If you’re a GoPro enthusiast, you probably already know how easy it is to accidentally delete a video or photo, or lose files for some other reason. (Or maybe you just found that out, which is why you’re here.)
The good news is that, in many cases, you can recover deleted files from your GoPro camera – and our walkthrough will show you how. With detailed recovery steps, tips, and a few additional recovery solutions.
Would you prefer to skip to the main course? Check our GoPro file recovery guide by clicking here.
GoPro Data Recovery Cases (and Possible Solutions)
Deleted footage is one of the most common reasons people look for GoPro file recovery, but don’t click away if that’s not exactly what happened to you. GoPros are used in conditions that aren’t always friendly to storage devices, and there are plenty of other ways photos and videos can become inaccessible.
We’ve gathered the most common causes below. Along the way, we’ll also point to some real cases from GoPro users who ran into the same problems:
- ❌ Accidental deletion: You wouldn’t be the first to mistakenly delete your precious content off your GoPro, like this Reddit user who accidentally deleted their footage, or another one who erased hundreds of photos in one swift move.
- 🛜 Problematic transmission: Some users saw their files disappear after a restart after transferring them to their PC, to edit them, send them to friends, post them online, etc.
- 💾 Unintended format: In one of the most common data loss scenarios, many GoPro owners, like in this case we saw on Reddit, don’t realize they’ll lose all their files from their SD card when their camera nudges them to format it. Or like this r/gopro user who asked for help after mistakenly formatting the wrong SD card!
- 🧩 Incomplete transfer/conversion: It should be comforting for this unlucky Reddit user to know that they’re not the only one who, after copying or converting their precious footage from their GoPro to their computer, found out it’s much shorter than the original.
- 📹 Damaged or destroyed GoPro: Unlike typical cameras, GoPros are built to take a beating, making them one of the best options for fans of extreme sports, with many choosing them for climbing<, mountain biking, etc. However, “extreme” ways to use a camera also lead to increased chances of something going wrong, as a GoPro owner found when their camera’s car mount failed and sent it flying at 120 miles per hour.
- 🦠 Corrupted content: A sudden power loss or crash has caused many, like this GoPro owner, seeking solutions for file or SD card corruption.
- 🪳 Multiple corrupted SD cards: This user was correct to assume that it’s not normal to have multiple SD cards fail on the same GoPro camera.
Regardless the reason, it is always possible to find the best approach to suit each individual case.
| Problem | Solution |
| Accidentally deleted or disappeared GoPro videos, photos |
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| Files lost after formatting a GoPro SD card |
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| Files are inaccessible or have disappeared on a corrupted GoPro SD card |
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GoPro SD card appears RAW / Unallocated |
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| GoPro footage is unplayable because of corruption or missing parts after an interrupted copy/abrupt power loss. |
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| Various file transfer failures |
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How to Recover Deleted Files from a GoPro
Whether you’ve deleted your JPEGs, GPRs, MP4s, LRVs, or THMs, they may still exist on your SD card and be recoverable using a suitable SD card recovery software, as long as you don’t overwrite them by continuing to use your camera.
We recommend Disk Drill SD card recovery software because it’s a reliable and user-friendly tool that flawlessly supports all file formats used by GoPro action cameras. It also includes Advanced Camera Recovery (ACR), a specialized video recovery module designed to reconstruct fragmented video files from camera storage, which gives Disk Drill a substantial advantage in recovering playable GoPro footage.
We’ve prepared a step-by-step guide to help you recover your deleted GoPro photos and videos with Disk Drill, for both Windows and Mac users.
Note: Disk Drill’s interface and recovery workflow are essentially the same on Windows and macOS. The steps and screenshots below use the Windows version, but if you’re following along on a Mac, you’ll see the same buttons, options, and recovery steps.
1. Connect SD Card to Computer
Connect your GoPro camera’s SD card to your PC or Mac. You’ll have to use a third-party external SD card reader if your computer doesn’t come with one built-in.
2. Download Disk Drill
Download Disk Drill, install, and run it. If it asks for any permissions during setup or on first launch, grant them so the software can access and scan your storage devices.
3. Scan Your GoPro’s SD Card
Disk Drill gives you two recovery approaches, and the right one depends on what happened.
If you simply deleted your GoPro files or the SD card’s file system became corrupted, select your GoPro’s SD card in Storage Devices, click Search for lost data, and choose the Universal Scan option.
Use Advanced Camera Recovery (ACR) when the SD card was reformatted or when the Universal Scan finds your videos, but they turn out to be unplayable. (ACR is specifically designed to reconstruct fragmented video files created by cameras such as GoPro.)
You can start Advanced Camera Recovery in either of two ways: open Storage Devices, select your GoPro’s SD card, click Search for lost data, and choose Advanced Camera Recovery instead of Universal Scan; or open Advanced Camera Recovery directly from the left-hand menu and select the SD card there.
