Recovering photos deleted many years ago

"Can I recover photos deleted 2 years ago? Today, I found an old SD card that I used with my Canon camera before. I checked the card and was delighted to see some old photos on it."

Then I realized that I had deleted most of the pictures from the card. Is there any way to recover photos deleted two years ago?”

If you're experiencing the same issue or have any of these questions on your mind, worry not. This page will contain reliable and practical solutions to help you with the following:

• Question 1. How can I recover files deleted a long time ago?
• Question 2. How can I recover photos deleted two or three years ago?
• Question 3. Is it possible to recover permanently deleted files?
• Question 4. How can I recover permanently deleted photos from my phone?

This page consists of three sections aimed at helping you fully address this issue. We'll explore why data, such as images, that was deleted a long time ago can still be recovered, and provide solutions to restore old photos deleted years ago from Windows computers, external storage devices, and mobile phones, along with tips to protect your important data.

[1] "Overview of Long-Term Picture Deletion Recovery"

Note: If you have backups of the lost files, great. Stop here and immediately restore them from backup.

There are two significant factors that can influence the recovery of files or images deleted a long time ago. As long as you meet either of the following conditions, you might be able to retrieve photos deleted years ago:

# 1. Never Emptying the Recycle Bin

The Recycling Bin is designed to hold all of your recently deleted files, including documents, images, audio, and video files, for a period of time. As long as you don't empty the Recycling Bin, any deleted files will remain there indefinitely.

However, there are situations where you cannot directly recover deleted files from there:

Scenario 1: The file is too large to fit in the Recycle Bin. For example, high-resolution photos and videos might exceed the Recycle Bin's size limit.

The text in the image says, "File is too large to be recycled."

Scenario 2: The Recycle Bin is configured to immediately remove files instead of holding them for deletion.

# 2. No new data has been written to the storage device where the lost files were saved

If you deleted the pictures or photos years ago and no new files have been saved to the storage device since then, congratulations. You can simply run a reliable data recovery software to scan and restore all lost data.

How to Recover Deleted Photos from Years Ago (3 Methods)

Generally, there are three practical ways to help you recover photos, images, or other files that were deleted a long time ago or many years back from your storage device. Choose the most suitable method now to get back those lost pictures from years ago.

Method 1: Recover Photos from the Recycling Bin

Applies to: Retrieve photos deleted years ago from an never-emptyed Windows 10/8/7 Recycle Bin with just a few clicks.

As long as you haven't emptied or cleaned out the Recycle Bin, you can recover files deleted a long time ago. Here's how:

1. Double-click the Recycle Bin icon on your Windows desktop.

Step 2: Right-click on the photo that you want to recover and choose "Restore."

Step 3: The deleted photo will be restored to its original location from the trash.

Recover Deleted Photos from Recycle Bin

If you've already emptied the Recycle Bin, your best bet is to seek help from a professional file recovery software as recommended in Method 2.

For mobile users, you can refer to the following two links to recover lost photos from your iPhone or Android device:

• Recover Permanently Deleted Photos on iPhone
• Recover Permanently Deleted Files from Android Recycle Bin

Method 2: Recover Deleted Pictures with a File Recovery Software

Applies to: Scanning and recovering pictures deleted many years ago from a Windows hard drive or external storage device that hasn't been used for storing new data.

Professional file recovery software like Data Recovery Wizard can help restore PNG, JPG, JPEG, TIFF, BMP, and other picture file formats after they've been deleted long ago from Windows PCs, external hard drives, USB drives, or even SD cards.

• Recover photos from emptied Recycle Bin, memory cards, USB flash drives, SD cards, digital cameras, and camcorders
• Automatically fix corrupted JPEG/PNG files during data recovery process
• Supports photo recovery in various scenarios, including accidental deletion, formatting, hard drive failure, virus attacks, system crashes, etc.
• Restore photos from mobile devices and both Windows and macOS computers

You can use a file recovery utility to restore all your lost image files first, then upgrade to the full version to recover the rest of your files. Users of Android devices that save photos on an external SD card can also follow these steps.

