How do I recover pictures on a Sony Memory Card?

Can I recover my pictures from a formatted SD memory card if I've taken a few pictures post- formatting?

• On a recent trip to Italy I took over 500 pictures on my Canon powershot camera. I have an 8 Gig memory card in it. On the last night of my trip, while looking to see how much space I had used, I accidentally chose format. My memory card erased all my photos. Thinking I would make the best of what time I had left, I took about 85 pictures. Are there any ways to get back the photos that I haven't saved over?

• Answer:

  Your memory card did not erase your images, you did by telling the camera to format the card and assuring the camera that you really did want to remove all the images on your memory card. That out of the way, depending upon how important those shots are, you can spend about $35 on a recovery program that works from Lexar (Rescue3) or spend a lot of time and frustration attempting to recover your images using a "free" recovery program. Using the card after formatting was the death of what ever chance you had of recovering those images. In this case you did every thing wrong. First telling you camera to format the card and then instead of using a second card, you went a head and saved new images over the old ones. In the future ALWAYS carry a second card and never tell your camera to format your card until you have safely copied all the image files to your computer. Then it is important that you always format the card. This will go a long way to assure that you never get corrupted image files or even corrupted memory cards.