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Trying to undelete/recover files from Android with a MacBook Pro

Posted: 16 Oct 2017, 04:47
by BurnoutJane
Hi there,

I'm not that tech savvy and am really hoping someone can help me. My equipment:

-Samsung Nexus with Android 4 (EDIT: it's version 4.3)
-MacBook Pro, OS 10.6.8

-What happened: while deleting some photos from my Nexus I accidentally deleted my "Camera" folder and I'm hoping to get my 400+ travel photos back.

-What I did right after: following suggestions in forums, I stopped using my phone soon after I deleted the photos 2 days ago, and have been looking for a solution since. I downloaded the free trial of Dr. Fone, enabled USB debugging, and scanned my phone, but most of the 500+ images it found were from websites I visited, not from Camera.

Thing is, I don't understand how PhotoRec works/what I'm supposed to do. The step-by-step instructions seem to be for someone with more tech knowledge than I have, and my "nerd friends" are all PC or Linux people (and I'm physically far from them in Middle of Nowhere Ville, Japan, right now anyway).

I downloaded PhotoRec, opened it, and connected my Android to my MBP. PhotoRec opened in Terminal and gave me the message that no disk was found. I closed it. I just tried to open it again and now Terminal is blank.

Can someone help me? What am I doing wrong? :geek:

Thank you!

PS: I did post something earlier but I don't see it in the forums so sorry if you see a double post!

Re: Trying to undelete/recover files from Android with a MacBook Pro

Posted: 18 Oct 2017, 07:53
by cgrenier
If there is a memory card in your phone, move it to an USB card reader and use PhotoRec.
If your pictures were in the internal memory, you need to enable the USB mass storage mode (goggle for it) but it's nly possible for Android up to 4.1.2, not Android 4.2 an later.

Re: Trying to undelete/recover files from Android with a MacBook Pro

Posted: 18 Oct 2017, 14:32
by BurnoutJane
Thanks for your message! There's no SD card, only internal memory, and I just checked and saw this info:

Android version: 4.3
Kernel version: 3.0.72

I do have it connected as media device and have enabled "USB debugging".

Is there anything else I can do?

Re: Trying to undelete/recover files from Android with a MacBook Pro

Posted: 19 Oct 2017, 05:32
by BurnoutJane
Hi again,

So I disabled USB debugging and PhotoRec now identifies a disk! However, it doesn't list "Nexus" or anything that makes it look like the phone, but rather "dev". I unplugged the phone and that option didn't go away so I'm wondering if it's referring to my computer's HD instead.

EDIT: ALSO, I clicked on "use the phone as camera" or whatever the other USB option is, and used Image Capture to see if I could access the photos. I was able to transfer whatever images there were but many showed 0KB so I'm guessing those are the ones I deleted. Weird how the phone would still show the files names, though (I'm guessing the images that I was able to transfer weren't from the Camera folder though, but from the Whatsapp, Download and other folders).

Any help greatly appreciated!

Thanks :)