What I have:
Both phones are stock. The g4 is using the system.rooted.H81110h.img
Galaxy S4 T-Mobile running 4.4.4. Original phone
Purchased T-mobile G4 running lollipop (didn't upgrade it yet)
Just want my messages of my deceased family.
I've gone as far as I could on my own. I need help and am willing to pay for it. Whatever solution that comes up will be (hopefully) useful to others. No one should have to go through what I have. I will lay out the steps I've taken and while I was unsucessful it doesn't mean I did everything right. I have been all over the internet and haven't been able to find much in the way of solutions so I pieced together a whole bunch of stuff.
First of all I want to punch the people at android in the face. No...seriously .I do.
Why in GOD'S NAME is it so HARD to do a SIMPLE thing like restoring your messages? Like I'm SHOCKED at the fact that they seemingly don't want this to ever happen.
They have gone to great lengths to ensure it doesn't happen and I'm seriously confused as to why. At every turn I've literally run into roadblocks that apparently are there for "my protection" like wtf people? I have messages of people who are now deceased and would it be that *&$&*#$& hard to put them into a new phone? I'm sorry, I'm upset, pissed off, and bewildered at how hard this is to do. Like. Literally. STUPID HARD.
I'm on the verge of tears and I have literally spend 3 weeks trying to import my MMS / SMS. I've purchased software, I've tried bribery, I've rooted my phone, extracted the mmssms.db file of the old and new. And I literally spend the last 3 days pasting all this crap into the new database. I've exported it to CSV where needed
Here is what I have tried:
1. sms backup and restore. By far the simplist. After literally 4 days of importing it finally was done. However, all of my picture mail was at the bottom of the thread. And some messages...actually a LOT of messages....were showing up at the time it imported. NOT the time it was sent. Like wtf? I opened up messanger....opened each thread....waited......some were fixed by what I found online to be a solution.
2. Purchased some software. This software (backuptrans). after 5 days. Yes FIVE days..it actually did a good job. All of them were on the right date...however....they don't support group messages....Yes. You heard me right. They thought a "solution" would be to convert every group message threat into individual ones.
Example:
group message with 10 people.
Every message you sent to the group is now shown as a sent message 10 times. One time to each person in the individual thread.
Those people's replies will show up in the corresponding individual thread.
your replies show up in all ten.
So what you have is a conversation that literally is useless. Try having a side conversation or multiple group messages with similar people at the same time...and you will quickly see why I was quite upset after 5 days of watching my new phone (which I only got because my S4 has the infamous "You removed your sim card! Let's restart!" bullcrap
Added backuptrans people to the people I want to punch in the face
3. Rooted. Copied MMSMS over and this ended up with com.phone.android has stopped. Was worth a try. I'm on kitkat...this new G4 is on lollipop. They changed the structure from what I read online.
4. No big deal right? I'll take a copy of the new database and the old one. Reimport?
Downloaded razorSQL, exported each table into SQL. Reimported when it accepted the SQL until it hit tables where they didn't match up. IE column names were wrong or one had a column the other did not.
So then I exported to CSV for both new and old. Opened the old, matched the columns up, and pasted into the new format CSV and reimported that.
Did this for all tables that matched up until I got to threads. Threads wouldn't import because it gave me a _INSERT_THREAD wasn't a function. After some reasearch it was some trigger that was there...so I'm like.. well.. can't do much with that. I ended up removing the trigger which I THINK...because I honestly don't have a clue... only helps with the indexing?
CREATE TRIGGER callback_on_insert_threads AFTER INSERT ON threads BEGIN SELECT _INSERT_THREAD(new._id); END
deleted that. Imported the CSV. And created the trigger again.
Between importing, exporting, etc. This took me about 3 days.
I had a hunch that there HAS TO be a database upgrade script. I found this page:
https://android.googlesource.com/pl...providers/telephony/MmsSmsDatabaseHelper.java
I think this might help someone but I again am not a programmer and have no clue what that all means.
There has been lolipop upgrades for other carriers...but not t-mobile....
Could we perhaps take an upgrade script from them that would convert 4.4.4 to lollipop?
Do I dare as if we can do the same from lollipop to marshmellow? The G4 will eventually
What complicates things further is that each manufacture uses different database structures. I'm not sure of the reasoning, however, this seems quite crazy and again android should step in and standardize things.
4. For whatever reason on my S4 I can't export into XML. Crashes on titanium backup. So that's why I used sms backup and restore.
