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How to Recover Photos and Videos from Drone Camera

Wondershare Recoverit Authors

Mar 11, 2024 • Filed to: Photo/Video/Audio Solutions • Proven solutions

Drone cameras are widely used by videographers and photographers these days. They allow us to take amazing shots with a birds-ey view. This lets us shoot remarkable videos/photos and can even help us tighten our security. Though, many people are confused about the types of drones and would like to know how drones work.

In this guide, I will answer all these important queries about drones and will also help you with photos and videos recovery from Drones as well.

Drone recovery

Part 1 Where Photos and Videos Stored on Drones?

If you want to learn how drones work, you need to understand their storage first. Ideally, the way photos and videos are stored on a drone camera would broadly vary from one model to another.

Internal Storage

Some types of drones come with an internal storage of a few gigabytes to store immediate photos and videos. Most of these drones are a bit expensive. Once users shoot photos and videos, they are stored on its internal storage. Later, users can transfer them to a secure location on their computer or hard drive.

SD Cards

Most drones have a feature to expand their storage with an SD card. There are numerous kinds of SD cards and micro memory cards compatible with drone cameras.

You can easily pick a supported SD card for your drone and connect it. The photos and videos will be stored on the SD card, which can later be connected to your computer.

Drone sd card for photo recovery

One of the best things about using an SD card for drones is the ease of data recovery. If your photos or videos are lost on an SD card, you can easily perform drone recovery. I have covered this in detail in the next section.


Part 2 Recoverit Photo Recovery – Best Drone Recovery Software

If you have lost the photos or videos on your drone camera, give Recoverit Photo Recovery a try. A highly advanced data recovery tool can help you retrieve all kinds of data from your drone camera by following a simple click-through process.

Recoverit Photo Recovery is extremely easy to use and yields professional results. Even if you have no prior technical experience, you would be able to make the most of this data recovery tool.

Its interface even provides a preview of the retrieved content. This way, users can first preview the photos or videos they want back. It also supports photo recovery and videos recovery of all the common formats.

  • Photos: It can recover photos in different formats like JPEG, PNG, BMP, RAW, PSD, CRW, CR2, GIF, RAF, DNG, etc.
  • Videos: You can also retrieve videos shot on your drone cameras in formats like MP4, MOV, AVI, FLV, SWF, 3GP, etc.
  • It supports all the major drone camera brands and every leading SD card or memory card.
  • You can run it on Windows 7, Vista, 8, 8.1, and 10, as well as macOS X 10.9 and later.

Part 3 How to Perform Drone Recovery on SD Card?

With Recoverit Photo Recovery, you can easily perform data recovery from your drone camera. To do this, you first need to unmount the SD card from your drone and make sure that it is unlocked.

Now, connect the SD card to your system and take the assistance of Recoverit. You can follow these steps to recover your lost or inaccessible photos and videos with Recoverit Photo Recovery.

Select a location

The application will ask you to select the location where you wish to perform data recovery. Select SD card from here and click "Start" to proceed. Make sure that the SD card of your Drone camera is connected to the system beforehand.

select Drone sd card

Scan the drone camera

Wait for a while as it will scan the location and look for any inaccessible or lost content. Don’t close the application or unmount your SD card during the process.

scan Drone camera

Preview and recover data

In the end, you will be notified when the process is completed. Then, you can just preview the recovered photos and videos on the interface. Then, select the videos/photos and restore them to a trusted location.

preview and recover drone files

Use Enhanced Recovery

Recoverit develops an exclusive feature called Enhanced Recovery in this market. It can recover your videos by scanning and piecing up all their fragments and thus make the video recovery smoother. Now, click on the "Enhanced Recovery" at the left bottom and click on the SD card to initiate the advanced recovery process.

drone camera advanced video recovery

Scan and Preview Videos

The recovery mode also requires a scanning and merging process. After it, you can re-watch the videos and decide if you want to recover them. If yes, please click the "Recover" button and get all of them back.

recover drone videos

Check out the steps to preview and recover deleted music.
- 2 minutes to read it.

Part 4 Causes for Losing Photos & Videos on Drone Camera

By now, you were able to perform Drone recovery using Recoverit Photo Recovery. However, to avoid other photo and video losses, you should learn the common reasons for causing the loss of data.