Step 1: Launch tools Data Recovery Wizard. Find the SD card, camera or hard drive partition where you deleted or lost pictures, and then click "Scan".

Select the location, and then scan for the lost photos

Step 2: When the scan is done, you can choose "Photos" from the left sidebar to quickly filter out photos.

Step 3: You can preview the images to be recovered. Then, click “Recover” and choose another location to save the recovered data.

For smartphone users, it's unlikely that you haven't taken new photos with your camera or photo app, or saved new images to your iPhone or Android device's internal storage. So you won't be able to recover photos deleted years ago from the internal storage of your iPhone or Android device.

If you had backups of the photos, you may be able to recover them using the advice in Method 3.

Method 3: Recover Photos Deleted Years Ago from a Backup

Applies to: Instantly restore photos deleted years ago from your personal backup, Windows, or iPhone/Android backup.

# 1. Restore from Personal Backup or Windows Backup

If you have copied or saved the deleted or lost photos, files to a storage device as a personal backup, simply connect the device to your computer. Open File Explorer and locate all the missing files there.

If you created a Windows Backup on your computer, you can restore missing files by following these steps:

Step 1: Open Control Panel, go to System and Maintenance, and choose Backup and Restore (Windows 7).

Click “Recover My Files” to proceed.

Step 2: Click on "Browse for files" or "Browse for folders," and select the backup you created earlier.

Select the backup you want to restore.

Step 3: Choose where to save the backup – “Original location” or “Another location.”

If there's a conflict, choose Replace Copy, Don't Copy, or Copy and Keep Both as needed.

Step 4: Wait for the recovery process to complete.

# 2. Restore Photos from an iCloud Backup

If you're an iPhone or iPad user, you can easily recover deleted photos from an iCloud backup using a reliable iOS data recovery tool.

# 3. Recover Lost Photos from Android Backup

On your Android phone, go to “Settings” > tap on “Backup and reset” > select the backup of the photos you deleted a long time ago > and click on “Restore from backup” to retrieve all lost data.

Warm prompt

While this method allows tools like Data Recovery Wizard to restore photos deleted a year or more ago, there are risks involved. For instance, new data might overwrite the old data, or the file could get corrupted during the recovery process.

Thus, if some of the recovered photos turn out to be semi-gray or damaged, you might still need to try and fix corrupted data after recovery. The best way to prevent all these issues is to back up all your important photos and images to another drive.

For Windows users, you can back up your desired photos to a local hard drive or external storage device with Windows Backup or a reliable file backup software like Todo Backup, in three simple steps:

Step 1: Tap on "Select Backup Content" to start the backup.

Create File Backup Step 1

Step 2: There are four backup categories: Files, Disks, Operating System, and Mail. Click on Files.

Create File Backup Step 2

Step 3: The local and network files will be displayed on the left. Expand the directories to select the files you want to back up.

Step 4: Choose where you want to save your backup, following the on-screen instructions.

Click “Options” to set a password for encrypted backups, schedule backups for specific times, and choose to initiate backups on certain events. There are many other options you can customize during the backup process.

Step 5. You can save the backup to your local drive, the tool's online service, or a NAS.

Step 6. Todo Backup lets you back up your data to third-party cloud drives and your own cloud drive.

If you want to back up to a third-party cloud drive, choose “Local Disk,” then scroll down and add a cloud device, enter your account information, and log in.

You can also save the backup to the tool's cloud storage service. Click Tool Cloud, register and sign in to your tool account.

Step 7. Click “Backup Now” to start the backup. When it's done, it will appear as a card in the left panel. Right-click it for more management options.

If you use an iPhone or iPad, you can store your cherished memories directly in iCloud.

If you use an Android device, you can back up important files thoroughly with Google Drive or the built-in Android backup feature.