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Can't recover files I just deleted on phone please help

daniel2344

Lurker
Jan 30, 2021
8
4
I literally just deleted a video I took a few minutes ago, and can't get it back. I have tried about 6 different file recovery apps at this point, they are miraculously able to recover files that I deleted a year ago or more, but not a single one is recovering the files I deleted just today. Please help!
 
I do have google photos installed and set to automatically back up but that's hardly an answer, it takes a very long time for those backups to upload, and obviously it is untrue that it is impossible to recover deleted files in general.

Again, I'm able to recover videos that were deleted weeks, months, even a year ago. Is there some special reason why files I just deleted hours ago would be exempt from recovery when very old files are not??
 
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Are these file recovery apps running on the phone or on a computer? Just for information.

There's no special reason a recently-deleted file should be less recoverable than an old one, assuming that they are on the same storage device, i.e. all on internal storage or all on removable storage - if they are on different storage devices then that could be a factor. Assuming no insuperable technical problems (e.g. trying to recover data after a factory reset has erased the encryption key, which is a common one) the commonest cause of file recovery failure in general is overwriting of the data you are trying to recover. As a rule of thumb you might think that files that were deleted longer ago would be more at risk of that, but it depends on the whims of the storage controller's algorithms (which I'm not an expert on by any means) - I could speculate about whether a block of released storage (a deleted file) is more at risk if it's in the middle of a section that is in use or at the start of a block of unused storage (more likely for the most recent file perhaps), but that would just be speculation.

Practically though it doesn't help you either way. There's no "switch" that says "don't recover files that existed for less than an hour", and hence there's no setting you can change to make the file recoverable. So unless you can identify something that's different about this file (and being stored on a different storage device is the only really relevant thing I can imagine) I doubt there's anything we can do.
 
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I was hoping someone could recommend a particularly powerful tool or method that might have a better chance at a deeper recovery than the apps I've found in the play store.

The thing is I immediately moved to recover so there was zero activity on the phone and no possibility of the data getting over written, and there is only one drive on the phone it doesn't have an insertable or anything like that just the built in memory.
 
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Depending on the particular phone or tablet you've got and who manufactured it, it may or may not have a recycle-bin/trash-can feature in the file manager app. My Huawei phone has it, and any files deleted with the My Files, can go into a hidden folder called .deleted-files. This is not a standard feature of Android of course, and my Samsung doesn't have it. Perhaps that's what you're seeing with the older files, but not the video you recently deleted?

Deep file recovery software may require direct access to the encrypted file system in an Android device, and AFAIK that can only be done if the device is rooted.
 
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YES! there is indeed a recycle bin feature I had absolutely no idea this existed! Thank you!!

I've only seen this type of feature on Huawei and Honor devices with the stock EMUI file manager. With other devices I've used, if something is deleted, it's basically gone, apart from maybe trying to use file recovery software.
 
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