Most quality data recovery programs such as those offered by Remo software are designed to recognize all of the popular and currently in use file types such as Microsoft Word documents or Microsoft Excel accounting files. If a program for file recovery is designed to recognize video file types such as .AVIs and .MOVs then the search and recover program will quickly find those recently deleted video files and place them on a list of recoverable information. An interesting exception to this is the recovery of digital camera RAW files. These are special file types created by each high end camera manufacturer such as Canon or Nikon. To locate and recover these files one must purchase a specific digital photo recovery program that addresses the recognition of these file types.

The second issue that many computer owners do not understand is what is required to delete files forever. Simply emptying your Windows recycle bin or directly deleting a file from external digital storage does not erase the underlying file information. To delete files forever you must overwrite the information in the area of your hard drive that held the original file. The best way to do this is to use a file shredder program that purposely writes new random information onto the file areas.

What makes recovery of digital image files different and difficult is that very often we assume a successful transfer of our precious photographs only to discover later that many of our images were incomplete. That being the case, the process to recover digital photos requires us to go back to our digital camera’s memory card and search through that media for the original stored digital photographs. These will most likely be in the camera manufacturer’s proprietary format known as a RAW file. When you purchase a program for digital photo recovery, make sure that program will recognize and recover RAW files.