5. Tried to import xml file from sms backup and restore into titanium backup and it crashes.
Hopefully someone can help
Update. Was able to make some headway. Had to give radio:radio permissions to the mmssms.db file and also the app_parts folder / files in there.
Lot's of missing messages. I'm not going to cross check the ones that DO show up and the ones that DON'T show up to see if I can find out why.
http://blog.namran.net/2010/09/25/how-to-recover-previous-smsmms-on-nexusone-backup-archive/
That was helpful.
if the “Messages” is having “force close ” problem.. after restoring backup database.
you may need to run “Fix Permission” once. and reboot the phone.
or possibly can be fixed with just the following
adb shell 'chmod 775 /data/com.providers.telephony/mmssms.db'
adb shell 'chmod 775 /data/com.providers.telephony/app_parts/*'
chown radio.radio /data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/mmssms.db
chown radio.radio -R /data/com.android.providers.telephony/app_parts
Related
First off, I searched without success hence this post.
Second, if this is in the wrong forum will a mod please move to the correct. (If this is the case I apologize in advance)
With my job I spend a deal of time some days txting employees seeking someone to work, notifying them of company things, yadda yadda yadda.
Lately I've had a few part timers 'screw me over' by stating they didn't receive a text message or don't remember replying back to me. Because of this I've had to resort to making nightly copies of my mmssms.db. I've got a tasker job set up to move and send the file and get it on my desktop. That's not a problem. The problem is after I send the database I want to 'clear' my messages out but leave only certain ones. ie threads from friends or family but delete threads that sit cluttering my messaging and getting in the way. Through tasker I'm trying to run some SQL to pull only relevant data and move that to a txt file stored locally and then trying to clean out the database of unnecessary stuff. The problem I'm running into is that it's not clearing out everything I want it to. I want to keep my stuff intact but because of that I can't remove threads started by me sent to my employees. Confuzed yet?
sorta goes like this
Tasker kicks in. copies mmssms.db to desktop.
Run query and write data to txt
Run another query and remove unnecessary rows from mmssms.db
my query to delete the unwanted rows is this
delete from sms where thread_id in (select _id from threads where _id in (select _id from canonical_addresses where address!="xxx-xxx-xxxx" and address!="xxxxxxxxxx"))
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
on the desktop this works great, I guess, but on the phone I'm just not getting the right results.
phew!
That being said, sorry for long windedness, am I doing this right? or am I going at it wrong?
any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks, in advance.
Hi!
A few days ago, I was writing on my tablet (Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition), using the papyrus app. While writing, the battery died, so I plugged the device in, restarted it, hoping to continue my writing. What I noticed was that all of my notes had disappeared from the app. I spent the last few days figuring out how to solve this, to no avail.
First, I checked on their website where Papyrus stores files on my tablet, which should be at "data/data/com.steadfastinnovation.android.projectpapyrus/files/data/", thinking they might still be around there somewhere. Unfortunately, I can't find this location anywhere, even though my device is rooted.
Then I tried contacting their support, but I still haven't heard back from them.
Finally, before I accidently overwrote the files by creating new notes, I did a back-up of the papyrus app using Titanium Backup. Funnily enough, while browsing through the back up, I came upon the files (I think) I need. The backup contained two files I could open with WinRAR and one of them contained the storage directory of Papyrus that I could not find on my tablet; yet as it has been backed up, it must be on there somewhere!
That same folder also contained .PAGE files with dates correlating to those of when I was writing a certain note, so I'm guessing those .PAGE files are actually my notes. However, I have no clue how to go about getting those notes back in the Papyrus app. I figured I would just copy/paste the files from the backup to the supposedly correct location on my tablet, but I still can't find it anywhere.
Is this location hidden/invisible? If so, how can I force it to show up? Also, would copy/pasting the files even work?
I am truly at my wits' end, and I hope that maybe someone on here can help me with this problem. I would love to get those notes back so my writing progress won't be set back.
If there is any further information you require, just ask and I will try my best to deliver it!
Tboesp said:
Hi!
A few days ago, I was writing on my tablet (Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition), using the papyrus app. While writing, the battery died, so I plugged the device in, restarted it, hoping to continue my writing. What I noticed was that all of my notes had disappeared from the app. I spent the last few days figuring out how to solve this, to no avail.
First, I checked on their website where Papyrus stores files on my tablet, which should be at "data/data/com.steadfastinnovation.android.projectpapyrus/files/data/", thinking they might still be around there somewhere. Unfortunately, I can't find this location anywhere, even though my device is rooted.
Then I tried contacting their support, but I still haven't heard back from them.
