Most photo recovery tools let you scan for free and then paywall the actual saving. Stellar plays this differently. The Free Edition lets you recover up to 1 GB of data without paying anything. That is a meaningful ceiling.
A 1 GB allowance comfortably covers a wedding ceremony’s worth of JPEGs, around 30 to 40 RAW files from a modern full-frame camera, or a short burst of compressed 4K video. For the photographer who formatted the wrong card on a Tuesday afternoon, that envelope is often enough to get the critical frames back without ever opening a wallet.
The free tier runs the same engine as the paid Standard edition. There is no crippled scanner, no watered-down algorithm. You are looking at the same Deep Scan, the same RAW signature library, the same file system support. When the 1 GB runs out, you decide whether the rest is worth the upgrade to Standard (currently €59.99 on sale) or higher tiers that add photo and video repair.
The first scenario is the one that keeps content creators awake at night. I loaded a 64 GB SanDisk Extreme Pro SDXC card with mixed content (JPEGs, a handful of CR3 RAW files, and a 4K MP4 clip), then performed an in-camera Quick Format on a Canon body. No third-party tool had touched the card before Stellar.
Installation took under a minute on Windows 11. The wizard asks two questions: what type of data you want back (Photos, Videos, Audio, or Everything) and which drive to read. One quirk worth flagging: the interface lists physical devices and logical drives separately, even when they refer to the same card.
The Deep Scan toggle, sitting to the left of the Scan button, appears only when you pick the logical drive. Select the physical device and the option disappears. This is true for full-size SD and microSD cards alike. For a formatted card, picking the logical drive is the right move because that is where Deep Scan does its work.
The initial pass finished in about 90 seconds. The Deep Scan ran for roughly 22 minutes on the full 64 GB. At one point, the software asked me to close unnecessary applications to free up RAM. Some background programs were indeed gobbling up close to 90% of my memory. I closed the biggest offenders, and the scan proceeded smoothly from there.
While the scan worked, the preview pane filled up gradually. This is genuinely useful: rather than waiting blind, I could see thumbnails of the CR3 files appearing one by one and tell at a glance which frames were intact. The preview is not a fake placeholder either. When a thumbnail rendered correctly, the recovered file opened cleanly in Lightroom. When the preview showed a corrupted strip, the saved file matched that damage.
The final count: every JPEG recovered, every CR3 file recovered, the MP4 clip recovered with its audio intact. The catch was the 1 GB free ceiling. The full restore would have run to roughly 4 GB, so I prioritized the RAW frames and the video, saved them under the cap, and noted what was left for a potential upgrade decision.
I repeated the same formatted-card test on a 64 GB Kingston microSD pulled from a Fujifilm X-M1, an older APS-C body that writes RAF files alongside JPEGs. Results matched the SanDisk run: full recovery of the deleted JPEGs and RAF files, accurate previews, no surprises. The fact that the workflow holds up on a decade-old camera and a budget Kingston card is worth noting. Stellar is not optimized only for current-generation hardware.
Drone pilots and action cam users delete clips on the spot to free space, then realize ten minutes later they killed the wrong file. I simulated this once on a 128 GB Lexar microSD from a DJI rig: shot a series of photos and short videos, deleted them through the device interface, then pulled the card.
Stellar found the deleted content in seven minutes during the initial scan, no Deep Scan required. The Tree View grouped files by their original folder structure, while the File Type view sorted them into Photos, Videos, and Audio bins. Both work, but for someone who knows roughly when the deletion happened, the Deleted List view is the fastest path to the right files.
Every photo came back. Every video came back. The 1 GB free tier handled all of it with room to spare.
I ran a parallel deletion test on the 64 GB Kingston microSD in the Fujifilm X-M1, deleting a mix of JPEGs and RAF files through the camera’s own menu rather than a desktop file manager. The behaviour was identical: initial scan found everything in under ten minutes, the Deleted List view surfaced the relevant files quickly, and every frame recovered cleanly.
This is where RAW format support gets tested. I deliberately deleted a folder of Nikon NEF files from a 64 GB ProGrade SDXC card used in a Nikon Z6. NEF files from a full-frame sensor run 25 to 30 MB each.
Stellar identified the NEF files by signature, previewed them correctly, and recovered them with full embedded metadata. EXIF data was intact. Adobe Camera Raw opened the recovered files without complaint.
A follow-up test on a smaller batch of NRW files produced identical results. Stellar’s RAW signature library is comprehensive: Canon CR2 and CR3, Nikon NEF and NRW, Sony ARW, SRF, and SR2, Fujifilm RAF, Panasonic RW2, Olympus ORF, Pentax PEF, Sigma X3F, and DNG are all in the supported list.
For a third data point, I ran the same RAW recovery test on the Kingston microSD in the Fujifilm X-M1, this time targeting the camera’s RAF files. Stellar identified the format by signature and recovered the files with embedded metadata intact, exactly as it had with the Nikon NEFs. The app also offers the ability to add new file formats manually, which matters as camera manufacturers introduce new RAW variants.
