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...
Related
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
I wonder if the encrypted sdcard access will be exactly like wp7.....
if the phone is damaged, and all my files/pictures have not been mirrored yet.....
can I still put the card into a reader and get them off?
I watched another thread and it wasn't clear if card access and encryption will be as restrictive as it currently is. a damaged touch screen alone could mean allllll my pictures would be gone, as there is no way to access them.
I know about syncing, but that doesn't always happen 5 minutes before someone drops their phone at a wedding
At least by what we heard it seems that the phones that do have a SDCard-Slot will use regular SD-Cards - that is to say: FAT formatted so you should be able to take it out and use on your PC. What we don't know yet is how data will end up on the card if you use it on the phone. I guess there will be a setting allowing you to store pictures/videos on the SD-card instead of in the phone's memory but you won't be storing App data there as at least in the Leaked SDK some time back Apps were only able to read from the SD-Card but not to write to it.
hmm, sounds like real phone backups still aren't going to be possible.
sigh
Given that Microsoft was specifically looking for people to improve the Backup experience and that there are at least some Cloud Backup capabilities that were leaked I actually believe that we will see much improved Backup possibilities - this has nothing to do with the SD-Card support. But as we don't know any details yet I did not mention that.
Given that Microsoft was specifically looking for people to improve the Backup experience and that there are at least some Cloud Backup capabilities that were leaked I actually believe that we will see much improved Backup possibilities - this has nothing to do with the SD-Card support. But as we don't know any details yet I did not mention that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
cloud backup has very little appeal to me. an imaging of the phone to sdcard is simple, effective, and easy enough to encrypt if security is an issue.
why Microsoft is opposed (or hasn't thought of) simple sdcard backups is beyond me.
I can't imagine waiting an hour ( and the data used) for a cloud solution to mirror a persons phone from a damaged phone to a new, undamaged device.
Good evening. I had some photos deleted from a microsd card. Does anyone have any experience as far as recovering? Thanks much.
Try Recuva
Try an app call diskdigger.
I've tried disk digger and I let it sit for several hours and it was only 10% done. Does this take a long time and is it pretty accurate? I haven't tried recuva before
It can take a very long time, as in overnight. Depends on the card size and speed and the way you are accessing it. Read Errors require multiple retries before giving up, stuff like that.
Or the data might just be completely gone due a card failure. Just deleting data, without overwriting the deleted area, is generally recoverable.
You might try recovering in a totally different system, in case the system you are using has a fault itself.
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
trent999 said:
It can take a very long time, as in overnight. Depends on the card size and speed and the way you are accessing it. Read Errors require multiple retries before giving up, stuff like that.
Or the data might just be completely gone due a card failure. Just deleting data, without overwriting the deleted area, is generally recoverable.
You might try recovering in a totally different system, in case the system you are using has a fault itself.
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the info. Outside of using the phone with disk digger app I have a micro SD card reader to just SD card reader which I can connect to the computer. Should I try a program via computer? Have you had luck with recuva or have you use something else?
I agree with jjones886 - plug the SD card into your laptop, install Recuva and see what it finds. It'll be a lot faster on a PC than on a phone, I'm sure.
https://www.piriform.com/recuva/download
Free.
Of course it will work only if you haven't added anything to the card since you deleted the photos - new stuff may have overwritten them.
dahawthorne said:
I agree with jjones886 - plug the SD card into your laptop, install Recuva and see what it finds. It'll be a lot faster on a PC than on a phone, I'm sure.
https://www.piriform.com/recuva/download
Free.
Of course it will work only if you haven't added anything to the card since you deleted the photos - new stuff may have overwritten them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK I have another question. Google photos is horrible a out backing up my photos and was part of the reason why I am in this situation. Also The Gmail app have emails stuck in outbox. Do you have a suggestion for a better and more reliable cloud? I don't want to use Google photos anymore. Ever since they split photos from Google+it has been a headache
As well as Google Photos I have an app called Drive Autosync Pro, which allows you to back up specific device folders to Google Drive (e.g. my DCIM\Camera to my Drive Nexus 6 Photos). The free version allows (I think) 2 folders to be synced, but I believe in supporting developers, especially as apps are so cheap compared with PC programs.
