This is probably a lost cause, but maybe there's a glimmer of hope. I just unlocked my bootloader and realized that my phone has been wiped. I'm pretty tired which is part of the reason why I made the mistake of unlocking it without backing up my files. Is there anyway to recovery any of my old pictures or files that were on the phone previously? I'm not one to make backups frequently (last was Nov), which was when I was starting to attempt this process., but I will definitely make them frequent from now on. I was hoping I might be able to use a program like recuva, but since the phone isn't detected as a drive letter I can't.
tldr - Unlocked bootloader, forgot to make backup. Is there a way to recover anything?
First rule of data recovery: stop using the device, NOW.
Doesn't matter if it's your only smartphone or not and is a necessity, every moment it's on means another moment that data can (and probably has been) overwritten by new data and is never going to be recovered.
Having said that, the "drive" meaning the internal storage should still show up as a drive letter and accessible in Windows, and it should show up as accessible under Linux or even OSX as well since it was wiped and is now basically ready to be used (given that the old data is probably there but the file allocation or journal entries for the data were cleared out). All that happens when you unlock the bootloader is the device forces into a full factory reset so when that's done, you're left with a clean fresh installation of the OS with no personal data on it (which you already understand, of course, hence your post/thread) but the phone SHOULD be working normally at that point; there's no reason if it's working properly that you wouldn't see a drive letter when it's attached to your computer - I'm guessing it's a PC since you mentioned Recuva which is a Windows-only application.
As long as you have the necessary drivers installed (HTC Sync installs them, then you can remove HTC Sync and the drivers will remain as a separate Add/Remove Programs entry), the phone should show up like any other device attached to the PC.
If it's not showing up as a drive letter then something else is wrong.
If it does show up (and again, the longer the phone is on the higher the chance important data of any kind will get overwritten) then you can use one of the following:
- TestDisk which is a completely free data recovery application that shouldn't have issues finding data on the internal storage if it's still there - I personally have used this data recovery software with pretty much perfect success in the past for accidental wipes of data on Android devices; I make no promises, just offering the suggestion
- EaseUS MobiSaver for Android is a somewhat newer product and it claims to be completely free (some data recovery software will find data but then charge you to actually do the recovery process) but I can't say for certain if that's the actual case. It claims to be able to recover data so, if it's free then it can't hurt I suppose
Just realize again that the longer the device is powered on the higher the chance that data is being damaged if it's sitting there on the internal storage so, pick one of those applications, give it a run and see what happens.
Good luck...
Thanks, I'll have to look into those a bit later. I shut the phone off within a short amount of time after the wipe, unfortunately that was probably longer than it should've been on. I'm going to switch to another phone for the time being and leave the M7 off. I could access it, but it isn't assigned a letter and instead shows up as a device, i'm guessing that's because it's internal storage. I did find another method, but i'll try those first.
Related
Hi,
My phone just received from 2 weeks has initiated the reset being locked in my pocket.
I had few pictures with my child captured with this phone and not uploaded on the Skydrive.
I don't have in Zune an update for the OS applied to the phone to make a simple recovery.
I wanted to use an application to try to recover the photos from the internal drive of the phone. Applications from the Internet for photo recovery does not see the phone as an USB drive as they said. I see my phone in Windows Phone as a Phone on a Windows 8 desktop and I can browse to copy file to and from the phone but I cannot allocate a letter drive or make a photo recovery application to see the phone as a drive to try a recovery. All applications below I used but no success they don't see the phone as a drive (ByClouder, Tenorsoft, Wondershare, Odosoft..etc)
[Do you know how to try to restore the photos?
Thank you,
Ovidiu
How to recover deleted files windows phone
A good way to recover deleted files from Windows phone is to use data recovery program, take a look at this one: Windows phone data recovery
hope this helps.
For a 920? Yeah, no go, sorry man (or lady). For phones which use a removable microSD card, you could try using data recovery tools off of that. The 920 doesn't offer any way (that I know of) to have direct access to the block storage driver, though, and that'll make it nigh-impossible.
It's vaguely possible that you could recover from whatever caused the unexpected reset by doing something like hard-rebooting the phone (harder of phones without removable batteries, but I think you can do it by holding Power for like 10 seconds) without going through with the first-time setup stuff, but it's a long shot and if you're already past there, no dice.
For the future, if you don't want to upload your photos (which I totally understand, I don't do it either) you really want to make sure you copy the off to your PC/tablet, whatever is handy ASAP.
Hi guys,
Somehow I have lost all my files from Internal Storage. It's weird - they disappeared after unplugging the USB cable from my laptop the last time my phone was connected. Now only the default folders are there.
I want to use data recovery software to retrieve as many photos as I can salvage, but ofcourse the phone doesn't mount as a drive on a computer so I cannot do that. There are some other methods online like this one but they require root. As you all know, root isn't easy on the Z3 compact, and the only working method which doesn't require you to unlock your bootloader needs you to flash the firmware again so then I will lose all chance of recovering any data.
Right now I have stopped using this phone and have only received 5-6 emails and messages after losing all my data so hopefully its not overwritten yet.
