Have you ever accidentally lost the videos and photos taken by the DJI drones and cameras? Do you know how to get the lost data back? In this MiniTool article, we will introduce two available methods. You can select one according to your actual situation.
Files Are Missing From DJI Drones or Camcorders
DJI, the abbreviation for Shenzhen DJI Sciences and Technologies Ltd., is a world-famous manufacturer of commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (also known as drones) for aerial photography and videography. It also designs and produces camera gimbals, action cameras, camera stabilizers, flight platforms & propulsion systems, and flight control systems.
Are you using a DJI drone or camcorder? Yes, it is convenient and cool to take pictures and videos with DJI drones or camcorders. However, you may also encounter some situations that make you lose your videos and photos taken by the DJI devices.
When browsing the DJI FORUM, you can discover many unexpected situations that cause the data loss issue. These users are looking for methods to retrieve their lost videos and photos from their DJI drones or camcorders.
Let’s look at some cases on the DJI FORUM as follows:
Case 1: The DJI Drone Crashes and the SD Card Becomes Inaccessible
This user’s unmanned aerial vehicle crashes into a hill with a lot of trees. He/she finds that the SD card becomes inaccessible. This user wants to recover videos from DJI drone. (This is the most common situation for drones).
Case 2: Videos Are Deleted by Mistake
This user deletes some videos in the Osmo pocket camera and then he/she wants them back. He/she is looking for solutions.
Case 3: Flight Records Are Missing for Unknown Reasons
This user suspects that some flight records are missing from the DJI Mavic 2 Zoom. He/she describes the situation in detail and asks for help.
Besides, there are some other causes. For example, you may format the SD card by mistake, or videos and photos are missing during transfer. (If you are bothered by other situations that are not mentioned here, you can let us know in the comment).
Everyone faces a different situation. But, the common point is to perform a DJI file recovery. Now, in this article, we will talk about how to recover videos and photos from DJI unmanned aerial vehicles and cameras.
How to Recover Videos/Photos from DJI Drones and Camcorders?
You know that the videos and photos taken by DJI drones and camcorders are always saved to the inserted SD card. When referring to DJI file recovery, it always means to get the lost data back from the SD card.
Moreover, there is another situation: you have installed DJI GO on your phone or tablet, and enabled the video cache option in settings. Besides, your phone or tablet should have enough space to save the flight records. Then, you will be able to export DJI flight records from your phone or tablet.
So then, you can use these two ways to get your lost videos and photos back.
How to Recover Videos/Photos from DJI Drones and Camcorders?
- Recover videos and photos from SD card.
- Export DJI flight records from your phone or tablet.
In the following contents, we will show you how to execute these two approaches successively. No matter you are using DJI Phantom, Mavic, Inspire, Osmo, or Spark series products, you can always find a suitable method here.
Solution 1: How to Recover Videos and Photos from SD Card
You need to use third-party data recovery software to retrieve files from an SD card. MiniTool Power Data Recovery is a recommendable choice.
This MiniTool software is a dedicated file recovery program. It is specially designed to recover your lost and deleted files from different kinds of digital data storage devices like computer hard drives, memory cards, SD cards, CD/DVD discs, and more.
Tip: If you delete videos and photos from DJI drones and camcorders by mistake, you need to stop using the SD card as soon as possible. Otherwise, the deleted data may be overwritten by new data and becomes unrecoverable.
This free file recovery tool is applicable to various situations. It can also scan the existing data on the card. No matter the SD card is damaged, corrupted, inaccessible, or encounter errors, you can always use it to get your data back. This software is totally safe. It works without influencing the SD card and the videos & photos in it. You can feel free to use it.
This software has a trial edition. You can first use it to scan the SD card and check whether it can find the videos and photos you want to recover. If yes, you can then use a full edition of this software to recover all of your needed files without limits.
You can press the following button to get this software and then install it on your computer.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
Before using this software to recover photos from DJI camcorder or recover videos from DJI drone, you need to prepare for a card reader.
Then, these steps will show you how to retrieve videos and photos from the SD card of your DJI drone and camcorder.
1. Remove the SD card from the DJI unmanned aerial vehicle and camcorder.
2. Insert the SD card into the card reader and then connect it to your computer.
3. Open MiniTool Power Data Recovery Trial Edition. Click Yes if you see the User Account Control interface.
4. You will see the This PC interface and this software will show you all the drives on the computer. You can identify the target SD card according to the drive letter and drive capacity. If you can’t find it here, you can press the Refresh button to make the software recognize the drive again. Then, click the SD card and press Scan to continue.
