How to Recover Deleted DCIM Folder on Android?

Losing DCIM Folder on Android

Have you ever deleted your DCIM folder from your Android phone or an SD card by mistake? DCIM folder that contains massive photos and videos is missing? Are you looking for a suitable Android DCIM recovery solution like the user below?

I accidentally deleted photos/videos that were in the DCIM folder from my camera. I've searched numerous programs from Google but they all seem to be bs. I don't have a rooted phone, but I was wondering if someone on here can give me legit advice and guidance on how can I recover these files. I believe the files were saved on the phone's internal memory and not the SD card. Please help me.

forums.androidcentral.com

Now, in this post, we are going to show you how to effectively recover deleted DCIM folder to get lost photos as well as videos back.

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What Is the DCIM Folder on an Android Phone?

DCIM (Digital Camera Images) folder is used to store some newly taken photos. It is often found in a digital camera or a smartphone. In general, it is located in the internal memory of an Android phone and an SD card of a digital camera.

When you connect a digital camera or a smartphone to your Windows computer, the disk that appears in your File Explorer will most likely have a folder named DCIM inside it.

Common Reasons for DCIM Folder Loss

• Accidentally formatted the memory card.
• Mistakenly deleted the DCIM folder.
• Applications like the photo gallery deleted the DCIM folder and photos in the folder.
• A digital camera error caused the DCIM folder missing.
• The virus deleted the DCIM folder.
• The incomplete transfer process from the memory card to other storage devices caused DCIM folder loss.
• Abrupt ejection of memory card while data read/write process is in action.
• Using the same card on multiple devices, etc.

In a word, DCIM folder loss happens more and more frequently and can occur due to various reasons and is unpredictable.

Therefore, it is recommended to back up all important data in case of any accidents. However, what should you do if there are no backup files? Is it possible to recover the DCIM folder on Android or from an SD card without damaging the original data? Fortunately, the answer is positive.

How to Recover Deleted DCIM Folder on Android Phone

You can recover lost photos and videos from the DCIM folder by using a piece of free Android data recovery software.

MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android, a piece of free and professional Android file recovery software, is the best option for you to recover the lost or deleted DCIM folder.

And, even if you are a new user, you don’t need to worry about Android DCIM folder recovery because MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android offers wizard-like interfaces as well as easy operations which can lead you recover deleted folders or files on Android phones without any difficulty.

More importantly, it offers 2 excellent recovery modules – Recover from Phone and Recover from SD-Card – to help you recover Android data quickly.

You can click the button below to download this professional Android data recovery software and then try it out.

MiniTool Android Recovery on WindowsClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Something you need to know in advance:

• You had better close any other Android management software when you are using MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android to recover deleted folders on your Android phones to guarantee its normal running.
• You have to root your Android device in advance no matter which Android data recovery software you are using. However, how to root Android? Here, you can read this post How to Root Your Android Device to find the answer.

Step 1. Launch MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android to get its main interface as follows, and then select the Recover from Phone module to continue.

Step 2. Connect your Android phone to your computer via a USB cable. After that, MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android will automatically detect the connected device.

You will be prompted to enable a USB debugging mode. Different Android versions have different steps to enable USB debugging.

The following interface shows you four different kinds of guidance. Just select the corresponding guidance according to the Android version of your Android phone and then follow the detailed graphic procedure to enable USB debugging.

If it is the first time your Android device is connected to the PC, your PC needs USB debugging authorization. To avoid authorization next time, please check Always allow from this computer and click OK on your phone.

Step 3. Choose a suitable scan method in the Device Ready to Scan interface. Here, in this window, you can see two scan modes:

Quick Scan: This scan mode scans your device in a fast way, but it only supports recovering deleted contacts, short messages, and call records.

Deep Scan: This scan mode scans the entire device so that more files could be recovered. You need to note that this mode may cost more time, so please be patient.

Here, we take Deep Scan for example. Then click on the Next button to continue.

Step 4. Now, you will enter into the analysis interface. MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android will analyze the Android device, and then scan data on this device.

On the scan interface, you can click the STOP button to stop the scan, and then MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android will load the current data. For the best scan result, you had better finish the scan process.