Any suggestions are welcome. Thank you!
Impossible without root.
Found a way. Used WebDAV to make it a network location, mapped it as a drive on my pc, used regular data recovery software...
No way, did it actually work?
GlebunV2 said:
No way, did it actually work?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope
Turns out only my SD card was being scanned by the software and internal memory ignored...I found one software in the end that could scan the internal memory mapped as a network drive, however the reported success rate was lower than recovering data from a local drive and I had to buy it for some $500 so I just gave up in the end...I think it was called Active something...
My wife's phone accidently got wiped clean due to factory reset, she had lots of photos of her dying mother without proper backup.
Unfortunately she has US note 10+ and it is snapdragon and can't be rooted, I found a person in this forum who was able to enable the bootloader despite Samsung removing it.
Will rooting the phone give better chances for recovery software's recover images and videos before the factory reset?
Thank you for your time people.
Is it possible it was backed up by Google or Samsung cloud?
Otherwise I would say it's unlikely.
Loading anything onto the phone could overwrite any data left. Turn off the phone until you decide what, if anything can be done.
It may be possible to directly access the chipset's memory internally. You would need an expert for that if possible.
Run it by Samsung as you aren't the first with this issue. Getting upper tier tech support ie a real engineer will be tough, be persistent. A letter may work better. You may get lucky and they'll ask you to send it in.
In the future get and use a SD card as a data drive for the 10+. A V30 .5 tb Lexar card is only about $75. With data, backup is the only solution most times. Make sure to backup the SD card data as well to the PC and at least one other stand alone hdd.
Hi All, long time user of XDA forums but havent had to root a phone in a while.
I deleted some pictures in error from my phone yesterday and am desperately trying to figure out a way to get them back. They dont appear in the recycle bin and they dont appear with a standard file search app, thousands of pictures do but not the ones I deleted.
Apparantly I need to root the phone to get better access rights to do this, but am I right in believing that rooting the phone will delete everything anyway?
Any way to do this please? I really need some help with these important images.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (UK) 5G SM-G998B/DS
Regards Tony
Don't try to use trashware like DrFone.
The internal memory is encrypted by default so if you lose that encryption key for any reason you are boned.
If you can use adb to access the unused portion of the drive, that may work.
Using ADB in recovery mode - recovering files from a locked phone
Hello, here's my problem: I accidentally put a schematic as a code on my phone that I immediately forgot. Now that I only have access to the lock screen, I can't put my phone in file transfer mode because I'd like to retrieve it before resetting...
forum.xda-developers.com
If you are successful know that the folder structure has been lost. The jpegs will be disassociated from their exif data, time stamps, image numbers, etc have been lost forever.
Using that phone at all may overwrite the data as it's now free space for the system to use; power down the device until ready to attempt recover.
Backup all data before you begin whatever you attempt!
Personally at this point I would have written them off. If you do recover data, you'll understand why. In the future use a gallery that has a trash bin if possible.
Redundantly backup critical data to at least 2 hdds that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC. A OTG flashstick can be used for quick "dirty" backups. Don't use as a primary backup.
If you can mount your phone on a PC using a USB cable, you could try a PC based file recovery program. (I honestly don't know if it would work over a USB cable, but no harm if it doesn't.)
Be careful where you get the recovery software. There are lots of people willing to promise the world, take your money, and blame the file recovery ghods when they can't recover squat.
The one I'd try first has the worst user interface, but it's free and has saved my butt more than once. It's called PhotoRec. (It's packaged in with a drive recovery program called TestDisk.) PhotoRec supports a bunch of Linux/Android disk formats (many only handle FAT and NTFS variants, which won't help you). Just be sure you read the instructions and be sure to direct the output to a dedicated folder on a drive different than your phone.
TestDisk Download
Download TestDisk & PhotoRec. TestDisk is a free and open source data recovery software tool designed to recover lost partition and unerase deleted files. PhotoRec is a file carver data recovery software tool.
www.cgsecurity.org
I just noticed that PhotoRec finally has a Windows based GUI implementation called QPhotoRec. Same download location as I mentioned in the previous message. But should be a fair bit easier to use.
Note: If QPhotoRec can't see your phone on the USB cable, you might still want to give PhotoRec a try.
One last note... As long as you continue to use your phone, it is still writing things to the drive that holds the pictures you want to recover. If the phone happens to overwrite the place the photos sat on, they're gone forever. So it's best if that you power off your phone until you can make an attempt to recover the photos and you move quickly to make the attempt... Good luck.
After the recent dumping of Samsung Cloud and the forced migration to a Microsoft cloud drive,I lost a bunch of photos from my alternative device (I had 2 phones and 2 Samsung Cloud accounts- but the changeover couldn't handle the 2 account bit, both phones ended up with the exact same data) and I tried several methods to recover the lost data and eventually had to give up. Good luck.
Relying on cloud to backup files is crazy. Keep a couple hard drives/usb drives for that.
rafaelinux said:
Relying on cloud to backup files is crazy. Keep a couple hard drives/usb drives for that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cloud backup is safer than keeping a couple of hard drives and usb drives. By design cloud storage is replicated a minimum of 3 times across 3 regional data centres, each having multiple copies on distributed storage with multiple backup services and UPS.
