Possible to recover deleted files after unlocking bootloader / rooting? - Xperia Z5 Compact Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I stupidly trusted the "transfer to SD card" function and now my Z5 Compact has moved a big chunk of my photos from internal storage to… nowhere. They've been deleted and I'm not sure if I can get them back. I've managed to recover the thumbnails using FonePaw so I'm assuming the original full resolution files are still hanging around somewhere in the internal storage.
All the "recovery" tools I've found require your phone to be rooted in order to recover the deleted files from the internal storage. I'm aware that, in order to root the phone, the bootloader needs to be unlocked but that there are issues with losing DRM keys and the impact of that on some of the phone’s functions (specifically a number of the camera features). Given the camera was the primary reason I purchased this phone, I am reluctant to do something that messes with that, especially since this is the second handset as the first one was replaced under warranty after only three months (and this one still has 4 months of warranty left and has been having intermittent issues). There is also the issue that unlocking the bootloader factory resets the phone and therefore wipes all the data.
I know there is a bit of a workaround in that I can downgrade the firmware from Marshmallow to Lollipop and temporarily root the phone in order to backup the TA partition so I can restore the DRM keys et al after unlocking the bootloader and rooting the phone. Again, as I understand it the firmware downgrade will wipe my phone.
Normally wiping my phone wouldn’t bother me beyond being a pain to reinstall apps etc. What concerns me is that, given my missing files are likely floating somewhere in the internal storage ether, would a factory reset completely wipe those files from the phone permanently? Or would I likely still be able to recover them using appropriate software even after the reset, downgrade, unlocking of bootloader, and rooting?
I don't know much about it (and I’m willing to find out more for myself) but Is it possible to use something like adb backup to back up the whole phone and restore that to the phone after rooting in order to recover the missing files? Or will that also only work on a rooted phone?
If it's unlikely that my missing files would survive the repeated resets during the rooting process then I will probably just take this as a lesson learned the hard way and not bother trying to recover the files. Given the way my luck has been going, this handset will also fail before 12 months and I’ll have no warranty – and still no files!
Thank you in advance for any light you can help shed on this dilemma

Related

How to root Xperia Z5 Premium (Android 7) without factory reset?

Hi all,
to make it short i deleted a ton of pictures by accident, for what i've seen, the apps that really work on recovering files and windows softs like fonepaw or dr.fone require root access, but i've read that in the rooting process you have to perform a factory reset wich will wipe out everything on your phone, so whats the point on rooting a device to recover files if you have to erase everything in middle? Is there a way to perform a "simple" root without any deletion?, i don't want to change anything in my phone, no flash, no roms, no unlock bootloader, etc, etc, i just want to recover the files and i'll inmediatle unroot to take everything back to normal.
Thank you all in advance!

Data recovery

A family friend has given me his Xperia Z5C (running 7.1.1.) as he's accidentally deleted some photos and wanted me to take a look at recovery.
We all know that to get the necessary access the device needs to be rooted, but this also requires wiping the device. My question then is how secure is the wipe / erase when rooting, is it a full overwrite (in which case there's little point trying) or is there a chance that some data might be present at the block level after rooting?
I'm not inclined to go through the process of rooting if it's futile, but if there's a chance there may be some files still recoverable, he'd probably want me to try.
Thanks for your help.

Can we restore/extract Photos/Datas from Fully Formatted OP3T Unrooted Phone ?

Hello there,
I recently lost my mobile and when i found the phone the next day , the person who took it had already fully formatted it.My phone is One Plus 3T and it was unrooted before.I tried many ways and apps but all says I need to root my phone now to get the photos n datas back.Could you please suggest me any ways to get my datas without rooting.And shall i get all my datas 100% back if i root it now though?Since i have found my mobile ,i haven't use its storage so that its previous data print don't get overlap.Please suggest me effective way to get my photos n datas back without rooting if possible or if not than by rooting process.And if rooting is a must than suggest me a link of rooting OP3T,i am new to it.
Thanks.
You can try different software but you will not be able to get everything back. The best you will be able to hope for is maybe 25% of the photos but that is all you will get back.
could you please suggest me different softwares for recovery of photos without rooting?..
Without knowing the pocess used to format the device, and any subsequent use, it would be impossible to tell how much of your data still resides on your device. Any guess made on this would be frivolous. If the data is extremly important, forensic techniques could be applied to retrieve the data. This would require proffesional forensic software such as XRY to aquire an image, and analyse it. This software is extremly expensive, and not designed for end users, but is deployed by some data recovery firms.
It boils down to the depths of your pockets, and the importance of the data lost.

