Database Develop

Contents of the storage card dissappeared!

Yesterday when I attempted to play some games that were installed on the storage card, the links under Programs/Games no longer worked. Turns out the data on the storage card got wiped out.
The file explorer and Total commander both show only one folder in the storage card. Its called WMDRM. And there is one file in that folder called B1DA8AC498FF588D471330048DEFE8FA02D6350B.hds. Other than that the storage card seems empty.
But the funny thing is, the Memory app under settings shows that 700 MB of data on the storage card is in use. Also, under Windows Explorer, when I try to browse the contents of the phone, I can see ~700 megs of data being used on the storage card (check attached image.)
Can someone explain to me whats going on? Is all my data lost? Is there a way to recover it?
Thanks in advance

Did you get the problem resolved yet
If not just reply and I could help you out

hidden files?
This actually happend to me recently. In my case I somehow, and I still have no idea how, checked the box to hide the files. It drove me nuts for about 20 minutes until I figured it out. as soon as I unchecked the box, everthing reappeared.

This has happened on my sons phone twice.. One time I magically fixed it by copying somethign back that "dissappeared" and once that file was "Back" everything else reappeared as well... Not sure what is going on.. and ideas?

ashoooo said:
Is all my data lost? Is there a way to recover it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try reading the memory cards contents by using the USB reader that came with it. I have a Sandisk 6 GB card that kept on doing this but since retiring that to out of phone duties with its card reader and using my 16 GB Sandisk card in my TyTN II, all is now well. What card is it that you have?
If you search the forum you'll see this is a relatively common problem and people have been able to recover files in this way using specialist file recovery software. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure though so make sure your memory card is fully backed up in future.

Flying Kiwi said:
If you search the forum you'll see this is a relatively common problem and people have been able to recover files in this way using specialist file recovery software./QUOTE]
Which software do you recommend? I've been trawling the search results, but either I'm simply using the wrong search terms, or I simply can't see the wood for the trees. I have a similar issue - my 8Gb card is showing as empty, despite apparently having 2.5Gb in use. And this statistic is reported both on my phone and a colleagues, as well as two different PCs when using a card reader.
Any help would be great.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

R3dF1v3 said:
Flying Kiwi said:
If you search the forum you'll see this is a relatively common problem and people have been able to recover files in this way using specialist file recovery software./QUOTE]
Which software do you recommend? I've been trawling the search results, but either I'm simply using the wrong search terms, or I simply can't see the wood for the trees. I have a similar issue - my 8Gb card is showing as empty, despite apparently having 2.5Gb in use. And this statistic is reported both on my phone and a colleagues, as well as two different PCs when using a card reader.
Any help would be great.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
*Bump*
Any ideas, anyone?
Thanks.
Thanks, guys.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

rola_electronics, thanks for the offer.
Everybody, thanks for your replies, guys.
When right clicking on the card, and selecting properties, it only showed like 5 files, but 700 megs in use. I had to reformat my card. Hard reset my phone (but that was because my phone was starting to get sluggish) reinstall everything.
But after a couple of weeks, it happened again (2 days ago.) I was playing Astraware sudoku, when the battery died. On recharging and rebooting, the card was fuxor3d again. Had to delete everything on it, and reinstall stuff again.
As for the suggestion of copying a new file and deleting it again for contents to reappear, I noticed that when I copied a file and deleted it, a ton of temporary files appeared on it. I deleted them manally later.
Kiwi, my card is Sandisk 6GB microSD.

rola_electronics, thanks for the offer.
Everybody, thanks for your replies, guys.
When right clicking on the card, and selecting properties, it only showed like 5 files, but 700 megs in use. I had to reformat my card. Hard reset my phone (but that was because my phone was starting to get sluggish) reinstall everything.
But after a couple of weeks, it happened again (2 days ago.) I was playing Astraware sudoku, when the battery died. On recharging and rebooting, the card was fuxor3d again. Had to delete everything on it, and reinstall stuff again.
As for the suggestion of copying a new file and deleting it again for contents to reappear, I noticed that when I copied a file and deleted it, a ton of temporary files appeared on it. I deleted them manally later.
Kiwi, my card is Sandisk 6GB microSD.

I'm not sure what ROMs you are using, but I know there have been issues with some that have the SD Power Management enabed. There are threads kicking around about it. You can disable it with Advanced Config.
Good luck

I'm using ATT stock, minus the bloatware (with the soft reset just before config trick)

your card -could- so to speak, dying. Do you have another one handy? Try using it for a while if you do and see what happens.