Disk Drill will also let you specify the camera type. You can select your GoPro, but this usually isn’t necessary; the software can detect the device automatically.
4. Preview Recovery Results
Although you can check out what Disk Drill has already located at any time, it’s best to allow it to complete its scan to make sure it finds (and enables the recovery of) as many files as possible. When the scan completes, click Review found items.
Were you using the same SD card for storing other types of files, like work documents from your laptop? Do you only want to recover the photos or the videos from your GoPro, but not both? Disk Drill’s categories allow you to narrow the results based on file types. Similarly, Disk Drill offers various file filters if you want to see only the largest video files, the newest photos, etc.
If Disk Drill’s preview panel isn’t already visible, point at any photo or video file and click the little hovering eye icon that shows up. You’ll see a preview of the selected file on the right.
5. Check The Files’ Recovery Chances & Mark Them for Recovery
It’s also worth noticing each file’s recovery chances, especially if dealing with a problematic or failing SD card. In such scenarios, it’s best to prioritize the files with the highest recovery chances since they’ll also be the quickest to recover, and leave the “hardest cases” for last to ensure you’ll save as many files as possible before your SD card stops responding.
ℹ️ Recovery Chances are an estimate, not a final verdict. Even if a file is marked with a low chance of recovery, it’s still worth recovering it and checking the result. On the other hand, if Disk Drill can correctly preview the file before recovery, that’s a 100% sign that the file itself is recoverable. (At the same time, no preview doesn’t automatically mean the file can’t be recovered – it always makes sense to try to recover deleted GoPro video or image and check the results yourself.)
Mark for recovery, with a checkmark on their left, all the photos and videos you want to recover from your GoPro camera’s SD card. Then, click Next.
6. Choose Recovery Destination
Disk Drill suggests some locations where you can save your recovered GoPro photos and videos (1). Among them, you’ll see some paths the app “remembers” if you’ve used it before. If your desired destination isn’t among them, click Choose destination and select another folder. Click Next to start the recovery process.
7. Check The Recovered Files
When the recovery is completed, Disk Drill will present a summary of the results. Click Show recovered data in Explorer to visit, using your OS’s default file manager, the destination folder you selected in the previous step, where Disk Drill stored the recovered files.
Whether you’re using the Hero 8, Hero 9, Hero 10, Hero 11, Hero 12, or the latest Hero 13, the recovery process remains the same. This makes Disk Drill an extremely versatile GoPro recovery software, capable of retrieving lost files from a wide range of GoPro models.
Additional GoPro Video Recovery Solutions
In most cases, Disk Drill is the best way to recover GoPro footage, but there are a few additional tools and methods that may be useful depending on what exactly happened to your files or SD card:
Solution 1: Recover Corrupted GoPro Video
Sometimes your GoPro files aren’t actually gone, but they refuse to open or play correctly. The same thing can happen after recovery: you successfully recover deleted GoPro videos, only to find that one of them is damaged and won’t play.
There are many ways something like this can happen:
- 🚵 The recording process could be interrupted because your GoPro’s camera battery became detached after an “unplanned meeting” with a rock.
- 🧱 Similarly, after an unexpected smash, your GoPro’s SD card may have decided to part ways with the camera.
- 🏄♂️ Your ex-GoPro might have proven not as waterproof as users on r/gopro sub-reddit report, when you took that dive over the specified max depth.
We could keep listing possible scenarios, but the outcome would almost always be the same: a classic case of video corruption. Thankfully, there are tools that can help with that, too.
To recover your corrupted GoPro video with Clever Online Video Repair:
- Visit Online Video Repair’s official website, click on “Choose File“, and select your corrupted GoPro video. The service supports MP4 and MOV, among other file formats, as well as videos encoded with H.264 (AVC) and H.265 (HEVC) – the formats and codecs commonly used by GoPro cameras.
- Give the tool some time.
- (Optional) In the next step of the process, click “Choose File” again and select a second healthy video. This will allow Video Repair to try to reconstruct your corrupted video’s destroyed parts using data from the healthy sample video as a reference. Note that the healthy video that will be used for reference should have the same characteristics as the problematic one (shot on the same camera, with the same recording settings, using the same encoding and file format, etc.).
- Video Repair will need some time to analyze and reconstruct the corrupted file. The time required for this step depends on the size and length of your video files. Although it should be quick enough, you will probably have some minutes to grab a cup of coffee until the process is complete.
- When Video Repair is done processing your videos, it will allow you to preview screenshots from the repaired file, and offer a link to download it. If you are dealing with more than one corrupted GoPro video file, you can click “New Repair” and repeat the process with another one.
