I’ve looked at the hits from searching the forum but I can’t decide whether this has already been answered.
I accidentally deleted media off my old Samsung, and then my FP2 went and forgot most of my contacts. So I searched online and tried some programs that’ll let you connect to your phone and recover deleted files (assuming you’ve not used your phone too much and said files have been overwritten). But some of the programmes would stall after reaching 99% at the reading phone data stage. So can anyone recommend one that actually works? Both phones work well otherwise, so I just need something that’ll scan for deleted files.
I’ve been a naughty boy who haven’t backed up my data (that’s also on my to do list), so can’t recover the lost media that way.
Actually such tools as I know them (Recover files; Recuva) can only recover data due to the way storage is physically built. Remanent (magnetic) data (fragments) usually remain on classical HDDs due to the platters magnetic structure not being fully altered after having deleted data. The file index (e.g. MFT speaking of Windows filesystems) is updated. The file entry is deleted, the used data blocks are marked as free again. But deleted files can be rescanned and just shortly deleted files have a higher chance of being fully recovered than older files which were most probably (partially) overwritten already.
I believe the same procedure won’t work with any semiconductor based storage.
I would say with conventional tools you won’t have a chance to recover anything useful.
But if so, I am very eager to read how this can be done without having to charge an arm and a leg for data recovery.
From what you’ve written I’m not very sure, but it sounds to me as:
By deleting media you’ve removed contacts on Google cloud via sync Samsung->Google. So via sync Google->FP2 your contacts were also removed from your FP2.
If that’s correct then you might also try to recover your contacts on Google cloud (and recover them on FP2 through this way…).
You might also have a look here:
Reading the blurb from the programs I saw online (which I tried running on a Mac and a Windows PC), what you describe for a classical HD drive (ie spinning platter type hard drive) should also work for the internal memory of a mobile phone. That’s despite a phone’s internal memory not being a spinning physical hard drive.
–EDIT–
OK, the forum placed my reply to Patrick at the bottom, not right after his post. So I’ll go ahead and reply to Volker’s post too here.
Apologies, I should’ve been more clear. I accidentally deleted some media off my old Samsung phone. Separately, my FP2 decided to lose most of my in phone (number) contacts. In reality, it seems any contact older than maybe 6 months dissappeared, from one power cycle to the next. I’ve never synced my FP2 with Google, in fact when I first bought it I immediately followed that forum guide for living without Google on it. The guide that you posted Volker describes how to recover contacts from Google mail and I do not believe that Gmail knows any of my contacts (read phone numbers) for the above reason.
On the flip side, Google is extraordinary skilled at tracking and monetising users’ private details (on par with Fazebook?). So I’ll double check my Gmail account later on when I’ve access to a PC.
According to xda-developers’ forum, there’s no known way of recovering deleted data from Android devices newer than version 4.3.
This is because newer phones implement trim (which appears to properly clear any deleted data, not just delete the reference to where said file is/was stored). I can only surmise that any program purporting to offer data recovery is bogus.
