The card says empty. The photos are probably not.
An empty card is usually a card with an empty directory. The photos underneath are another matter. Here is how to find out on a Mac, in seconds, without paying.
Four reasons a card looks empty
- Deleted. Someone pressed delete, in the camera or in the Finder. The names are gone, the photos stay until overwritten.
- Quick formatted. A new empty directory was written. The old photos, and often the old directory, are still there.
- Damaged directory. The card was pulled during a write, or the camera crashed. macOS cannot read the directory and shows nothing, or asks to initialize. Do not initialize.
- Overwritten or wiped. The card was reused or securely erased. This is the one case where the photos are gone.
From the outside, the first three look exactly like the fourth. The difference is what a scan finds.
Find out in seconds, for free
Right after you choose the card, Retriever takes a quick look at the whole card and tells you what is on it. For a healthy card: "72 % hold data, the rest is empty." For a wiped card: "21 % hold data, 75 % were overwritten with a fill pattern. Where the pattern is, nothing is left." You learn this before the backup, before the scan, before spending an evening on it. If it finds nothing, it costs nothing.
Until then: stop using the card
Deleting a photo removes its name from the card's directory. The bytes stay until the space is reused. Every new photo, every video, every "format" in the camera menu can overwrite them. So: no new pictures, no formatting, no repair tools. Take the card out and leave it alone until you scan it.
Get them back with Retriever, step by step
- Download Retriever on your Mac. It runs on macOS 13 or newer, Apple Silicon and Intel. Scanning and looking are free.
- Put the card in a reader and choose it in the app. Retriever asks once for your Mac password, through the normal macOS dialog. It reads the card and never writes to it.
- Back up. Retriever makes a bit-for-bit copy of the card and works on the copy. You need free space the size of the card, on the Mac or an external drive.
- Scan. The app reads every byte. "Sniffing through 64 GB…", then "Found 1,204 photos so far".
- Look. Thumbnails by day, the folders of the card, full-size previews. Every file carries an honest badge: intact, probably damaged, fragmented, unverified, duplicate. All of this is free.
- Recover. This is the paid step, 29 USD once. Pick a folder on your Mac, never the card itself. Every written file is verified.
Scan and look for free
Download Retriever, choose the card, back up, scan, look. You pay only if you save files you have already seen, 29 USD once.