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Recently, I made a TWRP Recovery Nandroid backup of my current ROM, and I had just taken some personal pictures. In the backup, it included the /data partition. When I went to restore it, I opened the Photos app, and nothing was there. I checked the file system, and the camera and DCIM folders are empty. Is there any way to get the pictures back?

I am on HTC One M8 GPe Android 5.1.

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That is the way nandroid works. Its NOT some bug.

Yes, it does include /data partition but your data is stored in /data/media/0 which it skips during backup as this would lead it to backup everything inside internal memory increasing backup size significantly.

In other simple words, nandroid backup's /data option includes only apps and their data, not your personal data on internal or external sd.

As for restore, there are a bunch of apps that claim to be able to recover deleted/formatted data such as Undelete (you need to be Rooted for this one) but I have never personally tried one so can't say about the performance. So you will have to test those yourself.

Hope this helps.

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  • Thanks, though I doubt Undelete would work, as I flashed a ROM and a kernel over after the initial backup. Jun 8, 2015 at 4:30
  • Well, I stand corrected... I tried out the app, it got everything back for me, even found pictures from weeks ago... The even more amazing thing is, I flashed at least 5 different ROMS and did factory resets. Jun 8, 2015 at 4:58
  • So basically Nandroid doesn't back up your media and personal data to decrease backup size significantly? That makes no sense. Why even bother to do a backup? In that case I can reduce the backup size to 0 and just not do anything.
    – Phillip
    Feb 7, 2017 at 3:14
  • I would have expected a Nandroid being a complete backup. Originally, it was even a partition dump. Have you any backing for that? // /data/media/0 corresponds to the "internal SD card", so it somehow even makes sense (Nandroid doesn't backup the external card either). So one must be aware to backup SD cards separately it seems?
    – Izzy
    Feb 7, 2017 at 8:43

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