If you want to avoid Google, the same developer also does one for Outlook. Also Dropbox, though its very small free allowance in comparison with Google & Microsoft doesn't really make this a sensible choice.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ttxapps.drivesync&hl=en_GB
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ttxapps.dropsync&hl=en_GB
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ttxapps.onesyncv2&hl=en_GB
Hi there!
I am a new member, recently bought P9 (L09) coming from Note 2.
I can't find a way of transfering files to PC without Hisuite.
I just came back from the holidays and took about 500 pics.
When I connect a phone via USB I can see only about 10 last pictures in DCIM folder on SD card.
I've searched the web high and low, but couldn't find out the conclusive answer.
Please help me!
Thanks
Probably the photos are inside the phone internal storage, not on the SD card.
The camera mode has an explicit option (you can check by swiping right) named "Priority save on SD card", maybe it changes or it changed by itself.
Anyway when you connect the USB you should see the SD card storage but also the "Internal storage" that contains another DCIM folder, which probably contains the other 490 photos.
Hi ScareIT,
thanks, but photos are on the SD card (size is 2Gb).
I can see them on the phone in Files app.
Obviously, Huawei wants me to use their Hisuite.
It's something to do maybe with correct driver? I know there are different file transfer formats(MTP,PTP). And I have even enabled USB debugging, but to no availability.
I haven't had any problems with Note 2 before.
How do you guys transfer files or pictures between PC and a phone?
I have the same problem, connecting with MTP protocol via HiSuite, creation of folders is extremely slow, and I found it impossible to move files from the phone (be it on internal storage or external SD) to the phone in a different folder.
I'd like to use USB mass storage option, but it's nowhere to be found in settings, only PTP, MTP and several other useless options... On top of that, i've lost a file (voice recording) trying to move it from one folder to another... should have saved it on PC first. But with mass storage i'm pretty sure i could recover it.
If anyone can help, would be really great.
Chiffin said:
I have the same problem, connecting with MTP protocol via HiSuite, creation of folders is extremely slow, and I found it impossible to move files from the phone (be it on internal storage or external SD) to the phone in a different folder.
I'd like to use USB mass storage option, but it's nowhere to be found in settings, only PTP, MTP and several other useless options... On top of that, i've lost a file (voice recording) trying to move it from one folder to another... should have saved it on PC first. But with mass storage i'm pretty sure i could recover it.
If anyone can help, would be really great.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's a program on PlayStore called "wifi file transfer pro" It's the easiest way to transfer files between any mobile/computers, anything that has wireless connection. Give the free version a try first.
evilc1 said:
There's a program on PlayStore called "wifi file transfer pro" It's the easiest way to transfer files between any mobile/computers, anything that has wireless connection. Give the free version a try first.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks man, next time i'll try that.
Chiffin said:
I have the same problem, connecting with MTP protocol via HiSuite, creation of folders is extremely slow, and I found it impossible to move files from the phone (be it on internal storage or external SD) to the phone in a different folder.
I'd like to use USB mass storage option, but it's nowhere to be found in settings, only PTP, MTP and several other useless options... On top of that, i've lost a file (voice recording) trying to move it from one folder to another... should have saved it on PC first. But with mass storage i'm pretty sure i could recover it.
If anyone can help, would be really great.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can ignore hisuite by selecting "files"in the notification shade. It will be MTP like any other Android phone.
Envoyé de mon EVA-L09 en utilisant Tapatalk
Hi guys, thanks for the replies!
I know its possible to transfer files with a third party app over wifi, but that's not what I am looking for.
And Marsou77: It's not working for me: when I choose Files in Notification menu- I can view Internal and SD card, but all I can see is only 24 pictures out of 500 in SD card.