5. The program will begin to scan the select SD card. This process will cost you some minutes. You need to be patient until the entire process ends successfully. After scanning, you will see the scan results as follows. These files contain both deleted and existing files in the SD card.
6. By default, the scanned files are listed by the path. You can click each path to open it and then check whether you can find your needed videos and photos.
Also, two other features can help you easily find your needed files: Find and Type:
Find: If you still remember the name of the video or photo you want to recover, you can use this feature to directly locate the files by name.
Type: After clicking this button, the software will show you the scanned files by type. It will be much easier to find the needed files by type.
For example, if you want to recover photos from DJI camcorders, you can click Graphics & Picture from the left list and then find your needed photos; if you want to recover videos from DJI drones, you need to click Audio & Video from the left list and then find your desired videos.
7. Since the trial edition of this software doesn’t allow you to recover files, you need to go to the MiniTool store to get an advanced edition and then use the registry key to directly register the software in this scan results interface.
8. Then, you can check your needed files and press Save to select a suitable location to keep them.
You should not save the selected videos and photos to the original path to prevent the lost files from being overwritten.
After these steps, you can access the specified storage location to use the recovered videos and photos immediately.
If you find this software can help you recover your needed data, you can click the following button to share it with your friends.
Solution 2: How to Export DJI Flight Records via DJI GO
DJI GO is an app for mobile phones & tablets including Android phones/tablets and iPhone/iPad. You can use it to capture and share the flight records. This app is available for the Mavic, Phantom series, Inspire series and Osmo series.
If your DJI drones are missing, you will be unable to restore data from the SD card. In a situation like this, you can export your flight records using DJI GO.
As mentioned above, this method only works when you meet the following requirements:
- You are using the DJI Go app when the unmanned aerial vehicle is working.
- You have enabled the video cache option in settings.
- Your phone or tablet has enough space to save the flight records.
Besides, the videos’ quality from the flight records is not as high as it from the SD card. However, if there is no other choice to get your lost flight records back, this method is the best solution.
The ways to export videos and photos using DJI GO are different for Android devices and iOS devices. We will introduce them separately in the following contents.
If you are using an Android device:
- Connect your Android device to your computer using a USB cable.
- Click File transfers for USB on your Android device to allow data transfer between these two devices.
- Open File Explorer on your computer and go to find your phone.
- Double-click on your phone to open it and then go to Internal Storage.
- Go to the following path: /sdcard/DJI/dji.go.v4/FlightRecord, and then you can save the DJI flight records to your computer.
If you are using an iOS device:
- Install the latest iTunes version on your computer.
- Connect your iPhone or iPad to your computer using a USB cable.
- Open iTunes.
- Click the Phone icon that is on the left side of the screen.
- Click the File Sharing option on the left menu and then select the DJI GO app you are using.
- Then, you need to select the FlightRecords folder and save it on your computer.
If you think this method is useful, you can press the following button to share it with your friends.
Matters Need Attention
The data loss issue always happens unexpectedly. You can’t control it. But, you can do something to reduce the possibilities of the issue.
For example, you can view terrain and environmental conditions before flying the unmanned aerial vehicle. Besides, when you need to transfer data from the SD card to your computer, you’d better copy the data to the computer rather than cut the data to the destination.
Moreover, you’d better use the DJI GO app to record the flight records. This can give the videos and photos double-layer security.
Bottom Line
When you want to recover videos from DJI unmanned aerial vehicles and cameras, you can just try these two solutions mentioned in this article to get them back.
Should you have some questions when doing a DJI file recovery or using MiniTool software, you can contact us via [email protected] or let us know in the comment.
DJI File Recovery FAQ
- If you are using an Android device, you can connect the Android device to your computer via a USB cable and then transfer the flight records to your computer.
- If you are using an iOS device, you need to connect your iOS device to your computer, open iTunes, click the iPhone icon, and then go to File Sharing > DJI GO to find the flight records and save them on your computer.
- You can use MiniTool Power Data Recovery to retrieve videos from the SD card of your Mavic pro.
- If you have installed the DJI GO app on your phone/tablet and enabled the video cache option, you can also recover the flight records using this DJI GO app.