Your data is not safer on two USB drives vs a Google data centre. Do you keep them in fireproof and electronic magnetic proof safe? If not then your backups are not protected at the first step, physical protection. Do you cycle the hard you use, change the drives regularly so that there is no chance of hardware failure, do you consider MTBF rates of the devices you use? USB drives have a limited number of writes so using them too much may risk the data on them. Do you use multiple off-site safes? If both are in one place and there is some disaster (building collapse, or fire for example) then you've lost your backups. Each site needs a fireproof/EM proof safe which adds a huge extra cost.
did you check the trash folders?? usually deleted files stay on for 30 days unless physical deleted from the trash like windows
ScalesOnline said:
Hi All, long time user of XDA forums but havent had to root a phone in a while.
I deleted some pictures in error from my phone yesterday and am desperately trying to figure out a way to get them back. They dont appear in the recycle bin and they dont appear with a standard file search app, thousands of pictures do but not the ones I deleted.
Apparantly I need to root the phone to get better access rights to do this, but am I right in believing that rooting the phone will delete everything anyway?
Any way to do this please? I really need some help with these important images.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (UK) 5G SM-G998B/DS
Regards Tony
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What app did you delete the photos in?
Each app will have its own "delete/recycle" solution. For example, if you delete photos in Google Photos they are kept in the "Bin" for 30 days. If you used a file manager it may have a recycle bin or may have permanently deleted using write over to provide a true delete function.
Rooting like years agao
I am cool with what i have now
Yes you do for acces to internal memory
I recently connected a USB flash drive (the SanDisk ultra dual drive with both A and C plugs that slide out of each end). It was having issues, as it would appear in FX file manager initially but then suddenly disappear. My phone told me via the notification area that the device had been removed improperly (which it hadn't) and that I should restart the phone. After a while, I did so, and as the phone was shutting down I removed the USB flash drive. Not sure if I should have left it in during the reboot tbh but what's done is done.
Anyways, after the phone started back up, I noticed that one of the folders in the root of my internal storage (a temporary folder to which I had been transferring files to from the USB drive) had disappeared. Odd, I thought, so I checked others, and found my Downloads, Music and Movies folders all empty, and my Documents, Pictures and Videos folders empty except only one subfolder or file. All of these folders had been full of files previously. Thankfully the photos in DCIM don't seem to have been affected (though I can't be sure of this as I don't know exactly what was in there in the first place).
If the external USB device has somehow been able to cause something like this, it'll be the first time I've seen anything like it in the whole time I've been using computers (more than 30 years). I would understand if the files on the external device had gone missing, as that's the device the phone reported the issue with. But for my completely unrelated files to disappear from internal storage? I have no idea how it happened.
If anyone has any advice on how I might get these files back and find out how they disappeared, I would be extremely grateful. I feel I can't trust my phone now...
Specifically, if anyone knows a file recovery app that works and can be trusted and won't put malware on my phone, that would be great
I haven't found one for the phone directly, but for the USB you could Recuva on Windows, which I have used with some success. This assumes that the deletes were not followed by wipes.
I would guess there is malware at play here, because this doesn't usually just happen. Or a mistake with copy vs move, and a bad USB stick as well... though with the 30 years of experience you have I would think these are VERY unlikely.
I realize it's too late to mention this, but I STRONGLY recommend backups, so you're not trying to recover deleted data like this. Of course, that doesn't help you today... but in the future, please setup a backup system to protect such files. For photos, for example, Google Photos is a great simple way to keep those backed up....
Thanks for the reply. Given the seemingly systematic deletion of files, I also suspect malware, though I haven't installed any new apps recently that weren't from reputable sources. Maybe an older malware app somehow triggered yesterday - who knows?
I've been hesitant to install a file recovery app on my phone, as I suspect most of them are clones/don't work/contain malware/only exist to prey on the vulnerable and make ad revenue.
Thankfully my photos are triple-backed up to various cloud services, including Google Photos (for sharing) and OneDrive (which retains the original filenames so that I can separate WhatsApp etc photos from my camera photos). The other files were backed up to iDrive until January, when I switched to a new iDrive account and forgot to transfer the backups. Losing those is more an inconvenience, nothing serious - for example I noticed this morning that my alarm sound had reverted to the (unpleasant) default and it is annoying to have to search and hand-pick a new bunch of alarm tones again.
I used to back up my entire internal storage regularly with FolderSync to a microSD card but nowadays I use dual sim cards so the microSD has been removed. I also used to have auto backups set up with SyncMe over wifi, but this seemed to stop working when I installed android 12.
I had become somewhat complacent about my safeguarding my files recently, and this is a stark reminder of how important regular backups are.
If anyone has advice on trustworthy file recovery apps, I'd love to hear from you.
Glad to hear you have backups... phew!
Sorry I don't have any leads on phone-apps for data recovery. But I am interested in seeing what others say as well...