Solution 2: Extract GoPro Garbled Files With Unstoppable Copier
Can you see your GoPro files, but you meet errors when you try to copy them? Does the copy process complete, but the copied files are corrupted? It’s worth trying Unstoppable Copier.
You can think of Unstoppable Copier as a better alternative to the operating system’s native copy command. It’s designed specifically for dealing with files that seem unreadable. Unstoppable Copier performs multiple retries when reading problematic files, trying “to get the data right” before copying it to your chosen target location.
Note: An alternative to this method (especially if you suspect the storage device itself is failing) is to create a disk image and recover the files from that image instead. This is generally a safer approach because it minimizes further reads from the original device and lets you perform recovery attempts on a copy. We cover how to create a disk image and scan it here.
- Download Unstoppable Copier from its official site, and install it.
- Run Unstoppable Copier. While on the Copy tab, click on the first Browse button on the right of its window. Then, select one of the problematic files you’d like to copy.
- Click on the second Browse button and choose where you want Unstoppable Copier to save your file.
- Click on Copy on the top right, and hopefully, you’ll soon have your file back in working order.
- If you want to recover more than a single file, move to Unstoppable Copier’s Batch Mode tab instead.
- Use the Add button on the bottom right to add to Unstoppable Copier’s list the files you want to recover and the path where you want them saved. You’ll have to repeat the steps for each of them. You can choose a whole folder, but that will take more time.
Also, if dealing with a failing device, you should prioritize saving the files you need the most. Don’t try to salvage everything, which could push a failing device past its breaking point before recovering your most important data. - Finally, click on Copy to have Unstoppable Copier try to clone them to the defined target locations.
Solution 3: Fix Your Corrupted GoPro SD Card With CHKDSK
CHKDSK can be useful when your GoPro’s SD card is still detected by the OS but behaves strangely (for example, it throws file system errors, some folders won’t open, files have disappeared).
In these cases, CHKDSK can check the card’s file system for logical errors and attempt to repair them. It may help restore normal access to the card, but it is not a GoPro recovery tool and shouldn’t be your first choice if the missing footage is important. Because CHKDSK modifies the file system while repairing it (this can lead to further data loss), it’s safer to recover or image the card first whenever possible.
To fix a corrupted GoPro SD card using CHKDSK:
- Press Windows key + X and run either the Windows Terminal or the PowerShell. Make sure to run them with elevated privileges (choose the version with “Admin” after its name).
Type chkdsk E: /f, where “E” is the drive you want to check, and press Enter. CHKDSK will start scanning your storage device’s file system for errors and attempt to fix them.
- Alternatively, type
chkdsk E: /rif you’d prefer to check the whole storage device for bad sectors. Remember to replace “E” with the letter of the drive you want to scan.
Solution 4: Format Corrupted GoPro SD Card
💡In general, we recommend formatting memory cards in the device they’ll actually be used with. That allows the camera to create the file system and storage structure it expects, which can help avoid compatibility and recording issues. But there are cases where formatting the card on a computer makes sense for troubleshooting.
If new photos and videos recorded with your GoPro repeatedly turn out corrupted, the problem may be with the SD card rather than the footage itself. File system corruption, card errors, or a deteriorating SD card can all cause newly recorded files to become unreadable.
If you’ve already recovered everything important from the card, formatting it is worth trying. If you decide to format the card on Windows, you’ll typically have two options: Quick Format (the default) and Full Format. Unlike Quick Format, a full format performs a more thorough check of the storage and can help identify unusable areas on the card.
Warning: A full format is more thorough than a quick format, but it also overwrites the card’s existing data instead of simply removing file system references. That means recovery afterward may be impossible. Only proceed once you’ve already recovered or backed up every file you still need from that SD card.
To format your GoPro’s SD card on a Windows PC:
- Connect your SD card to your PC – you’ll have to use a third-party SD card reader if your computer doesn’t have such a slot. Ensure your SD card is recognized by the PC.
- Fire up an instance of Windows File Explorer, or any other file manager you prefer. Locate your SD card in its interface, right-click on it, and choose to Format it.
On the format dialog that pops up, disable the option to Quick Format your GoPro’s SD card. This will have Windows perform a full format, which will also mark any bad blocks it finds as unusable.
When the format completes, safely “eject” your SD card, disconnect it from your PC, and move it back to your GoPro. Then, reformat it there, to ensure it uses the optimal block size for the best compatibility with your camera.
Note: If your GoPro’s SD card doesn’t appear in File Explorer but Windows still detects it, check Disk Management. You may still be able to format the card there by right-clicking its partition and choosing Format. Just make sure you’ve already recovered any important footage.
Challenges Associated with GoPro Data Recovery
On a surface level, GoPro cameras look deceptively straightforward: you press a button, and anything “they see” is stored as a still capture or footage. However, their reality is much more complex, and it can be hard to recover data or salvage usable versions of files from their SD cards.
