How to Recover Deleted Photos by Mistake from Your Smartphone

One of the most dramatic moments in anyone's life comes when you lose your personal files by mistake or accident. Although these misfortunes have always been associated with desktops, smartphones and mass storage capabilities are increasingly likely to go through it. But do not lose heart, because although in many cases it is an impossible task, there are ways to recover photos and videos that we have lost our phone .

What is file recovery?

It's about magic. When we delete a file on a storage system we are not really deleting such content, but we marked the area of ​​the disc that was as empty for the system to write over (at least in certain systems re files as FAT32)

Therefore, if no information is overwritten in these sectors, there are chances redial such information as available. Or what is the same, if we lose information, do not perform any writing on the drive where this is located and perform recovery tasks as soon as possible. This procedure will vary depending on the phone's storage system and if we are root (or jailbreak if iOS) on your terminal.

Case 1 - The files are in a MicroSD card

If we store our videos and pictures on an SD card are in luck as there are many more hope of recovery to be able to work externally to the phone and isolate the affected unit. The first thing to do as soon as we lost the pictures is off the card and connect it to a PC using a card reader. In this way, the system will recognize it as an external drive.
The flagship program for Windows that recover deleted files by mistake is Recuva , a tool developed by Piriform, parents also of known CCleaner. In a previous post  we talked at length about the program, but its operation has no mystery: We open the program, we choose the unit in question, the type of file you're looking for and after a short search we will list all files that have been recently deleted. If there is a green circle next to it, it can be recovered; if it's red, it will have lost forever.

There are many other programs that perform similar tasks as Wise Data Recovery  or more complete alternatives  Jihosoft Photo Recovery , but in most cases they are trial versions that require purchase the application to perform the recovery, because if not, what All it does is to detect any files that can be restored.

Case 2 - The files are in the internal memory

The problems come when your smartphone does not have removable storage system and stores all the information in the internal memory. It is much more difficult to use tools like Recuva in this case because when connected to the PC is detected by the protocol MTP  instead of a mass storage system, so it can not be treated as a standard drive and most programs of this type are not able to detect the phone by using a USB cable. This is because most smartphones use internal storage in file systems or F2FS EXT4 , in which it is almost impossible to retrieve deleted

Ask our Android root device is to perform some modification level software for certain privileges and functionalities that are not accessible by default. Some applications have the requirement for use, as is the case Hexabomb Recovery , one of the few able to recover my files from EXT4 units.

If we are not the work of 'rooting' the phone, we can still sell out our latest cartridges using certain recovery programs from the PC. Dr. Fone is one of them, whose assistant is able to retrieve pictures, chat conversations and other temporary stored documents can not be located easily .
If all else fails and you still want to try something crazy, we can try to create an accurate picture of our external drive, virtualize our PC and restore it with Recuva or similar. In XNA-Developers forums there a tutorial interesting about the process to follow.

Life experience

Indeed, this whole journey has lived the undersigned having accidentally deleted all the pictures of your terminal. Being a Nexus 4 I tried to retrieve files from the internal memory, but because of poor management on my part I ended up recovering a fraction of the lost images. Here are some  additional recommendations to maximize the result :

• Disable WiFi and 3G at the time along with any file syncing service or performing backups to avoid writing in the unit.
• No root the phone after the accident to use my recovery, because although seals Android system files, it is more than possible that writing tasks are performed in the rest of the unit.
• If we connect the smartphone to the PC, use quality USB cable (preferably including the device), and use a USB 2.0 connection up trying to avoid hubs and extension. Programs like Dr. Fone install their own drivers, and in the case of Windows, we know what it is thankless when detect external hardware.
• If we use WhatsApp, in the folder / WhatsApp / Media Phone can find a stash of images that can save our lives, and hence all the videos and photos sent to other users are stored, so if we are of those who share much material, possibly there have lost much of our gallery.
• PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE, so it's a good idea to use some form of backup file storage service in the cloud with automatic synchronization as Google Drive or DropBox.