FWIW my ROM was the same as the one I'm still using (HTC standard throughout) and I've made no configuration changes associated with the microSD card other than swapping the 6 GB Sandisk with a 16 GB Sandisk. I've not used advanced config or similar and it's a plain 'as from the factory' setup. I strongly suspect this is associated with the card or at least a compatibility issue between the card and phone. Although power related issues may contribute to the likelyhood of problems in some cases, that wasn't the case with me.
When I did loose the card contents, I wasn't able to recover them using any software (I've read here that others had some luck however - though I don't recall what software they used). I had all my crucial files backed up and just low level erased the card in its USB reader using the HDD Wipe tool from the HDD Guru website (Sandisks own utility to perform these functions was not free - unlike every other HDD manufacturer I know of that does provide free HDD utility software to work with its drives, hence why I found the HDD Guru tool). I then formatted the card in Windows and restored my files from backup using Win XP Professionals native drive backup program. It was good as new (but did the same thing about 3 times in total before I became fed up with it and swapped out the card). I would suggest that those considering the purchase of a card to use with the TyTN II be wary of (at least some) Sandisk 6 GB microSDHC cards.

Thanks for your responses, Kiwi and kaiserII101.
Kiwi, what app do you recommend to backup the SD card?
If it gets corrupted again, can I just reformat it, and restore the backed up files (file copy)?

ashoooo said:
Kiwi, what app do you recommend to backup the SD card?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As mentioned in my post above I just used the native backup and restore app built into Windows XP and used the card reader so the card showed as a drive and backed up everything. I'm using Win 7 now but haven't checked out all its similar options yet. The answer to your second question is yes (from within the app). Have a read of the Windows help relating to the backup/restore program. Not sure what it's called under Vista but I suspect something similar will be there built into the software. Otherwise you can simply copy all the files and folders across to a dedicated folder on your PC and if you prefer, just zip them up into a backup archive using something like Winzip.

Thank you Kiwi. The Win 7 app is also called "Backup and Restore".
So, if simple file copy suffices, I guess I'm just going to do that. Thanks for your help again.

I'd go for the backup - restore option
ashoooo said:
The Win 7 app is also called "Backup and Restore".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I put that into my Win 7 search box and found it but haven't used it yet - it looks like it does the same sort of thing the Win XP app did though so that will do it fine and it'll be much easier than having to copy files over and zipping them up manually.
So, if simple file copy suffices, I guess I'm just going to do that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It'll depend what kinds of files you have and if they're not all straightforward things like mp3s, avi files or jpgs etc then you may run into problems if file attributes are changed by copying them directly. I think your best bet is to play it safe and use the backup - restore utility and just backup the whole card. It's usually easier and results in less space being used on the backup media because the files are automatically compressed (depending on configuration choices).

[Q] recover pictures/videos from internal memory?

So my wife's thrill has been running super slow over the last month or so. She uninstalled a bunch of apps, deleted a bunch of stuff and it was still lagy. So she decided to do a factory reset on it. I had her install astro file manager and check to make sure her pictures were saved under /mnt/sdcard/dcim - which I assumed was the SD card like on my HTC Inspire . The photos and videos were there and she proceeded to do a reset - and of course now everything is gone. We didn't realize that /mnt/sdcard wasn't actually the sd card, but the phones internal memory on the Thrill . Is there any way to recover these deleted files? Connect the phone to a computer as mass storage and scan the internal sd drive with a recovery tool? Or are these gone forever?

My guess is gone forever
sent from my acidhazard thrill

For those interested, the files were indeed deleted with the factory reset since they were saved on the phones memory, not the actual sd card. However, I installed Recuva, hooked the phone up to the computer as mass storage and scanned the internal drive. Doing a quick scan it found about 5 of the files. Then I did a deep scan and it found most, if not all of the pictures, videos and music files that she had on the phone. Most of the pictures showed up 5 or 6 times (along with all of the other junk picture files from ads and apps) so we have almost 10,000 files to sort through. But from our skimming through them it looks like we saved at least 75%, and possibly all of the files.

gabe.cole said:
For those interested, the files were indeed deleted with the factory reset since they were saved on the phones memory, not the actual sd card. However, I installed Recuva, hooked the phone up to the computer as mass storage and scanned the internal drive. Doing a quick scan it found about 5 of the files. Then I did a deep scan and it found most, if not all of the pictures, videos and music files that she had on the phone. Most of the pictures showed up 5 or 6 times (along with all of the other junk picture files from ads and apps) so we have almost 10,000 files to sort through. But from our skimming through them it looks like we saved at least 75%, and possibly all of the files.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is great to know. I just did the same thing a couple weeks ago and lost all of the pictures of my kids. I will try this out and hope it works like it did for you.

Dont worry, it is possible to recover pictures/videos from internal memory, I have done that before. All you need to do is to follow this LG android phone data recovery guide: How to recover data from LG android phone
The tutorial is easy to follow and works well.