The standard scan reads the card’s existing filesystem index for entries that have been marked deleted but not overwritten. This is fast and catches most accidental deletions. Deep Scan ignores the filesystem entirely and reads the raw data blocks, matching them against known file signatures. It is slower (often by an order of magnitude) but it works on cards that have been formatted, on cards with damaged filesystem tables, and on files whose directory entries have been overwritten.
One interface detail worth knowing before you start: the Deep Scan toggle appears next to the Scan button only when you select a logical drive. Pick the physical device entry for the same card and the toggle is hidden. If Deep Scan is what you need, pick the logical drive.
The practical rule from my testing: try standard scan first. If your files do not appear, run Deep Scan. The Pause and Resume feature is genuinely useful here. A Deep Scan on a 256 GB card can take an hour or longer. Pausing it to do other work, then resuming later, beats sitting and waiting.
Every recovery feature is present in the free tier. Deep Scan, RAW signatures, preview-while-scanning, file-type filtering, pause and resume, support for FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, HFS+, APFS, and BTRFS file systems, and recovery from BitLocker-encrypted drives. The 1 GB save limit is the only restriction on the free tier.
The paid tiers add capabilities the free version does not have. Standard removes the 1 GB cap. Professional adds corrupted photo repair, which is different from recovery: it fixes images that exist but cannot be opened due to header damage or bad sectors. Premium extends repair to video files and handles multiple corrupt videos in batch mode.
The preview-while-scanning system is the standout feature. Most competitors make you complete a scan before you can see anything. Stellar lets you watch results populate and stop early if you spot what you need. On a large card, this can save hours.
Speed is the other genuine advantage. Independent benchmarks from Neocamera clocked Stellar at 5 minutes 40 seconds for a full FAT32 scan and 6 minutes for ExFAT on 32 GB cards, while another free alternative took 14 minutes and 45 minutes respectively for the same drives.
Surprisingly, there is only one limiting factor.
The Free Edition’s 1 GB cap will not cover a full card recovery in most professional scenarios. For a wedding shooter, a 1 GB ceiling is a triage tool, not a complete solution. The paid Standard tier removes this barrier but costs €59.99 on sale.
No recovery tool is magic, and Stellar is honest about working on a best-effort basis. A few situations can put your files beyond reach regardless of which software you run.
New writes overwrite old data. When you delete a photo, the camera removes the filesystem entry but leaves the actual image data sitting on the card until something else writes over it. Shoot a new burst, record a new clip, or even let the camera write a small thumbnail database, and you risk overwriting the very bytes you want back. The moment you suspect data loss, stop using the card.
Full or low-level formats wipe the data itself. A standard in-camera format is usually a Quick Format, which clears the index and leaves the data recoverable. A full format or a low-level format overwrites the storage with empty data, and at that point no software can bring the files back.
Physical damage to the card. Bent pins, cracked plastic, water damage, or a controller chip that has stopped responding will keep recovery software from reading the card at all. These cases require a hardware-level lab service, which costs significantly more than any consumer tool.
Severe filesystem corruption with bad sectors. If the card has developed bad sectors in the areas where your files live, parts of those files will be unreadable. Stellar can often recover what remains, but the result may be a partial JPEG or a video that plays only up to a certain point. The Professional and Premium tiers add repair tools for some of these cases.
Encryption without the password. Stellar can recover from BitLocker-encrypted drives if you supply the password. Without it, encrypted data stays encrypted.
Very large RAW files from medium-format bodies. As noted earlier, independent benchmarking has flagged trouble with RAW files in the 200 MB range from cameras like the Fujifilm GFX100 II. Smaller RAW files from full-frame and APS-C bodies recover reliably.
The single most important habit: the moment you realize a file is gone, eject the card and do not write anything else to it. Every additional action lowers the odds of a full recovery.
For the photographer who has just realized they formatted the wrong card, Stellar Photo Recovery Free Edition is the right first move. Install it, run it, and see what comes back before you commit any money. The 1 GB free ceiling is enough to rescue the frames that matter in most casual loss scenarios. If you need to recover an entire 128 GB card, the Standard tier is reasonable insurance, and the upgrade prompt comes only after you have seen the software work.
Tests across multiple cards and cameras (a Canon body, a Nikon Z6, a DJI rig, and an older Fujifilm X-M1) produced consistent recoveries. RAW files came back with metadata intact. Deleted videos restored cleanly. Formatted cards gave up their contents under Deep Scan. The preview system saved time on every run.
Verdict: A genuinely useful free recovery tool, not a teaser for an upsell. The 1 GB tier covers most real-world incidents, and the underlying engine handles quick-formatted cards, deleted RAW files, and mixed media without drama.
Best for: Photographers and content creators who need a reliable safety net for SD card mishaps.
Skip if: You routinely need to shoot 100-megapixel medium format. For those cases, the paid Standard tier or a different workflow makes more sense.
Score: 10/10
If you shoot for a living, install the Free Edition now, before you need it. The moment you actually need photo recovery is not the moment to start downloading software.
Written by Alius Noreika
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