Step 5. After scanning, MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android will show you its scanning results as shown below. The file types are listed on the left side of this interface.

Here, to recover deleted or lost photos and videos from the DCIM folder, you can focus on these files: Camera, Screenshot, and App Picture under Photos & Videos as well as Picture and Multimedia under RAW & Document.

After that, you can select the items you want to recover and click on the Recover button to continue.

There will be a small pop-up window with the software’s default storage path. If you want to choose another storage path on your computer to save the selected data, you can click on the Browse button to select a proper location.

There are some limitations in MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android Free, and you can learn these limitations from this introduction: Limits in MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android Free Edition. If you want to break these limitations and retrieve all of the deleted files, you should get the full edition from the official website.

After these steps, you have finished recovering lost photos and videos from the DCIM folder.

After knowing how to perform an Android DCIM Recovery, some users might want to know whether they can recover the deleted DCIM folder from an SD card. If you have the same question, please keep reading to find answers.

How to Recover DCIM Folder From SD Card

MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android also offers a “Recover from SD-Card” feature to help you recover the deleted DCIM folder on an SD card. The steps are:

Step 1. Launch MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android, and then click Recover from SD-Card to recover lost photos and videos from the DCIM folder.

Step 2. Connect your SD card to the computer via an SD card reader, and click the Next button to continue.

If there is no SD card showing up or MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android cannot recognize the inserted SD card, the Next button will be grayed out. This may be caused by an abnormal connection, and you can try to reconnect it or replace a card reader.

Step 3. Select the target SD card according to the drive letter and label, as well as storage space. Then click on the Next button to continue.

Step 4. At this time, MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android will analyze the selected SD card and scan the data saved on the SD card automatically after analyzing it. In the scanning interface, you can click the STOP button if you have found desired data. But it is recommended to wait until this software finds all data.

Step 5. After scanning, all found items will be shown on this interface. Here, since you want to recover the DCIM folder from the SD card, you can focus on image types and videos to recover the DCIM folder from the internal memory of the Android device.

After that, you are supposed to select all needed files and click on Recover to choose a proper path to save them.

Other Useful Tools for SD Card DCIM Folder Recovery

In addition to MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android, there are some other data restore tools for SD card deleted DCIM file recovery.

1. MiniTool Photo Recovery, a free photo recovery software, is used to recover lost and deleted photos, videos, and audio from various data storage devices, like internal hard drives, external hard drives, SD cards, memory cards, USB flash drives, and more.

Thus, you can use this photo restore software to recover the deleted DCIM folder from your SD card.

With the free edition of MiniTool Photo Recovery, you can recover 200MB of data for free. Just download and install this photo restore tool on your computer to have a try.

MiniTool Windows Photo RecoveryClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

If you want to use this software to recover your photos, videos, and audio without limitation, you can use its advanced edition.

2. MiniTool Power Data Recovery is another professional and free data recovery software that can assist you to recover deleted DCIM folder as well as other files including documents, videos, emails, and so on from internal hard drives, external hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, CDs/DVDs, and more.

Now, you can click the button below to download the free edition of MiniTool Power Data Recovery to check whether this data restore tool can find the files you want. If yes, you can update this software to the full edition to recover unlimited files for the free edition allows you to recover up to 1 GB of data for free.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

For a more comprehensive guide to recovering files or folders from an SD card, you can refer to How to Recover Photos From an SD Card Without Formatting.

Bottom Line

Now, you should know how to recover deleted DCIM folder from an Android phone and SD card by using MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android.

If you find any other good solutions for Android DCIM recovery, please share them in the comment zone below. On the other hand, should you have any questions about MiniTool data recovery software, please do not hesitate to contact us via [email protected]. We will solve it as soon as possible.

DCIM Android FAQ

How do I recover a deleted DCIM folder on my iPhone?

If you want to recover the DCIM folder from your iPhone, you can try MiniTool Mobile Recovery for iOS Free Edition. It offers you three data recovery modules to help you get lost folders and files effectively: Recover from iOS Device, Recover from iTunes Backup File, and Recover from iCloud Backup File.