how recover data from formatted smartphone? - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I formatted my lenovo g5 plus; is it possible to recover the data? I already unlocked the bootloader, installed twrp and already tested it with magisk and supersu. The software I tested (these most famous of the internet) failed to recover. (with magisk the software says that i have root but the app does not have access and with super su the software does not recognize the root). The question is even if it is possible to recover data after factory reset. Its possible?

This question gets asked about every other week. When you formatted the minimum damage you did was to destroy the file structure.
If anything remains you'll be sorry once you see the huge, jumbled mess of gigabytes of data...
Files have lost their association with their folders and unfortunately it goes much deeper than that.
You now have or are about to learn what everyone including myself has learned the hard way by losing a database completely. Always backup up your critical data redundantly to at least to 2 hhds that are physically and electronically isolated from each other.
Do that in addition to any other backups you have. Backups can fail too.
Some of my data is backed up over 6 times on isolated hdds and secondary flash drives.
Do not encrypt the bloody backup hhds...

Related

Random factory reset

My phone (sk17i ) did a hard reset with a full wipe of the sd card contents. Do not know how this happened. I was at 10 percent battery, i just pressed the button on top and it just restarted and now the sd card is wiped clean but i do have my google account on the phone. This is stock firmware , stock rom , rooted with blocked bootloader, only modifications are systemui and quickpanel ( colored ) . Other root applications are Xperia Cwm Auto Installer and titanium backup. Is there a log i can look into to see what happened ?
kasmq said:
My phone (sk17i ) did a hard reset with a full wipe of the sd card contents. Do not know how this happened. I was at 10 percent battery, i just pressed the button on top and it just restarted and now the sd card is wiped clean but i do have my google account on the phone. This is stock firmware , stock rom , rooted with blocked bootloader, only modifications are systemui and quickpanel ( colored ) . Other root applications are Xperia Cwm Auto Installer and titanium backup. Is there a log i can look into to see what happened ?
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I think there isn't any log for that action.
Are you sure you didn't doing something with your SK17i before it got fully wiped..??
By default, there is no background logging process in order to have better performance and battery life.
I did not do anything . i was just checking the battery life. so i opened the phone looked at the 10% of battery that i had left and closed it. Now- any good sd card data restoring software anybody can help me with. I need a good one , and i tried 4 until now and i can't seem to find anything on that sd card.
If the SDcard was formatted, then there is only a very small chance to restore anything.
From Wikipedia
As in file deletion by the operating system, data on a disk are not fully erased during every[17] high-level format. Instead, the area on the disk containing the data is merely marked as available, and retains the old data until it is overwritten. If the disk is formatted with a different file system than the one which previously existed on the partition, some data may be overwritten that wouldn't be if the same file system had been used. However, under some file systems (e.g., NTFS, but not FAT), the file indexes (such as $MFTs under NTFS, inodes under ext2/3, etc.) may not be written to the same exact locations. And if the partition size is increased, even FAT file systems will overwrite more data at the beginning of that new partition.
From the perspective of preventing the recovery of sensitive data through recovery tools, the data must either be completely overwritten (every sector) with random data before the format, or the format program itself must perform this overwriting, as the DOS FORMAT command did with floppy diskettes, filling every data sector with the byte value F6 in hex.
However there are applications and tools, especially used in forensic information technology, that can recover data that has been conventionally erased. In order to avoid the recovery of sensitive data, governmental organization or big companies use information destruction methods like the Gutmann method or the DoD 5220 of the National Industrial Security Program[18]. For average users there are also special applications that can perform complete data destruction by overwriting previous information. Although there are applications that perform multiple writes a single write is generally all that is needed on modern hard disk drives.
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From my personal experience i restore from my sd card in photocamera (fat32 like here) few 5 years photo even when i using this camera. Its becouse theses jpg files wasnt ovewrited with other. But that program was especialy designed for photo files only.
My point is i thing there is bigger chance just keep away from formating and ofc make restoring to your hard drive
Sent from my ST15i using XDA
So - for photos i used East Imperial Soft Magic Photo Recovery - did a great job, except it changed the names of the photos .
And for the other files i'm using EASUS data recovery wizard -this is the best thing ever. It recognized a ton of files and right now i'm restoring all my files.

