The kid deleted some photos. Can they be retrieved?

[northbound]

Our darling 4-year-old son is a little less darling to my wife right now b/c unbeknownst to her he just spent 20+ minutes deleting photos from her phone. She thinks they're gone forever, but I think they're in there, just like stuff you delete on a Windows computer isn't gone from the trash unless you actually go into the trash and delete it there.

Are they in there? If so, how do we get 'em out? And besides revoking our sweet little Destructor's phone privileges, is there anything we can do to make it harder to put stuff in the trash?

 

[Rukbat]

1) If they were on the external SD card, mount the card in the computer and run any deleted file recovery app. The best one is PhotoRec - CGSecurity best, but also cheapest, it's free. You'll have to burn it to a CD, then boot the computer with the CD, but if the file is there, PhotoRec will find it. (If a photo has been overwritten, you won't recover the whole thing - the part that's been overwritten will be garbage - lines, dots, etc.)

If the pictures were on internal memory, you have to root the phone (which totally voids the warranty) - I haven't found an app that recovers deleted files on an Android phone that's not rooted.

Then use any deleted file recovery tool (Disk Digger is a good one) to recover the files.

And as far as making it more difficult for little darling to delete pictures in the future (and I say this as a father, grandfather, etc.):

1) A 4 year old doesn't need access to a phone, unless he's dialing 911.

2) Put a password on the lock screen. (If you put the dialer on the lock screen, you can still dial 911 on the locked phone.)

3) Ignore the tantrum - it'll pass.

 

[bcrichster]

SD rescan from playstore - as long as you haven't rebooted your phone yet, it'll work. No PC or CD required