How to recover photos after factory reset if new photos have been taken?

[Fish_In_A_Suit]

Hello there!

I am interested if it is possible to recover photos from my Huawei P9 Lite after a factory reset, if some new photos have already been taken after the factory reset?

The factory reset occurred unexpectedly yesterday evening due to the face that too many images have been stored on the phone, taking up so much memory that somehow an error occurred, which set off the factory reset. All of the images (around 3000) have been deleted and I am really interested how to recover them. However, what concerns me is the fact that around 20 new photos have been taken after the factory reset, therefore possibly overwriting the old ones.

I have already tried recovering the photos using some android data recovery application on my computer, which scanned my phone in order to find the deleted photos, but only the 20 new photos showed up. I didn't, however, scan the phone with root priviliges.

Now, what interests me is:
- Have the 20 newly taken photos overriden ALL of the previous 3000 photos, therefore making them unrecoverable?
- Would scanning with root access help?
- Your recommendations... How should I recover the lost images, if possible?

Thank you for the time taken to read this thread and I would really appreciate all of the provided information.

- Fish

 

[Dannydet]

Did you happen to use Google photos?
That one is a lifesaver since it can automatically back up every single photo you've ever taken.
It would be linked to your Gmail account

 

[ocnbrze]

yeah if they are not stored on an sd card (if you have one which you should) and only saved internally, you are going to be SOL when the phone craps out on you......there is no way of saving them after they have been deleted.

google photos is the best way to go as it stores them on the cloud automatically.

and i never heard of a phone randomly doing a factory reset on its own like that........that is weird.

 

[Hadron]

20 new images won't have overwritten 3000 existing ones, though they might have damaged more than 20 previous images. However, I think that is the least of your problems.

The first is that with Android 4 the USB access method was changed from USB Mass Storage to MTP. This doesn't give the low-level filesystem access that file recovery software needs.

The second, and more serious, is that in any phone originally shipped with Android 6 or later the filesystem has been encrypted by default. From what I've been able to glean off the web (including a Huawei manual) I'm pretty sure that this will be the case for the P9 Lite. And the way this normally works a factory reset will also delete the encryption keys.

So unless Huawei do something unusual there's no way of decrypting the data, which means that even if you can give the required access to a file recovery program (possible on many phones but probably requires root, not sure about one with a Kirin SoC) it won't be able to do anything anyway.

 

[Fish_In_A_Suit]

20 new images won't have overwritten 3000 existing ones, though they might have damaged more than 20 previous images. However, I think that is the least of your problems.

The first is that with Android 4 the USB access method was changed from USB Mass Storage to MTP. This doesn't give the low-level filesystem access that file recovery software needs.

The second, and more serious, is that in any phone originally shipped with Android 6 or later the filesystem has been encrypted by default. From what I've been able to glean off the web (including a Huawei manual) I'm pretty sure that this will be the case for the P9 Lite. And the way this normally works a factory reset will also delete the encryption keys.

So unless Huawei do something unusual there's no way of decrypting the data, which means that even if you can give the required access to a file recovery program (possible on many phones but probably requires root, not sure about one with a Kirin SoC) it won't be able to do anything anyway.

Wow, I really appreciate the detailed answer!


Hmmm🤔;. But this link (http://www.recover-iphone-ios-8.com/android-data-recovery.html) claims (under the 'Compatible with multiple android devices & tablets) claims to be working with android 6.0. Would it be possible to achieve this goal with the program found under the link?

 

[Dannydet]

Good luck with that.
Anybody can claim anything on the internet these days.
What actually happens is you spend money on applications that don't deliver

 

[Hadron]

You can try. If it does work please let us know: you'll find many recommendations for such software on the web, but reliable reports of success (i.e. not written by people acting for the company) are much, much harder to find. So a reliable report on it would be useful either way. But if your storage was encrypted in the standard way I'll be very surprised indeed if it succeeds.

(For information, only devices that originally shipped with Android 6 or later are encrypted by default. Older devices that were upgraded to 6 won't be unless the user chose to encrypt them).

 

[mikedt]

Wow, I really appreciate the detailed answer!


Hmmm🤔;. But this link (http://www.recover-iphone-ios-8.com/android-data-recovery.html) claims (under the 'Compatible with multiple android devices & tablets) claims to be working with android 6.0. Would it be possible to achieve this goal with the program found under the link?

That's bullshit snake-oil from China. It will not work on an encrypted Android device that's been reset and the encryption keys erased.

Android 6 and above the internal storage is AES256 encrypted, and not even the feds can crack that AFAIK.