There was a post here looking like spam, but now it’s gone (probably because it looked like spam).
However, the article it linked to was a translation of a Russian article which worked around the problem of not having an external SD card in the phone while basically trying this approach here and adapt it for deleted file recovery …
https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2450045
… which needs root, and one would have to …
- determine the memory partition on the phone which most likely includes the deleted data
- copy a raw image of this partition to SD card, and in the end to your PC
(workaround without SD card was to setup an FTP server on the PC to FTP the image directly to the PC … I would have had reservations about blindly following this tutorial right down to the given FTP port number out of security concerns, but FTP in itself is not a bad idea.) - mount the raw partition image as a drive on the PC
- run a deleted file recovery tool of your choice on this drive
Sounds like a valid idea in the sense of this topic to me, even if it needs root.
Edit: And I think with an SD card in the phone it should be possible to do it without needing a rooted OS by booting TWRP without flashing it and use TWRP’s built-in terminal.
Edit 2: Apparently, with TWRP booted, you can also copy directly to the PC using adb.