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I had an LG Optimus I phone (LG E410f) with Android (can't remember the exact version now, but I believe it was 4.1.2) -- and I had OI Notepad pp installed (app home is here). There were some very important notes saved on that notepad, but I accidentally did a factory reset while trying to boot into recovery (as far as I remember I did boot into recovery, but now everytime I boot it, the phone will start the initial setup again). I did not finish the initial setup after the accidental factory reset, so as to not overwrite any data in case it's possible to recover.

The device was rooted prior to booting into recovery (but I did not install alternative recovery/os/anything -- I just used some apps that needed root access).

So, my question is: is there any way to recover the app data?

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    Did you just boot into recovery – or did you perform any actions there? Just booting into recovery mode doesn't change (or delete) your data. Next time you boot up the device normally, you should find it as you've left it.
    – Izzy ♦
    Jun 19, 2016 at 13:26
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    That's a complete different issue then. Looks like your device does a factory-reset either on startup or on shutdown. I vaguely remember we've had a related question already.
    – Izzy ♦
    Jun 19, 2016 at 14:13
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    No, that's not the one. The one I think of was about a device resetting itself on every boot. Bot just booting into recovery doesn't trigger that.
    – Izzy ♦
    Jun 19, 2016 at 15:08
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    If you really performed a factory reset, data recovery won't be easy. Please see our data-recovery tag-wiki and the questions linked from there.
    – Izzy ♦
    Jun 19, 2016 at 17:37
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    Each new write lowers chances of restore, of course. I'd rather boot into a custom recovery and try creating an image from there (writing it to the external SD card).
    – Izzy ♦
    Jun 19, 2016 at 18:41

2 Answers 2

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You might have a chance via a custom recovery:

  1. boot into and see if adb devices shows your device
  2. if not, or if you have no custom recovery, you can "temporarily load one" using fastboot boot recovery.img (this is not guaranteed to work with all combinations, but I had luck with this using on several devices)
  3. if it shows up, use adb shell to get to its prompt. This should be a root prompt.
  4. use dd to create an image of the relevant partitions (the /data partition is what you're usually after). Have it created on your external SD card.
  5. use adb pull to get the image to your computer
  6. use a file-carving software (see our data-recovery tag-wiki) to get back your deleted content from that image

Detailed information can be found in the article One Way to Use a Linux Computer to Recover Files from an Android Device – including those for some of the tricky parts: how to find your partition (step 4), plus an alternative way to grab it (adb shell su -c "cat /dev/block/mmcblk0" | pv > mmcblk0.raw would work even if you have no external SD card, and write the image directly to your Linux machine).

If you got no Linux machine, there are several LiveCDs available you could use. To use ADB on those, see our adb tag-wiki for a minimal installation; I'd recommend to simply download the minimalist archive from my site, unpack to an empty directory, and run it from there.

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If the data was not encrypted and not over written, it is technically possible to recover the data using (linux) data recovery tools.

It will require a root shell, it can be the one of your main system, one from the recovery system or one from a volatile system you would load from a computer using fastboot binary.

You may want to check if you didn't just cleared dalvik cache.

If adb is enabled on your recovery or volatile system, you can explore the file system to check if the application folder is still there.

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