Media data loss/Disappearance

[shaheed]

Hi everybody..

my Phone (Note 3 SM-900N0) has lost its mind when yesterday i came to know that all the media files Pics, Videos and apps went disappeared from internal me memory of phone for no apparent reason. I am in shock, confused and upset why and how it happened. Is there any free recovery tool good enough to dig my data out.

 

[Hadron]

Internal memory or removable card? The latter are much easier to recover (put them in a card reader and use a computer) but much more prone to failure.

If actual internal storage it's much harder (apps disappearing would imply internal storage, but you may have moved apps to SD so I can't be certain). That almost sounds like a factory reset: did you have to sign in again, or lose your texts? There are a number of utilities on the web that will claim they can do this (and we'll probably get people pop up here to promote them), but I'm very dubious of most of the claims. Unless the Note 3 is old enough that you can still mount it as USB mass storage, in which case you can treat it like a flash drive and use any old file recovery software. That would get media back, but not apps (or texts etc if they also went).

 

[shaheed]

Tnx @Hardon. Its an internal memory not SD card furthermore the text messages have remained intact and I was not prompted to lo gin either so cant say what really happened.
However you talked about the USB massage storage option there is an alternative for it in Note 3 by name of MTP and that serve the same purpose as the former as far as the Google says

 

[Hadron]

That's what I was afraid of. MTP "serves the same purpose" but isn't the same thing. In particular it doesn't give the low-level access to the storage device that file recovery software needs.

 

[shaheed]

Then what you think still is there any remedy ?

 

[Hadron]

Probably not. This is one reason why whether on internal or removable storage backups are important (some people tell themselves removable is safer, but that can fail so badly it's irrecoverable, and if the device is lost or stolen it doesn't matter whether the data are on internal or removable storage).

There are utilities that will tell you they can recover internal data. Many do not work, and I can't name one which I know does. What I can say is that any whose instructions tell you to mount the device as USB mass storage will not, and personally I would doubt any that don't require usb debugging to be enabled (because I just don't believe it's possible over MTP). You could experiment, but don't have your hopes too high and don't pay any money up front.

Sorry, but Google's switch to MTP broke the easy and reliable options here.

 

[shaheed]

what is that utility you referring to ?

 

[Hadron]

None in particular. Search for something like "Android data recovery" and you'll get a slew of hits for various utilities. It's possible one of them might work, but most seem pretty sketchy and verifiable independent reports of success are much less common than adverts.