Recovering lost photos

[Hodor]

I have a friend with a Maxx who let another friend look at the photos on his phone, and God only knows how, the guy accidentally deleted his whole gallery! My friend is not a forum kind of guy, so on his behalf, is there anything I can do for him? He is not rooted, and on 4.4.4 I am going to go over there tonight and look at his phone, and am looking for suggestions on what might be able to be done. Thanks all!

 

[leeshor]

If the photos were indeed deleted from the Gallery and not their actual location they should still be there. What you see in the Gallery are only cached images of items and not really stored in that app. Go to settings - the app manager and scroll to all. Find Gallery and clear the cache then restart. It may take some time for the images to re-index. If what was deleted somewhere else was not also store somewhere else like DropBox or an SD card then you may be out of luck.

 

[Jonny Kansas]

This kind of thing keeps coming up in threads lately. There are programs available that claim to help recover deleted items like pictures. I haven't seen anyone have much luck with them, but might be worth a shot.

If the pictures are indeed deleted from the phone, the best thing your friend can do is STOP USING THE PHONE immediately to save anything. Standard phone calls, texts, etc should be ok, but when you delete something, whether on the computer or one of these devices, all you're actually deleting is the path to that file. The file itself is still saved until it's written over. Basically, the device registers the space that was taken up by those files (the pictures in this case) as free space, even though it's actually still there. However, the more the device is used, the more likely it is to save something over that new "free" space and the pictures will be gone forever.

This is how the FBI and etc often catch people that used a computer to write ransom notes and etc. Even if they delete it, if it's not written over (and in this case, written over more than once), it can still be recovered.

I'd recommend a Google search of android photo recovery software and try your luck there, but as I said, I haven't seen much success with it, so your friend may be out of luck.

If nothing else, this is a good time to get him setup with automatic backup to DropBox, Google+, Microsoft OneDrive, (and the list goes on).

I never worry about my pictures because they auto backup to at least 2 of those. If I remember right, OneDrive backs up whenever I'm on wifi and G+ does the same, but only when I'm charging. That way I'm ALWAYS backed up to one and get backed up to the other over night while I'm on my home wifi network and charging the phone.

Hope that helps a little! Let us know.

 

[Hodor]

Thank you guys, I will let you know how it goes...

 

[Hodor]

UPDATE : Well, as I feared, there seems to be nothing we can do to get the pictures back.

If there was a way to root 4.4.4 there might have been something I could have used, but that's not possible yet, and by time it is, it will have been too long.

Well, thanks anyway everyone....

 

[Jonny Kansas]

Sorry you couldn't get 'er. Did you at least set your friend up with auto backup!? Haha

 

[Hodor]

Oh yeah, he's learned his leason there and is now having all his photos automatically saved to his Google drive lol

 

[FoxKat]

This is something that I think has long been engineered by the cellular carriers. By specifying that there are no removable SD card slots on these phones, it's a way to increase data consumption, and obviously with no more unlimited data and paying data on a tiered basis, results in the cellular carriers making more money and we want up paying the price in the long run.

For what it's worth, I received in the mail yesterday my very inexpensive On The Go (OTG) USB SD card adapter. Plugged it into my phone last night and downloaded a couple of different apps that allow me to gain access to the external SD card and do file transfers from internal memory to external memory just as easy as I could with the card inserted into previous phones that had slots.

 

[Jonny Kansas]

This is something that I think has long been engineered by the cellular carriers. By specifying that there are no removable SD card slots on these phones, it's a way to increase data consumption, and obviously with no more unlimited data and paying data on a tiered basis, results in the cellular carriers making more money and we want up paying the price in the long run.

For what it's worth, I received in the mail yesterday my very inexpensive On The Go (OTG) USB SD card adapter. Plugged it into my phone last night and downloaded a couple of different apps that allow me to gain access to the external SD card and do file transfers from internal memory to external memory just as easy as I could with the card inserted into previous phones that had slots.

If somebody was smart, they'd build this functionality into a case with a retractable cable. I couldn't see using something like what you've got there as I'm walking around living life, but if you could insert the card into a reader like this that's built into the case of your phone & has a cable that retracts into the case when you're not using it so you can charge the phone/etc without the cable dangling, I think you'd be in great shape.

Glad my Note 4 has 32GB onboard and can take up to 128GB external sd for sure!

 

[wicked]

Give Recuva a try.

 

[FoxKat]

If somebody was smart, they'd build this functionality into a case with a retractable cable. I couldn't see using something like what you've got there as I'm walking around living life, but if you could insert the card into a reader like this that's built into the case of your phone & has a cable that retracts into the case when you're not using it so you can charge the phone/etc without the cable dangling, I think you'd be in great shape.

Glad my Note 4 has 32GB onboard and can take up to 128GB external sd for sure!

That WOULD be excellent. Wonder if it's out there already... Not seeing any.

The reader I got is a bit bulky but there are others which are very small and plug directly into the USB port, being only a small hardware dongle... Some are MicroSD to MicroUSB only, others have another end with a USB-A connector for the ability to take from the phone and move directly to the PC. These are usually a flip over style, and are small enough to carry on a keychain with the included loop and tether.

Just "google" "USB OTG MicroSD Dongle".

 

[FoxKat]

Give Recuva a try.

That's a PC based app. I am still looking for one that will run on Android and work. Any ideas?

 

[wicked]

That's a PC based app. I am still looking for one that will run on Android and work. Any ideas?

If the photos/files were stored in micro sd, you can still use this app by plugging in to pc if you have a card reader.

 

[FoxKat]

If the photos/files were stored in micro sd, you can still use this app by plugging in to pc if you have a card reader.

Oh yeah, I know that. I am speaking regarding phones that don't have a removable SD Card. In those cases, you either need to be able to run an app on the phone that can recover the data, or have an app on a PC that can obtain access to the internal SD Card through the USB port, or have an app that will give access to the internal SD Card by way of WIFI or Cellular communication, however it would still need to be able to read the SD Card at the root level and see deleted data. Since the internal SD Card is shared by the OS, it may be impossible to do within the phone unless rooted. The drive can be accessed via ADB commands through the USB port, but again it may be only if USB Debugging is enabled.