If you’ve ever deleted a photo album
by mistake or had your smartphone go
haywire and wipe everything in your
gallery, then you know that particular
variety of ”bottomless pit in your
guts” feeling. Never fear, we’ll show
you just how easy it is to recover lost
photos on Android, whether you have a
Nexus 5, Galaxy S5 or Droid X.
There’s only one thing to remember:
act fast..
If you’ve got photos dating back to
January 1970, you probably don’t want
to lose them. / ©TECHNOKICK
As you’ve probably guessed, speed is
of the essence, so first thing’s first:
turn off your Wi-Fi and data
connections on your phone. This is
because when data is deleted, whether
photos, music, documents or
whatever, it is not actually deleted
until something has been written over
the top of it in memory. All that is
initially deleted is the index that
points to where the data starts, so as
long as you can find that point again
you can get your pictures back and a
poorly timed update can be
disastrous. Here’s how to get your
photos back..
Note: this process requires root
privileges on your phone.
How to recover lost photos on Android
1. Download a free program on your
computer called Dr Fone for Android
by Wondershare. There’s other
programs available, but we’ve always
had good results with Dr Fone.
2. Install the program and launch it.
You’ll see the screen below..
3. Connect your smartphone to your
computer with a USB cable. You need
to have USB Debugging enabled on
your smartphone for this process to
work. If you do not already have this
option enabled, simply go to your
Settings > About Phone and tap the
Build Number repeatedly until the
notification appears to say Developer
Options have been enabled. Back in
your main Settings screen you’ll see
Developer Options down near the
bottom. Scroll through the settings
until you see USB Debugging and
check the box beside it. You’ll see a
notification at the bottom of the Dr.
Fone screen saying that USB
Debugging is being opened.
4. Once Dr Fone for Android has made
the connection to your smartphone
you’ll be able to select from the
following categories of deleted files.
We’re only after photos, but of course,
if you’ve lost more than just photos
you can tick as many as you like..
5. The next step asks you to scan for
deleted files or all files. If you’re after
a quick recovery of your lost pictures
to set your mind at rest take the
”Deleted files” option. You’ll need to
accept the RSA key prompt on your
smartphone (check ”Always accept”
to make it easier), making the
connection between the two devices
secure and of course, grant Superuser
permission when prompted.
6. One this is done, Dr Fone will
analyze your phone. There will be
reboots and possibly some weird
screen popping up on your phone. Just
let Dr Fone do its thing..
7. Once Dr Fone has finished
analyzing your phone you’ll get the
scan results screen where you can
check the boxes for the photos (or
other files, as you can see below,
depending which file types you
selected earlier) that you want to
save, then hit ”Recover” and you’re
golden.
8. If you’ve made it this far you’ve
hopefully learned a valuable lesson
and will make regular copies of your
smartphone data from now on. Don’t
worry, we have plenty of tutorials on
the site for that too! We’ve also used
Dr Fone to recover deleted text
messages where we shared a great
app for backing up your SMS as well.
Have you had some disastrous lost
data accidents before? What did you
do to get your photos back?..
For wondershare Dr.fone Android :
http://www.wondershare.net/ad/dr-fone/dr-fone-android.html