Finally, before I accidently overwrote the files by creating new notes, I did a back-up of the papyrus app using Titanium Backup. Funnily enough, while browsing through the back up, I came upon the files (I think) I need. The backup contained two files I could open with WinRAR and one of them contained the storage directory of Papyrus that I could not find on my tablet; yet as it has been backed up, it must be on there somewhere!
That same folder also contained .PAGE files with dates correlating to those of when I was writing a certain note, so I'm guessing those .PAGE files are actually my notes. However, I have no clue how to go about getting those notes back in the Papyrus app. I figured I would just copy/paste the files from the backup to the supposedly correct location on my tablet, but I still can't find it anywhere.
Is this location hidden/invisible? If so, how can I force it to show up? Also, would copy/pasting the files even work?
I am truly at my wits' end, and I hope that maybe someone on here can help me with this problem. I would love to get those notes back so my writing progress won't be set back.
If there is any further information you require, just ask and I will try my best to deliver it!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know this is old but did you ever get this resolved? Their support has not responded to me as I have my backed up files but I can't restore them.
4redstars said:
I know this is old but did you ever get this resolved? Their support has not responded to me as I have my backed up files but I can't restore them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I got a response from them, but they had no idea why my files went missing and didn't know how to restore it either. I just accepted the loss and tried to re-write everything I'm afraid...
Good luck with it, though, I hope you find a way to restore your files.
Hi!
I have been searching for this on Google and in the forums, and I cannot find any answers. I see that the most of the sms/mms backup apps are using .XML files, and I read that they do not support emoji and would corrupt the .xml file if I try to restore it.
I have only had to restore sms one time and that time i used go sms pro since I read that they support emoji backup even though they didnt so my 14000 sms got corrupted when I tried to restore, also tried with Titanium without anyluck or maybe I did something wrong (luckly I had nandroid backup and didnt update ROM), this time i want to make sure that this would not happen again and I want to update rom without loosing my sms. I feel there is a simple solution, but I cannot find it.
Would be nice if someone could help out a newb
Bump
Dns94 said:
Bump
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This
I'd like to know toO!
Why do they have to make this so damn hard. Why can't I just drag a file from old android phone and drop it in new android phone? What is the best method to COMPLETELY backup and restore SMS/MMS on non rooted phones?
Try this app (find the latest beta from release folder) : https://github.com/jberkel/sms-backup-plus/blob/master/README.md#readme
Used for years and did several restore while changing my rom. It push the backup into a Gmail label.
From what I saw, it saves pictures. So I guess it saves also emoji.
Hope it helps.
baudbox said:
Try this app (find the latest beta from release folder) : https://github.com/jberkel/sms-backup-plus/blob/master/README.md#readme
Used for years and did several restore while changing my rom. It push the backup into a Gmail label.
From what I saw, it saves pictures. So I guess it saves also emoji.
Hope it helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, I'll give it a shot. I tired SMS Backup & Restore but for some reason when it restored them (which worked for the most part) it screwed up a bunch of the time stamps.
One year later and no good solution to my problem?
A solution I found
Dns94 said:
One year later and no good solution to my problem?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know this thread was years ago, but I came across it while trying and failing to fix this issue, and after a ridiculous amount of time investigating I have a solution finally. I thought if I posted it here then others with the same problem might come across it too and it could help people.
Assuming you already have "SMS Backup and Restore" (though confusingly there are two apps in the Play Store called that, you want the one with the green icon by SyncTech Pty Ltd).
Select "Back Up Now" and send it to Dropbox (or another place, I found Dropbox the easiest). Most importantly though, click on" Advanced Options" and turn the "Emojis & special characters" slider OFF. xml doesn't understand emojis, and it will corrupt the file and cause "XML Parsing Error" when you try to open it.
There's an extra optional step to make the file easier to read (puts it in a nice table without bare code everywhere) but this website won't let me post the code because it contains two links (and because I'm a very new member, signed up just to write this). This step involves adding a file called "sms.xsl" and adding a line of code to the xml file to make it talk to the xsl file, but I can't find anywhere to download it with a quick Google search.
Let me know if anyone wants any more details.
This all worked for me very well at least, I hope it does for others.