GoPro cameras use multiple types of files and encoding formats for storing photos and videos. To complicate things further, those also depend on your GoPro model.
As a short guide of what you can find in a GoPro’s SD camera:
- 🖼️ Images are stored as JPG files or, when RAW capture is enabled, as GPR files, GoPro’s RAW format based on Adobe DNG.
- 📽️ Videos are stored in MP4 files. Those are “a container format”, a type of file within which one may find video and audio streams, text, and metadata.
- 📷 Depending on the GoPro model and the user’s settings, video streams within MP4 files may be compressed with either the older H.264 algorithm, or the newer H.265 codec (also known as HEVC – High-Efficiency Video Coding).
- 🗜️ H264/H.265 are demanding compression algorithms. To help in “managing” (previewing, seeking, etc.) such “heavy” files, GoPros create a “lighter” Low-Resolution Video version (LRV), and a thumbnail file, stored as “THM”.
Unlike dashcams or surveillance gear, like most cameras, GoPros don’t record continuously, allowing us to take photos and videos whenever we like. However, this freedom means that larger files, like long videos, might be transparently split into separate parts to “fit between” other smaller files that already exist on the SD card. Strangely, there’s a fun way to understand how that results in a data mess: check out Defrag: The Game!
There are reports that fragmentation could slow down access to files in old mechanical Hard Disk Drives that had to seek every single part of a file to access it, but it is not a significant issue with modern memory-based media, like SSDs and SD cards, for typical daily use. But there’s an exception to this, fragmentation becomes much more important during data recovery: instead of locating one continuous block of data, recovery software may have to identify multiple fragments that belong to the same video and reconstruct them in the correct order. And the more files that need to be recovered, the more fragmentation can turn into a recovery nightmare.
Thankfully, apps like Disk Drill can recover deleted GoPro footage by seeking, locating, and reassembling each video’s parts into usable files. In the case of Disk Drill, the app can recover deleted MP4 files as they are and can even find missing THM files. However, it may convert LRV and THM files to their true form hidden within their custom formats, bringing them back as MP4s and JPGs, respectively.
Usually, the results are positive. Sometimes, though, “complexity wins”, and also, depending on the type of corruption/damage, the produced files may still be incomplete or unusable.
Conclusion
GoPro data recovery is, in many ways, a specialized case of SD card data recovery, since GoPro cameras rely on memory cards for storage. The difference is that recovering GoPro footage is much more demanding than restoring ordinary documents, photos, or other files that are often stored more continuously. Large GoPro video files may be fragmented across the card, so successful recovery can require finding the right pieces and ‘reassembling’ them into a usable video.
In real-world cases, your best chances usually come from using recovery software built to handle this kind of camera footage. GoPro recovery tools like Disk Drill make the process fairly straightforward with features such as Advanced Camera Recovery: in just a few steps, you can scan your SD card, review the videos and photos it finds, select what you want to recover, and save everything to a safe location. For fragmented footage, the software will attempt to reconstruct the recovered pieces into playable video files instead of simply returning disconnected fragments.
FAQ
Does a video seem gone but still takes up space on your GoPro’s SD card? Use an app like Disk Drill to recover it. Then, fix your SD card with CHKDSK, or reformat it.
If your recovered video refuses to play, try to repair it using Clever Video Repair.
Sometimes, but only in limited cases. If the videos were backed up to GoPro Quik, cloud storage, your phone, or another device, you may be able to restore them from there without using recovery software.
If the videos were actually deleted from the GoPro’s SD card and no backup exists, however, there’s usually no built-in recycle bin or undo option, you’ll generally need GoPro recovery software to scan the card for deleted footage and attempt to reconstruct the files.
It’s hard to answer this with a simple yes or no because it depends on what happened on the SD card after the files were deleted. Recording new footage can overwrite some, all, or none of the deleted data, and there’s no reliable way to tell.
If the new recordings only replaced part of the deleted data, you may still be able to recover some files, although they could be incomplete or corrupted. The more you use the card after deletion, the lower your chances generally become.
The best way to know for sure is to stop using the SD card and scan it with recovery software. If the missing files are still detectable and can be previewed, that’s a good sign they can be recovered.
GoPro cameras typically store photos as JPG files or (when RAW capture is enabled) as GPR files. Disk Drill supports both of these formats, along with the file systems commonly used on GoPro SD cards, which makes it a strong option if you need to recover deleted photos from a GoPro.
It can also help in more difficult cases where the SD card’s file system is badly damaged or no longer readable. Disk Drill can identify those image file types by their signatures, so even if the original file-system records are gone, it may still be able to locate JPG and GPR images directly from the card’s raw data.