And another thing I just tested: I've took a new picture and I can see it on SD card fine now. So I am not sure where all other pictures are?! Maybe some sort of corruption of SD card? But I had transfered all pictures with Hisuite fine. Anyone?
I'm having the same problem. I've already connected my P9 to my PC and transferred a whole load of images about a month or so ago, but now I'm about to run out of storage on my phone and I can only see about 10 images in my DCIM/Camera folder where I know I have about 1000. I'm also missing a whole load of files in my download folder including a big video file that I want to transfer to free up space.
A load of other folders have missing files on my PC but I can see them on my phone and I can double check their location in file details. It seems that I'm only able to view about 20% of the files that are on my device.
If you have password or fingerprint active, you have to keep the phone unlocked for the transfer to work. Just keep the screen on. I had the same problem and now it works.
Just to confirm: I have no passwords or fingerprint scanner set on...
Same here - only some files are visible. Unlocking the phone is not solving this issue.
Ok so this is odd: I've connected my phone to my work computer and I can now see 450 of my 1000+ photos that I've taken on my phone. I moved about 30 images from the phone, deleting them from the internal storage but when I check my phone the images are still there! What's going on? I feel that I'm missing something important here, but I see no other options on the phone regarding USB connection settings.
I don't know if it makes a difference (why would it?) but my home PC is running windows 10 whilst my work one is still windows 7.
Are there any drivers I should be updating to allow Windows to see files on the phone?
I tried searching the phones internal storage for ALL .jpg files and I can see on my phone that I have 1000+ photos that I've taken and around 100+ images that have been downloaded from various places but when I search for all .jpg files I'm only getting 700 results in total. Something strange is going on and I hope I'm just being an idiot here and that I don't have a problem with my phone.
Did you try what Marsou77 said, when pluging phone into pc, on the phones screen, select files, not pictures, you should then be able to browse the whole phone from PC
Greasedferret said:
Did you try what Marsou77 said, when pluging phone into pc, on the phones screen, select files, not pictures, you should then be able to browse the whole phone from PC
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, that's exactly what I'm doing. Tried keeping the screen on too as has been suggested but I'm still only seeing some of my files. Installed a different file manager on the P9 to double check where the phone says they are but they just don't appear on the PC.
Good news and bad news.
The good news is that I can now see my 1000+ photos and all the videos I've taken with the camera so I can now copy them off and free up more space on my phone. Very relieved that I can access all the files on my phone again.
The bad news is that I have no idea what has caused this sudden change in access. I'm using my work computer which is windows 7 and I haven't changed anything with the phone or done anything different today, just connected the phone and selected "files", as I have done each time. The only thing I can think of is that I deleted a few things from the phone yesterday whilst at home. I went through the installed file manager and decided to delete a few large-ish, downloaded videos that I decided that I didn't need to keep. Perhaps this increased the freespace on my device to a certain level in which allowed me to access all my files? I have no idea, and that's frustrating because this account can't really help anyone else that comes across this issue.
Since you asked, I install Flickr on my phone which uploads all images automatically at full resolution to its online server. Since Flickr gives 1 Tb free, it generally a no hassle solution. I have never connected my phone to my iMac so far. Plus the Hisuite has no OsX option.
Today just happened a strange thing: I connected my phone to download few photos (stored in the SD) and I found them in their place ("DCIM" folder), but I also found a lot of other photos were missing (and I immediately thought about this thread): I still found them inside the SD but inside the "Pictures" folder, not inside "DCIM" one.
I don't remember I actived any option, but that's it.
Just hope it can help some people in my situation.
Hi all!
I think I know the answer.
Basically its to do with a Memory storage settings>Default Location>Internal/ SD Card Storage and emulated storage.
Basically what's happened I was still playing with a settings and customizing my phone and set Default Location to Internal and then SD Card storage. And location of pictures became kinda scattered. I am still learning/reading how Android storage works for SD cards and also emulated storage. Now I set default location to internal storage, phone gave some warning about encryption and it restarted and now I can open SD card on my PC and all the pictures are there! Happy days
Hopefully that will help some people. Cheers
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