Help with Deleted photos off S4 internal memory

[fairywishes1]

Hi

I am hoping some of the wonderful regs on here can offer some advise please.

I stupidly ( well actually I blame my husband who had me fiddling with the stupid panoramic mode ) somehow deleted my entire batch of photos from my 40th birthday in Glastonbury. I've no idea how it happened I think i must have clicked on the panoramic pic to remove it and it must have been the pic on the folder of photos, its just a guess but i've no idea how it happened they are just gone :0(

I am desperate to recover them but it seems as its on the internal memory and not the sd card its not possible i've not taken any other photos hoping i could recover them but just wondered if anyone had any advise for me on if its at all still possible?

[Sophes]

I have used this before, not for internal memory but it may work:

http://download.cnet.com/Recuva/3000-2242_4-10753287.html

Good luck!

[hrym]

There are programs which will recover files from an sd card.  They run on a pc and I'd have thought there's a good chance they'd work with the internal storage of your phone if it was connected as external storage to a pc.

The main this is not to use the phone until you've done it as anything, even another app, that writes to storage may over-write the photos.  Given how much goes in in the background ona smartphone, I'd try to keep the phone off as much as possible and certainly turn off the data connection to stop apps from updating their content. If you do need to use the phone, only use it for calls.

[fairywishes1]

Apparently something in the 4.0 update has blocked access to the internal hardrive so the phone has to be rooted which i'm not prepared to do I'm probably screwed anyway then i downloaded to apps dumpster and a file manager type one immediatley after trying to get them back :0( thanks anyway

[hrym]

That's an odd one, which frankly I don't understand and there's nothing in Android which would require your phone to be rooted.   I'm also surprised that you refer to an update to 4.0, which as far as I know is ICS, which I'm pretty sure was the standard version when the S4 was launched (and it might even have been 4.1).

Can you see the phone as external storage when it's plugged into a pc?  However, the fact that you've made what sound like quite siginificant changes to the phone reduce your chances of revovery, but you may still be able to get at least some of the files back.

Up to Anrdoid 2.3 (Gingerbread), you had to turn on usb access to storage, but that requirement went with ICS and you should be able to plug straight in.   Even if 4.3 (Jelly Bean) changed it back, there ought to be ab option in settings and rooting is certainly off the agenda.

At the moment, it sounds as though another app has done something untoward.

[fairywishes1]

Thanks so much for replying i do appreciate it, I don't know all i know is every which way i google it i'm hitting a brick wall when it comes to recovering from the internal memory rather then sd card and when i actually ran the Recuva firstly i don't have the option to choose the phone or other as shown on the link included then when i choose all files it comes up with: no drives were scanned because none matched your filter, it just does not seem to be able to see the phone. I also enabled usb debugging but it makes no difference.

http://www.squidtooth.com/recover-deleted-files-on-your-android

If they were saved on the internal hard drive of the phone, unfortunately, I am afraid that it exactly is impossible to recover lost data from the phone, because the computer can’t read the internal memory of the phone as a drive, unless you have backup files.

http://androiddatarecovery.wordpress.com/tag/recover-data-from-samsung-galaxy-s4/

here is the bit about the 4.0

http://android-photo-recovery.com/tutorials/android-4.0.html

[thesoupdragon]

When you got your S4, did you set up DropBox? If you did, DropBox automatically uploads your Photos as soon as you take them or as soon as you are connected to Wifi.

Also if you have a Google+ account set up, that also uploads photos as soon as you connect to wifi.

RE: scanning internal storage:

The easiest thing to do is connect the Phone to your PC. Then copy the entire contents of the Internal storage to a Folder on your PC desktop.

Now you can use Recuvva to scan the Folder (on the desktop) for the Photos.

[hrym]

---

@thesoupdragon wrote:

RE: scanning internal storage:

The easiest thing to do is connect the Phone to your PC. Then copy the entire contents of the Internal storage to a Folder on your PC desktop.

Now you can use Recuvva to scan the Folder (on the desktop) for the Photos.

---

Brilliant idea!   I'm a bit concerned that the OP doesn't seem to be able to see the phone as an external drive, unless they're not doing what we think they're doing.

To the OP: The part of the phone's storage you're interested in behaves like and SD card and is referred to as such by the File Manager app (an external sd card is called just that to distinguish it).  It's possible that Recuva is seeing the relevant area and not finding anything.

I'd give tsd's suggestion a go, though.  It also has the advantage of preserving a copy of the current state of the storage before any further changes get made.

[fairywishes1]

I checked dropbox at the start i didn't have it i do now lol.. I also checked google + to see if it was backed up it says i am not logged into google+ whatever that means :0(.

I must be doing something wrong in my connecting and would definatley be interested in saving the entire contents of my internal memory to my comp and doing it that way however i just don't seem to be able to find out how to do that i'm not a techy type person and i have now turned off the usb debugging as i'm presuming really i should not have that enabled should i? Although i think i am now stuck with the developer mode.

Every attempt i made last night to try to get recuva to see my phone just didn't work when i plug my phone to my laptop via the cable a box with autoplay pops up i only have options sync digital media files,  open devise to view files, import pictures and import videos i've chcked all the folders the photos are gone. Everytime i find some kind of description of how to do this online it never seems to have the options i have on my phone in the settings.

My S2 was so much easier to use i've had nothing but agro with this s4 the blue tooth regardless of how many times i try and send pics to my comp fails hence with only having it since Aug had not had chance to transfer my new pics over from my 40th :o(

And ow today due to workmen working on my roof i've been forced to rush outside and take pics so i've prob now screwed my chances of getting them back anyway :0( How do i copy my internal memory onto my computer then?

By the way thanks for trying to help me i'm not a techy hence my probs

re this:  RE: scanning internal storage:

The easiest thing to do is connect the Phone to your PC. Then copy the entire contents of the Internal storage to a Folder on your PC desktop.

Now you can use Recuvva to scan the Folder (on the desktop) for the Photos.

but how do i do this?

[hrym]

When you connect, the option you want is Open device to view files.  You should then see the phone as a external drive under Computer in Windows Explorer.  Click on it and you should see a tree of files just as you do elsewhere. Right click the top-level one and select Copy, then go to a convenient location on the laptop, right click and select Paste.

You mention Bluetooth.  I've never tried using this for file transfer, but you would have to pair the phone and the laptop to be able to do this.  Does the laptop have Bluetooth?

The only things that are backed up to Google are the basic settings and wallpapers.  They'll appear under Account|Dashboard|Devices.  Google+ doesn't come into it for this.

You can also use Google Drive for cloud storage.  The app is on Play, but bear in mind that image files are quite large and will take some time to upload and use a large chunk of your data.  The easiest way to keep backups is to put an external sd card into the phone and periodically use the My Files/File Manager app to copy them.

For this and image recovery, the folder you want is DCIM\Camera.