  • Malware attack
    Sometimes, when we connect our camera or SD card to a public (or an already corrupted) computer, it can lead to a virus attack. This can corrupt the data storage and make your photos/videos inaccessible.
  • Power issues
    If your drone's power supply would cut off while shooting, it can lead to the loss of immediate data. The content might not be stored in the cache for you to access.
  • Software problem
    There might be a software-related issue with your drone, SD card, or connected computer. Try not to tamper with your drone's firmware to avoid this.
  • Physical damage
    Lastly, your drone (or the SD card) can also get physically damaged. For instance, if your drone has been crashed in the water, it can cause evident data loss.
  • Unreliable SD card
    A corrupt or malfunctioning SD card is one of the primary reasons for data loss on drones. To avoid this, make sure that you use a reliable and functioning SD card for your drone camera. (Repair corrupt videos due to SD card errors.)

The good thing is that most of these issues can be resolved by using a reliable data recovery tool for drones (like Recoverit Photo Recovery).


Part 5 How to Select SD Card for Drones

To further ensure that you make the most of your drone camera, it is recommended to use a reliable SD card. Go through this section to pick the best SD card for drones.

1. Benefits of using an SD Card for Drone

choose sd card

2. Things to consider while buying your drone’s SD card

Keep the following requirements in mind while picking an SD card for a drone.

  • Capacity: Firstly, consider how much storage the SD card provides. Your drone should support the expanded storage limit, and it should also meet your requirements.
  • Type: There are different SD cards out there like micro SD, SDHC, SDXC, etc. Explore their pros and cons before picking the right kind.
  • Processing speed: Also, note the data transfer (writing/reading) and processing speed of the card. Ideally, it should be fast and responsive.
  • Price: Consider your budget and make sure that your SD card won't cost too much.
  • Warranty: Every SD card has a default and extended warranty. Therefore, you should read the fine prints carefully before making the purchase.
  • Compatibility: Most notably, the SD card you are interested in should be compatible with your drone.

3. Best SD Card for Drone Brands

Here are some of our recommendations for getting an SD card for the drone.

  • SanDisk 400 GB Micro SDXC: With a transfer speed of 100 MB/sec, it supports the storing of full HD videos.
  • Kingston 128 GB Canvas: A highly affordable micro SD card recommended for beginners.
  • SanDisk 128 GB Extreme: While the capacity is less, its 275 MB/sec transfer speed makes it a keeper.
  • Samsung 64 GB Evo Plus: The chances of data loss on this one are quite bleak. Although the storage is less, it comes at an affordable cost too.
  • Strontium 128 GB Nitro: This SDXC has a storage capacity of 128 GB and a transfer rate of 100 MB per second.

Part 6 More Information on Drone Cameras

A lot of users ask us questions about drones and their functioning. Here are some of these FAQs that you might like.

1. What is a Drone?

Ideally, what is a drone or a UAV is the same thing? A drone is an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAV). That is, it is an aerial unit that has a specific range to communicate to its base.

Mostly, drones are attached with a camera to shoot videos and photos. In addition, they provide an aerial view and are extensively used for photography and security.

2. How Do Drones Work?

Drone camera

Ideally, most of the drones out there follow the same principle. They are made of lightweight materials and have a single or numerous propellers. With the help of UAV technology, they can aviate.

Drones have an attached camera to record a video or shoot pictures. They communicate to their base unit (operated by the user). A user can control its positioning wirelessly when the drone is under its restricted range.

3. Common Types of Drones

Ideally, drones can be classified under different categories. Here are some of the commonly used types of drones.

fixed wing drones

Fixed-wing drones:They look like an airplane as they only have a single fixed-wing. They can fly for hours and are mostly used by the military. Though, they are the most expensive kinds as well.

single motor drones

Single motor drones: As the name suggests, these drones only have one rotor and appear like a helicopter. They are quite strong-built and have a long flight time. Nevertheless, people find it hard to fly and control them because of their single motor.

multi motor drones

Multi motor drones:These drones have more than a single motor and are most commonly used commercially. They can further be classified on the number of motors used like tri-copters, quadcopters, hexacopters, etc.

You can also classify drones based on their size, range, and other parameters.

The guide would be able to answer all the major questions that you had related to drones, like what a drone is, how drones work, what are the types of drones, etc. Also, you can follow our suggested ideas to pick the most suitable SD card for drones.

Apart from that, you can install Recoverit Photo Recovery to recover lostfiles from memory cards. It is a handy tool that will let you recover all kinds of lost and deleted content under different conditions.

- 2 minutes to read it.
Recoverit author

Eleanor Reed

staff Editor

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