Deleted files recovery app

Hello!!!
Do you know any F-Droid app that allows you to recover deleted files from your mobile?
Thanks!!!

Generally impossible. Different android versions use different filesystems.

In low level there are tools for old FAT FS. But ext3/4 was always hard to restore deleted. Etc. Etc

Undeletion of files requires a direct access the block device. Android does not allow this (because of security concerns), unless you unlock the bootloader and gain root privileges.

Nope. Or are you saying that all these apps are fakes? Unfortunately, none of them is available at F-Droid.

Hard ≠ impossible. I wrote a shell script for that some 10 years ago, which worked fine. Apart from that, “external storage” is always using FAT (though often through FUSE); not sure if “fused FAT” exposes the file allocation table in a way it can be used to undelete, but those apps let me assume it does.

Funnily, those apps rarely speak of “needs root” – because I agree with relan here that undelete would require direct access to the block device.

Izzy, I am glad that I’m wrong. And I’m eager to look at your 10-years old script :wink:

You’re welcome to: ext3undel. The script was even featured at Linux.com (English; link goes to Archive.org as the original was removed) and in the Linux-Community.de (German). It’s basically a wrapper around several forensic tools.

I knew Photorec, one of the tools included. Is possible to install or run it in Android?

Not as an app. Maybe Termux has a package for it, I didn’t check.

Yes, I have installed Termux and Testdisk through it, but Photorec or Testdisk don’t detect any disk in my Android mobile (?!!?).

I cannot tell, have never used it on Android, sorry. And before you ask: I have no time to play with it either…

Till I abandoned proprietary things I used Dumpster. It worked very well for years. If someone wants to play around with Undeletion it should be worth the time to look into it.

Hi lldar, As you said different android system uses different file system, so it is impossible to recover deleted files. Here I want to add some more points if the data store in SD card so we are able to recover those file using third party utility programs likes Stellar Data Recovery, Recuva etc. These programs support more than 300+ file types and recover data efficiently.

@sandrajmcgray I only remember recuva from windows and stellar seems to be only for windows, too. Reverse-engineering a working android app should be rather useful than a windows program.

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