Hello dear xda users,
I wanted to transfer my WhatsApp to a new phone. I have created a local backup and transferred it to the new phone. Though WhatsApp doesn't want to recognize it and just prompts me for the google drive backup. The number stayed the same and in the past I never had problems with that. The same things happens on my old phone. So now I have all the data, but I cannot use it. It would be sad for me to lose all my chatlogs (6 years). So I wanted to decrypt the database with the help of https://andreas-mausch.de/whatsapp-viewer/. Though I haven't found a recent and decent manual on how to get the WhatsApp Encryption Key from the newest app version and newest Android (crypt 14). I can root my phone if necessary. So if someone knows how to do that, may you please provide a manual or point me in the right direction?
Kind regards,
sollo477
Ordinarily, you should be able to restore WhatsApp chatlog from your local backup.
I have the same problem... i can´t restore from local file, i spent all my SMS verification codes, i have to wait til tomorrow to try again... ;(
James_Watson said:
Ordinarily, you should be able to restore WhatsApp chatlog from your local backup.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know, it always worked before. But now WhatsApp is just stupid. I also contacted the WhatsApp Support. They were like: "Well...tough luck. We can't help you." Maybe they should just give people an easy way to make an unencrypted export of all chats. I did everything according to the manuals and then the restore of the backup doesn't work. You don't even get any pop up, if something was wrong with the backup file or that WhatsApp cannot find any back ups on the phone. I have Threema as well, but most people I know don't use it.
I am also facing the same problems since yesterday.. And i am losing almost 3 yrs of my important chats due to this careless whatsapp bug. Anyone please help me in this..
mayur9890 said:
I am also facing the same problems since yesterday.. And i am losing almost 3 yrs of my important chats due to this careless whatsapp bug. Anyone please help me in this..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My backup database file is having crypt14 extension.. (usually it was crypt12) i already tried installing older Whatsapp version, rooted my phone and tried getting the key as well but whatsapp viewer saying invalid key as the file got skipped while authentication and activating whatsapp. Now i am stuck with a database file which i cant use and whatsapp is not at all concerned to help me with their system.
That really sounds like a bug. So maybe I should just keep the backups for now till they are old enough to be opened or WhatsApp fixes the problem.
I saw this fix on another thread and it works
Copy the files ("msgstore.db.crypt14", "msgstore-YYYY-MM-DD.1.db.crypt14"...) in "internal storages/WhatsApp/Databases" on your old Android smartphone
Create the path "sdcard/WhatsApp/Databases" on your new Android smartphone and paste the copied files there
Install Whatsapp via Google Play Store on your new smartphone
Open Whatsapp and verify your phone numer (you have to use the same number as on your old smartphone)
When it asked you to grant access to your files for Google drive, ignore the message and instead close the app (press □ and wipe Whatsapp away)
Activate airplane mode
Open Whatsapp again and wait until you see the message that scanning is taking longer than usual. Press "skip" (don't know the English word, I'm also using Whatsapp in german) and in the new message also press "skip"
You should now see your local backup, press "restore backup"
Disable airplane mode and activate Wifi
Ignore the message regarding Google Drive and, when your backup has been restored (look at the progress bar at the bottom in the background), close the app
Open Whatsapp again and you should see now your old and new messages alltogether!
Oddking said:
I saw this fix on another thread and it works
Copy the files ("msgstore.db.crypt14", "msgstore-YYYY-MM-DD.1.db.crypt14"...) in "internal storages/WhatsApp/Databases" on your old Android smartphone
Create the path "sdcard/WhatsApp/Databases" on your new Android smartphone and paste the copied files there
Install Whatsapp via Google Play Store on your new smartphone
Open Whatsapp and verify your phone numer (you have to use the same number as on your old smartphone)
When it asked you to grant access to your files for Google drive, ignore the message and instead close the app (press □ and wipe Whatsapp away)
Activate airplane mode
Open Whatsapp again and wait until you see the message that scanning is taking longer than usual. Press "skip" (don't know the English word, I'm also using Whatsapp in german) and in the new message also press "skip"
You should now see your local backup, press "restore backup"
Disable airplane mode and activate Wifi
Ignore the message regarding Google Drive and, when your backup has been restored (look at the progress bar at the bottom in the background), close the app
Open Whatsapp again and you should see now your old and new messages alltogether!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can u give the thread link to this fix?
hansdok123 said:
Can u give the thread link to this fix?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WhatsApp cannot detect local backup file
I did a backup for my messages then uninstalled WhatsApp. The next day, I reinstalled it for a quick thing and it restored locally without problems then I uninstalled it again. 2 weeks later, when I
stackoverflow.com
@sollo47..Did you tried any of the methods above.. My WhatsApp is stuck for verification for next 48 hrs and i wont be getting sms codes to verify.
