How to Recover Camera RAW Photos (CR2, NEF, ARW, DNG)

Deleting or formatting does not actually erase your RAW files — it only marks their space as free. The original data stays put until something overwrites it. On a camera card, the fastest way to lose a photo for good is to keep shooting; on a drive, it is to keep saving files.

• Power down the camera and eject the card.
• Do not take more photos, reformat again, or run the camera’s own repair.
• Connect the card or drive to your computer and scan it from there.

A quick format leaves your data recoverable. Only a full format or secure erase that overwrites every sector destroys it for good.

RAW formats like CR2, NEF, ARW, DNG, ORF, RAF, PEF and TIFF are found by their file signature, so the right mode depends on where the photos lived.

• Carving Only — the mode for SD cards, CF cards and USB sticks. These are usually FAT32 or exFAT, so RecoverHelper does a pure signature scan and pulls the RAW data back even when the filename is already gone (names are not restored in this mode).
• Deep Scan — the default for internal drives. It runs a Quick Scan first, then carves the whole volume by signature to find files the file system has forgotten.
• Quick Scan — fastest on a healthy NTFS drive right after an accidental delete; it reads the Master File Table to bring files back with their original names, folders and timestamps.

Once the scan finishes you can preview results and check live progress, throughput and ETA. When you choose what to restore, save it somewhere other than the card or drive you are rescuing.

1. Run the scan and let it complete — you can do this for free to confirm your RAW files are listed.
2. Preview and select the photos you want back.
3. Recover them to a different drive. RecoverHelper blocks same-drive output so you can never overwrite the very files you are saving.

The source card or drive is opened strictly read-only, so scanning can never make things worse. If the card is failing, bad-sector tolerance skips unreadable areas and keeps going, so most of your files still come back.

You can run the full scan and preview everything for free, with no signup and no bundled adware. JPG and PNG photos recover at full quality at no cost.

Camera RAW formats — along with HEIC, video and audio — unlock for free by pairing the free RecoverHelper mobile app. That also enables partial recovery of fragmented files, which helps with large RAW images. Because the free scan shows your RAW files in the preview before you pay, you can confirm they are recoverable first.

RecoverHelper runs on both Windows and macOS, and recovers from drives, memory cards and USB devices connected to the computer.

• Windows / NTFS drives: original filenames, folders and timestamps are rebuilt on a Quick or Deep Scan.
• Memory cards (FAT32/exFAT): RAW files are carved by signature; the data comes back even though the original names do not.
• Mac: filenames are rebuilt on NTFS volumes, while the Mac’s own APFS/HFS+ disks are recovered by signature — contents come back, not names.