recover photos from from the list of available storage devices. Then click Search for Lost Data to start the scan.
4. For external devices, Disk Drill offers two scanning modes. Use Universal Scan if you want to recover photos. Advanced Camera Recovery is needed to recover fragmented videos.
5. After the scan finishes, click Review found items to view the results.
6. Use the Preview feature to verify that your photos are recoverable before restoring them. You can also use filters to narrow the results or search for specific file formats.
7. After finding the photos you want to restore, choose them and click Recover.
8. Choose a destination on your computer, an external drive, or another storage device. 
9. After the recovery process finishes, open several photos to confirm that they were restored successfully.

How to Avoid Losing Your Kids’ Photos Again

We’ve prepared a few simple tips to help make sure this doesn’t happen again. Taking these small steps now can help keep your family photos safe in the future.

• Turn on automatic backups on your phone. Enable iCloud Photos, Google Photos, or OneDrive so copies of your photos are saved automatically.
• Keep a second copy on another device. Regularly copy important photos to your computer, an external hard drive, or a USB flash drive.
• Don’t keep your only copy on a single SD card. Camera SD cards can be lost, damaged, or accidentally formatted, so move your photos to another device as soon as possible. If your camera supports dual SD cards, use two cards at the same time for extra protection.
• Back up your computer regularly. Use File History on Windows or Time Machine on macOS to create automatic backups.
• Check that your backups are working. From time to time, open your cloud storage or backup drive to make sure your latest photos are actually being backed up.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, recovering deleted photos isn’t as difficult as it may seem. First and foremost identify your situation. Then choose the recovery method that matches your case. If the photos were deleted recently, start by checking the recycle bin of your device. If you have local or cloud backups, restore there. And if you don’t have any backups or the photos were deleted directly from a camera SD card, data recovery software will help you get them back. Of course, the best thing you can do is learn from your mistakes and avoid making them again by following prevention tips.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I recover photos after emptying the Recycle Bin?

Yes. If you created a local or cloud backup before the photos were deleted, you can restore them from there. If you don’t have a backup, data recovery software will recover your photos, provided they haven’t been permanently erased or overwritten.

Can I recover photos deleted directly from a camera SD card?

Yes. If the photos were deleted from an SD card, stop using it immediately and scan it with data recovery software. However, recovery won’t be possible if the card has already erased the deleted data using SD ERASE commands.

Will recovering deleted photos reduce their quality?

No. It doesn’t matter whether you restore your photos from the recycle bin, a backup, or with data recovery software, their quality will remain the same.

Guest Article.