[SOLVED] Data gone yet memory full after spontaneous reset

The other day the phone seems to have just reset itself without user interaction. All apps and contacts and such are gone but the device memory is full (10mb free after clearing cache and doing delete dumpstate/logcat). The phone memory was also quite full before this happened. Before I perform a factory reset I wanted to ask if it's possible that the data is still there and could be recovered by rooting the phone or something.
Are the chances of recovering anything so low I might as well just do the reset? I'm also worried that the the low amount of available memory is a problem with rooting - is this a valid concern?
The phone is an GT-I9100 with stock Android 4.1.2 (not rooted)
Thanks in advance
So I rooted the phone and can now access the data on the phone using adb. However, I don't know how to copy e.g. the data folder to my computer or the usb memory because "cp" isn't recongnized and I'm not able to install busybox (or a file explorer) on the phone because of insufficient memory. I also can't seem to use adb pull to get the folders (adb pull /data/data outputs "0 files pulled, 0 files skipped").
EDIT: /data/lost+found seems to be taking all the space and looks like the lost data is there. After deleting some files I was able to install busybox and copy the folder where I can access it.
EDIT2: I indeed seem to be able to restore the data (so far tried with mini diary and was succesful) so I'll mark this as solved.
If you've got files in lost+found, they're there because the on-boot filesystem check, fsck, put them there because it found the filesystem to be corrupt. Best thing is to factory wipe as there may still be lurking errors. If it keeps happening, your phone's flash is probably defective (either worn out from use, or manufactured that way) like that in my i9100.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[Q] Restore internal sd data after unlocking bootloader

Hi 2 all,
Forgot to make nandroid and unlocked bootloader on my wife's m8. And 27GB of photos gone. I think she'll kill me after she wake up in the morning. Is there any way to get data back?
Unlocking the bootloader is not supposed to do that. It will wipe user data (/data partition) but I believe the internal storage ("virtual SD") should have been untouched. So you shouldn't blame yourself too much. And a nandroid would not have helped you as not only is that partition not backed up with a nandroid, but the default location for a nandroid is the internal SD, so it would have been lost, anyway.
That said, I try to backup any important personal data (even on partitions that are not supposed to be impacted) to my computer whenever doing something major like flashing a ROM or unlocking the bootloader. Only reason I've started doing that is a similar bug on the One X (EVITA) where actions that are not supposed to wipe the internal memory, occasionally did so (which is what I suspect happened to you).
I think your only hope is to use data recovery programs (Recova is a free one). But I've had mixed results doing so (and have seen similar reports here) when trying to recovery photos and other data that were "accidentally" deleted or recovered. Its certainly worth a try, and also keep in mind that you should do so ASAP as the more you use your phone, the higher the chance that those memory sectors where the photos were saved will be overwritten by other data.
Also, is there anything left on the internal memory at all when you browse with a file manager? Sometimes, corrupted data will be saved to a folder named LOST.DIR and there have times where folks have often found many of their photos simply moved there.
Found very helpful post
http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-nexus/general/guide-internal-memory-data-recovery-yes-t1994705.
For M8 it works pretty much the same. I was able to get userdata partition from the phone, but because of I converted to GPE I lost everything. So I'm 99% sure that it will work right after unlock bootloader and factory reset.
exbarboss said:
Found very helpful post
http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-nexus/general/guide-internal-memory-data-recovery-yes-t1994705.
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Ah, that's true. I hadn't thought about the fact that the memory mounts as MTP now. The times I did the data recovery was on the old bulk storage mode on my One X (before it was switched to MTP). All I had to do was connect my phone to my PC and run Recuva.
Mind you, even mounted properly, data recovery programs will not always be able to recover all data. It was pretty hit or miss for me (and from other reports I've seen). But the linked method is also clever in that it makes a copy of the corrupted partition to your computer, so you sidestep the issue that those sectors may be overwritten as the phone is being used. Give you more times to try various data recovery apps, etc.
redpoint73 said:
Ah, that's true. I hadn't thought about the fact that the memory mounts as MTP now. The times I did the data recovery was on the old bulk storage mode on my One X (before it was switched to MTP). All I had to do was connect my phone to my PC and run Recuva.
Mind you, even mounted properly, data recovery programs will not always be able to recover all data. It was pretty hit or miss for me (and from other reports I've seen). But the linked method is also clever in that it makes a copy of the corrupted partition to your computer, so you sidestep the issue that those sectors may be overwritten as the phone is being used. Give you more times to try various data recovery apps, etc.
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Yeah I tried Recuva, WinHex, R-Studio - nothing helped. I looked at low level data with WinHex and most sectors were zeroed...
Tennor1 said:
Just try for a sd card data recovery
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Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand what is being referred to here. Can you clarify or give more detail?
Hello Guys, i have been attempting to flash the phone , but it doesnt go in flashmode ( i know it's volume down when plugging to usb ), but nothing happen with flashtool, any idea ?
Maybe driver, but it looks like the phone still in fastboot, and it s reconized by flashtool with the build number and kernel . i don t know how to go to this flashboot mode.
thank you

