Restore deleted photos

Question

I accidentally deleted the entire "downloaded" album full of pictures from my Samsung Galaxy S2 (SPH-D710) and am trying to use a recovery program I downloaded.

My phone will not show up as a remove-able storage device on my computer, or on the program. I have tried to change the USB settings on my phone but there is no USB settings when I go to Settings > Wireless and networks as most information instructs.

I found the setting for USB debugging by going to Settings > Developer options and can turn that on and off, but that is the only setting I can find relating to USB storage.

When I connect it to the USB cord it gives me MTP or PTP options but again no USB options.

Any advice??? Thank you!

Answer 1

If your device is rooted, you can try Undelete for root users which claim to restore even from internal storage, which is boon as other PC based apps does not work well unless they have physical access.

The app Dumpster claims to work even for unrooted device. But I suspect this has to be installed before the event of deleting - not sure just give a try.

If either of the apps seems promising, I would advice you not to directly or indirectly use the internal storage as if the data blocks are overwritten (by you or by an app or by the system) your chances of recovery goes slim.

Answer 2

If the folder is on your external SD card: remove the card from the device, and connect it via a card reader. This way you ensure your computer will have the physical access to the card which is needed by most recovery programs for best results.

For further advice, also see Data Recovery - How to Restore Deleted / Formatted Files on HD Micro SD Card

Answer 3

^{Answer taken from an edit made by Christin taylor (Christin: Edits are for fixes/clarifications; alternative solutions should be presented in their own answers)}

When photos deleted from android, the os removes the pointer to the files from the file allocation table and flags the deleted files as no longer needed. in order to recover the deleted photos, you need to avoid writing data to the card or internal storage, plug in your device and set the usb setting as mass storage so that both the sd card and built-in storage should be recognized and mounted as removable drive, scan the drive, then recover the deleted photos from android.

Remarks (by Izzy):

1. This only works as long as the Android device supports USB Mass storage.
2. The reason described just applies to FAT based file systems (which admittedly are used here in most cases).
3. It's always the safer method to use a dedicated card reader for such low-level operations – though, in absence of such, it should work.