Retrieve Stored SMS from SD Card

[JaneLane]

Hello forum!

Newbie here experiencing a bit of bother! I better provide a bit of background for this one!

I had a Samsung Europa phone (my first android) and one day it decided to go haywire and deleted all of my messages, call logs and generally started acting funny. As you can imagine this was quite traumatic as I had a lot of important text messages on there! Heavily dependent on my phone, I bought a new one, this time the Samsung Galaxy Y Pro. (Notice the cheap - entry phones here! )

While my Europa was still working, I did a back up using Safe Backup and Mobile Backup 2 (can't be too careful!). Having little faith, I assumed all of the previous messages were gone forever but after setting up my new phone and noticing the lack of space on the SD card, I decided to investigate.

I found a LOST.DIR folder which I did some research on and deleted that. However there is a folder entitled 'private'. A sub folder of this is called '1000484b'. Inside this again there is a folder called 'Mail2'. Clicked it and low and behold there are a lot of DATA files and after viewing them in Notepad (although surrounded by symbols) I discovered that they were my old SMS messages!

So to get to the point (finally!!!), is there any way that I can have these messages displayed on my new phone (Galaxy Y Pro), either saved on the SD or the internal phone memory? I'd sacrafice space for apps to have these messages back, thats how important they are!

Any information you have would be very helpful! Thank you!

 

[El Presidente]

Welcome to AF Jane!

Is DATA the file extension or the filename? There's a tool called SMS Backup and restore which will read certain types of files and restore them to the messaging app, the data needs to be in .xml format (I believe) though.

 

[JaneLane]

Thanks for your reply El Presidente!

I was referring to DATA as the extension, the file names themselves are numbers placed in folders that also have numbers on them!

Very strange! I'll try that app in the meantime and I'll see if it works! Thanks!

 

[JaneLane]

It didn't work!

 

[El Presidente]

It's been a while since I used the app, does it ask you where to look for the xml file? I think it's got to be in a certain place.

 

[JaneLane]

It does alright but it doesn't recognise the .data file extension, it just says there's nothing there. I'm starting to think there isn't a way to fix it!

 

[El Presidente]

You might be able to convert the files to xml format?

Alternatively, you could just change the extension to xml, see what that does?

 

[JaneLane]

That doesn't work either. When I did it, it just said that the file couldn't be read! Thanks so much for all of your help so far!

 

[El Presidente]

No worries. I'm thinking they might not be retrievable though, is that going to be a major issue?

 

[JaneLane]

No not really, its probably better if i don't have them. Looking back on the past and all that! Thanks again though, I really appreciate it!

 

[El Presidente]

No problem, sorry though.

 

[teratoma]

Hello forum!

Newbie here experiencing a bit of bother! I better provide a bit of background for this one!

I had a Samsung Europa phone (my first android) and one day it decided to go haywire and deleted all of my messages, call logs and generally started acting funny. As you can imagine this was quite traumatic as I had a lot of important text messages on there! Heavily dependent on my phone, I bought a new one, this time the Samsung Galaxy Y Pro. (Notice the cheap - entry phones here! )

While my Europa was still working, I did a back up using Safe Backup and Mobile Backup 2 (can't be too careful!). Having little faith, I assumed all of the previous messages were gone forever but after setting up my new phone and noticing the lack of space on the SD card, I decided to investigate.

I found a LOST.DIR folder which I did some research on and deleted that. However there is a folder entitled 'private'. A sub folder of this is called '1000484b'. Inside this again there is a folder called 'Mail2'. Clicked it and low and behold there are a lot of DATA files and after viewing them in Notepad (although surrounded by symbols) I discovered that they were my old SMS messages!

So to get to the point (finally!!!), is there any way that I can have these messages displayed on my new phone (Galaxy Y Pro), either saved on the SD or the internal phone memory? I'd sacrafice space for apps to have these messages back, thats how important they are!

Any information you have would be very helpful! Thank you!

You know what, You've saved my live dude.

I've just registered to this forum to say: THANXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I was looking for any way to even see a special referral code been sent to me by an embassy, since i sold my old cell phone and kept the old SD card, Finalllllllllllllly after seeing your post, I've been able to view those sms and get back my referral no from a similsr folder that you've mentioned: private / 1000484b / Mail2 and after tracing each sms - accroding to the date of that file, I've got my sms. thannnnnnnnnnnxxxxxxxxxxxxxx