Data Migration Across Format of Data Partition

Hello!
I have a somewhat unusual challenge on my hand and am hoping there is a solution, however after days of searching I am unable to come up with a clear or consistent answer. I got a shiny new SM-T580 around the holidays, and immediately set to work on installing twrp, rooting the device, etc. to be able to use it for my needs. My device is OEM unlocked, rooted, has Xposed installed, and has a ton of hard to come by apps installed, as well as a substantial amount of important personal files on it. On Saturday, I went to flash a zip file to install a tool pertaining to ROM modification and the install unexpectedly failed because TWRP couldn't mount my /data partition; I realized I had completely forgotten to format /data after disabling encryption back when I first did everything, and my /data partition was still encrypted.
That being said, I really do need to remove the encryption, but I really need to preserve my data also. To make matters more complicated, I have enabled adoptable storage, and am using a 64gb card formatted as internal storage, with about ~30gb data on it. I have backed up my personal files to the cloud, but now am trying to figure out how to move my apps and app data. Ideally I would like to preserve my entire existing directory structure, as well as home screen configurations, etc. I am left with a few questions that are preventing me from proceeding:
How do I determine which data is stored on the actual external SD card? From my own poking around, it looks as though the external SD is /mnt/expand/aa11a11a-blah-blah-blah/ but I am not positive. If that is my SD card, can I simply move it to a new install? I assume the SD card is also encrypted, as I am guessing the string following /mnt/expand/ is an encrypted serial number or something of the sort. If that is the case, can I simply copy the files from the above directory, and then copy them back in after formatting the card? Beyond this, as far as what is actually stored on my phone, is there a means of backing up and restoring the files and directory structure and having it all still work and point to the right places? I don't know how the system links the adopted storage and just feel like I'm in over my head when it comes to understanding the nitty-gritty of Android file system internals. I would simply backup the whole partition and then restore it but then I would be back to square one with the encryption. I am competent with TWRP, ADB, ODIN, etc and would be very, very happy if anyone could point me in the right direction on this, even if the solution is complex. If I am unable to figure this out before the weekend I am going to have to manually back up all apps and click through 300+ apk files. I do also have titanium backup but I am kind of in a bind with storage space vs backup size. Anyhow, if you made it this far thank you so much for reading and I am looking forward to your replies! :highfive
Edit: This was intended for the Galaxy Tab A forum. Mods, please move this thread to Samsung Galaxy Tab A series Questions & Answers if possible, though the question should pertain to both device series on 6.0+. Thank you!

Recover files from internal memory after wipe

Hi there,
A friend of mine accidentally erased photos and videos from the internal memory of her Honor 7 Lite (NEM-L21) with a locked bootloader, stock recovery/ROM (Android 6/EMUI 4.1.2). DiskDigger was able to recover only a couple of them after running a basic scan.
DiskDigger offers a full scan functionality which requires root privileges. I've tried running it on my rooted Honor 5C (NEM-L51, which is almost the same as the NEM-L21 AFAIU) and it indeed recovers more files than the basic scan (8 times more on my phone).
I'm willing to root here phone in order to be able to run a full scan with DiskDigger but I'd have to unlock the bootloader in the process and it's gonna wipe the /data partition. Now, I suppose that DiskDigger is able to recover files because there are not actually erased from the memory (i.e the corresponding bits are not set to 0) but this answer suggests that on recent Android versions a factory reset would actually make the data unreadable.
Can anyone confirm all of this ? Any alternative ideas to recover photos/videos from internal memory ?
PS : I've also dumped the /data partition of my phone to my computer following this guide but PhotoRec was unable to find any picture (which is somehow strange since DiskDigger finds a lot of them).

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