Retrieving data from locked device

My brother passed recently. I am in possession of his s9+ and want to either remove the lock screen PIN (preferable) or just retrieve the pictures (if all else fails). This is very important to me. It is a Verizon phone.
If the images are stored on an SD card and the card is not encrypted you can just take the SD card out and use it from a computer.
If the phone was configured to backup photos to samsung cloud you can try logging into that using the appropriate credentials. The URL for samsung cloud login is https://support.samsungcloud.com/#/login
If the images are stored on the internal storage you are most likely gonna have too contact samsung for help. I honestly don't know if there is a way to do this considering the phone is unrootable and what your asking is to break/remove the phone's security features.
In case it has twrp installed ,you can use it
a_t_21002000 said:
In case it has twrp installed ,you can use it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The G965U and G965U1 are unrootable at the moment... So any options for the OP that involve rooting the phone is not going to do much good
Recover file from G965U1
I have a G965U1 from which I want to recover a deleted video. I don't care if I brick the phone. I simply want the video. I'm tempted to rip open the phone, pull the memory and solder on a USB reader. Can you give me any good options prior to the rip.
stevearas said:
I have a G965U1 from which I want to recover a deleted video. I don't care if I brick the phone. I simply want the video. I'm tempted to rip open the phone, pull the memory and solder on a USB reader. Can you give me any good options prior to the rip.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Best suggestion (not just to you, this is in general for everyone who has this issue) is that in the future if there is a file you want to keep or is of great value to you make a backup of it elsewhere. I do this with what pics/videos I take on my phone for this very reason. There isn't a reason why no one can't make a backup of an important pic/video with this phone... It has a removable SD card, you can transfer files to a computer or use cloud backup.
Other suggestions:
Did you check the gallery trash to see if it is in there? When you delete a file using Gallery it ends up in the "trash" (essentially acts like the recycle bin on windows). In the gallery app look for the 3 dots that run vertically at the top right corner. Pressing on those will show a menu, the word "trash" will be listed.
Pressing the option to access the trash will show you what is able to be restored on the phone. Files you delete will be sent to the trash and remain there until you empty the trash or 15 days pass since the deletion. If you have the phone backing up the files to Samsung cloud you might be able to access the file(s) from the cloud using the link I posted previously.
If the gallery and cloud storage don't help:
I am afraid there really is no other good option.. The software I can find which does data recovery requires root access (which we can not do). Google searches pretty much yield the same result. There are some that say you can without root, but further reading into them show it's a misleading statement and that root is still needed. You may be able to find a software recovery service locally that might be able to do what you want... And I would suggest (unless you have the tools, software and ability) you go that route first before you try to CSI cyber your way to accessing that data. Please don't take this the wrong way, I do not believe what your thinking of doing will even work... Assuming the location where the video was has not been overwritten by data already (if it was then your SOL unfortunately), removing the memory and placing it onto a USB reader will most likely not resolve/remove any permission based issues.
This is a drawback of not having root ability on our phone
scottusa2008 said:
I am afraid there really is no other good option.. The software I can find which does data recovery requires root access (which we can not do). Google searches pretty much yield the same result. There are some that say you can without root, but further reading into them show it's a misleading statement and that root is still needed. You may be able to find a software recovery service locally that might be able to do what you want... And I would suggest (unless you have the tools, software and ability) you go that route first before you try to CSI cyber your way to accessing that data. Please don't take this the wrong way, I do not believe what your thinking of doing will even work... Assuming the location where the video was has not been overwritten by data already (if it was then your SOL unfortunately), removing the memory and placing it onto a USB reader will most likely not resolve/remove any permission based issues.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
While this is older topic and probably it doesn't really matter anymore, i might add something. First of all, those phones are factory encrypted. Second, ability to recover deleted files from modern phones in nonexistent in practice. You may find that there was such file but it's already empty inside or not find any leftover that it was even there. You don't have to fully overwrite the space it occupied like on SD cards or HDDs for this to happen. There are mechanisms, like TRIM that take care of deleted content to maintain storage chip performance. It is possible to recover deleted data stored inside database files, like contacts, texts, chats, notes etc.
In general, there's no harm in trying but this requires you to create a decrypted memory chip dump and this either requires root or some fancy exploit, for example to boot custom kernel image with adb and root permissions that won't tamper with data. Achieving root on those devices without factory reset is not really possible for the time being, and enabling OEM unlocking (requires for TWRP and Magisk) itself triggers factory reset (there's a warning so that's good).
Desoldering memory chip and dumping it directly also won't work. First of all due to factory encryption, so no there won't be any useful data and it can't be decrypted outside that specific phone. Second, it's an UFS type memory and this requires expensive reader. The cheapest on the market is currently easy-jtag plus with adapters for UFS, but this still ~$1000 and i'm not sure it supports chips used in S9+.

PLEASE i need help this is serious and urgent

i will make it quick, my father suicided yesterday 6:30 pm yesterday, and i have the task to figure out if he left a note or something inside the phone, it is a lg g5 with 4gb of ram, it is pattern protected and i cant access the phone, i know i can delete the pattern if i do a hard reset but the data inside the phone it is extremely important for me, also i know that if this phone had installed TWRP already installed i could simply delete the files and get it running again but obviously this is not possible since is a stock phone, non modded and non rooted, any help on how i could get the pattern lock to disapear without losing data would be great
First of all, let me say that I'm really sad for what happened. Unfortunately, the only know way to overcome the phone lock is to remove the pattern lock file from recovery. As the phone is not rooted, of course you can't access the memory to delete the file, and even if you could, the stock rom encrypts by default the internal memory. The only data you may save from the phone is the data stored on the MicroSD card, if the phone has one and it was not encrypted (SD encryption is optional). That's what you can do with DIY methods. Considering the relevance of the informations that could be on the phone, it might be worth looking for some reputable company and ask if they can disassemble the phone and extract (somehow) the data; the G5 hasn't received any safety patches since a long time, and maybe some vulnerability could be used to decrypt the data, but I wouldn't be too confident on this chance.

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