There's a possibility of recovering them if the space they were on hasn't been over written.
Sent from my LG-P920 using xda app-developers app

How to Restore Lost Photos/ Videos from LG Thrill?
LG Thrill is the most popular between users because of it high-technical function and eye-catching looks.
But it may happen that you face a major issue with the latest LG Thrill phone. You are deleting some unnecessary folders from the phone to have some free space.
You get Panic! And don’t know how to recover the folders you are just feeling helpless. It seems impossible to recover your most lovable files. .........its not actually
You can Recover Lost Data from Android device
visit : androiddata-recovery.com/blog/how-to-restore-lost-photos-videos-from-lg-thrill

Does everyone agree that hooking up to pc sucks?

When I found out my new Razr I couldn't use the SD card as a mass storage device, I was disappointed. I thought oh well, I guess it'll only be a problem if I ever want to take or dump files to friends computers but since having to rely on Moto's own device connection ways I'm getting a bit annoyed. First of all, if you want to "Move" a folder from for example, the root folder of the SD card into another folder, it's as if it's copying it bit by bit and takes AGES even in my USB 3 port. USB Mass storage has always treated the SD card like anything else in windows and will just move in a millisecond, but not this Also, I noticed upon transferring a folder which had 98 files, only 90 showed up on the properties once it was on the sd card I like to make sure transfers happened ok by comparing file sizes in bytes so this obviously throws it way off.
Has anyone come up with an alternative solution I wonder?

An alternative is a simple card reader
I think there were some experiments to get mass storage back, but i don't now if they succeeded...
But the new MTP - technology is better for the android system, it doesn't have to unmount the sdcard. and pc and android can parallel access the sdcard.
gesendet von meinem Motorola RAZR i rooted+unlocked

I guess they are some good reasons alright and yeah, I might have to start carrying a card reader so

Personally I like MTP, it's much faster than USB connection, but still it would be great to be able to choose from two options. I've read somewhere that even Motorola had problems with creating USB drivers, so it will be miracle if we see that option on our phone.
Sent from my XT890 using xda app-developers app

Airdroid.
There, i solved all your problems.

Never heard of airdroid, will check it out, thanks
MTP seems a lot slower than USB to me? Just the fact you can't "move" like I described is enough

Ok airdroid seems cool, but it seems not to be working properly for me, I've managed to view my sms on web.airdroid.com and the phone details etc come up right, but the internal and SD storage are both showing as 5.13gb with 1.34gb free when my SD card is 32gb.
Also it's giving errors on trying to open photo/video/app folders.
Like the idea so if it can work it'd be great.

Agree
I agree, it sucks!
It´s so slow the cable connection, that it reminds me my old moto V360´s one. Unbelievable!
cormie said:
When I found out my new Razr I couldn't use the SD card as a mass storage device, I was disappointed. I thought oh well, I guess it'll only be a problem if I ever want to take or dump files to friends computers but since having to rely on Moto's own device connection ways I'm getting a bit annoyed. First of all, if you want to "Move" a folder from for example, the root folder of the SD card into another folder, it's as if it's copying it bit by bit and takes AGES even in my USB 3 port. USB Mass storage has always treated the SD card like anything else in windows and will just move in a millisecond, but not this Also, I noticed upon transferring a folder which had 98 files, only 90 showed up on the properties once it was on the sd card I like to make sure transfers happened ok by comparing file sizes in bytes so this obviously throws it way off.
Has anyone come up with an alternative solution I wonder?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

cormie said:
Ok airdroid seems cool, but it seems not to be working properly for me, I've managed to view my sms on web.airdroid.com and the phone details etc come up right, but the internal and SD storage are both showing as 5.13gb with 1.34gb free when my SD card is 32gb.
Also it's giving errors on trying to open photo/video/app folders.
Like the idea so if it can work it'd be great.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's strange because Airdroid works fine for me (expect the phone details but it's not a big bug)
Sent From My Beaned Razr I

cormie said:
Ok airdroid seems cool, but it seems not to be working properly for me, I've managed to view my sms on web.airdroid.com and the phone details etc come up right, but the internal and SD storage are both showing as 5.13gb with 1.34gb free when my SD card is 32gb.
Also it's giving errors on trying to open photo/video/app folders.
Like the idea so if it can work it'd be great.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Works pretty well for me. Maybe you modified something?

Did you test it today? I saw great ratings for it this morning when I downloaded it first but then later today I checked back and the latest ratings were saying it wasn't working.
Didn't modify anything at all really, tried both with an account and without an account and same issues.

Hooking up Razr i to PC really sucks cause you always need to install drivers and Motorola application when you plug into a new PC (and remove they after, when PC is not yours). But I think wi-fi transfer sucks too cause it's slower. =(
When I need to transfer small files I use X-Plore app on Android. X-Plore can access shared folders on your network. It works like a charm!
When I need to transfer big files, I preffer to plug on USB. There's no other way...

Question Do I need root?

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

100s of files disappeared from internal storage after using USB flash drive

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...