When I got my Nexus One, I took my 8GB Class 6 MicroSD out of my Hero, popped it into the Nexus and formatted it – assuming that I’d already backed up everything to my computer – how wrong I was!

Only this morning I was going through my backup to find some older photos of me and some friends, only to find that they weren’t there.  A quick recap of recovery software reminded me of a nifty and free piece of software that’s also saved me a couple of times in the past, namely PhotoRec.  Now even though the name suggests its pictures only, it actually works for any kind of file.

I connected up my Nexus One in USB mode, opened PhotoRec (bear in mind that it’s hardly what you call a GUI) and selected my Nexus One.  It started scanning and within 5 minutes I was seeing all my photos appearing in my recovered files folder (you specify where to save the files).

It was really straightforward, did a thorough job and worked really quick.  Why pay for commercial crap when this actually does the job a LOT better and faster than the paid versions which just provide eye-candy.

Finally, here’s the link to PhotoRec (comes bundled with TestDisk)