I just wanted to chip in to say that I am hitting exactly this issue right now. I wonder if it's a new bug in WhatsApp because just a couple of months ago I migrated really smoothly from my old Huawei P10 Lite to Pixel 4a and everything was fine.
Now I'm trying to migrate my wife from her Honor 9 (very similar to the P10) to a second Pixel 4a and WhatApp is being a nightmare! There are successful local and Google Drive backups on the old handset and all the messages are still present on that one, but when the new one restores from Google Drive, it only seems to retrieve the media files and none of the Chat history.
I've copied over the latest msgstore.db.crypt12 file but WhatsApp didn't seem to detect it and went back to Google Drive again. Now I've exhausted my verification options for a couple of hours so will have to wait (seriously! I've used 2-3 SMS codes and about 3 phone verifications trying to sort this out!!)
One thing I've noticed, which I really hope isn't going to be a big problem is that when it creates its own new database when restoring from Google Drive it's got a `crypt14` extension.
When I'm able to retry the verification I am going to try as above and put it into flight mode before attempting a restore so that it is forced to look at the local files for options.
Every other App on the damn planet includes menu options for both Backup and Restore, so what does WhatsApp only have Backup and make it damn near impossible to do a proper restore. :-(
I'll update with any progress.
Well... I'm no further forward :-(
I tried downgrading the App to 2.21.8.17 and then following these instructions: https://stackoverflow.com/a/67756993/4915304
By putting the phone into flight mode and skipping the internet checks the application _did_ then discover a local backup file however it then failed to Restore it :-(
There's a possiblity this failure was my fault... I've discovered that on my wife's phone there's an old Directory from 2020 containin backups, and then the external SD card has more recent ones... I'd accidentally copied the wrong ones, which I realised when it offered to restore the newest backup from nearly a year ago :-( So before accepting, I thought I'd try my luck and I replaced the msgstore.db.crypt12 via adb push to be the up-to-date one. I was hoping that it might not care. The reason for it failing was not displayed but now there's no option to restore unless I reset the app, which means waiting another 4+ hours before they'll give me a new verification code :-(
I also tried purchasing WonderShare MobileTrans as it claimed to be the only option to enable restoration of messages without reinstalling/resetting the installed application. Unfortunately that's of no use to me because it required the Source Phone to have WhatApp verified and active in order to capture the backup that it needs! Under the hood it's entirely reliant upon 'adb' access to the phone and I'm sceptical as to whether it will even work with the newer versions of WhatsApp.
On both the Android 8 source phone and A11 destination phone, it pops up with a warning that the application was built for an older version of Android and might not work ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm sooooo annoyed about this now. If it wasn't for the fact that so many friend and family are only using WhatsApp I'd uninstall it now and use something more open instead.
I had the same problem yesterday! Spent ALL DAY trying to restore my WhatsApp local backup (I've done it before a million times and no problems).
Looks like there is a problem with the latest version (2.21.10.16) restoring local backups.
I downloaded an older version apk (WhatsApp Messenger 2.21.6.17 from apkmirror) and copied to my internal storage.
Went through the normal process of instaling and verifying my number... IT FOUND MY LOCAL BACKUP!!!!
I thought I had lost all my chats from the last 4 years or so!
Try it and good luck!
@groovy909 and all others. Many thanks for help and all the hints here. After 24 hours of using hating speak, I was able to restore least 2 years old back up.
- the downgrade of Facebook Whats-app helped and I have least something.
Many thank for awesome community and please keep the great work.
sollo477 said:
Hello dear xda users,
I wanted to transfer my WhatsApp to a new phone. I have created a local backup and transferred it to the new phone. Though WhatsApp doesn't want to recognize it and just prompts me for the google drive backup. The number stayed the same and in the past I never had problems with that. The same things happens on my old phone. So now I have all the data, but I cannot use it. It would be sad for me to lose all my chatlogs (6 years). So I wanted to decrypt the database with the help of https://andreas-mausch.de/whatsapp-viewer/. Though I haven't found a recent and decent manual on how to get the WhatsApp Encryption Key from the newest app version and newest Android (crypt 14). I can root my phone if necessary. So if someone knows how to do that, may you please provide a manual or point me in the right direction?
Kind regards,
sollo477
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My suggestion is to root your phone...it's way much easier to get the key.
Concerning whatsapp-viewer...I suggest you another parser for crypting/decrypting/viewing whatsapp databases: https://github.com/B16f00t/whapa
It works very nicely...one you have the key of course.
L
Anybody can decrypt msgstore.db.crypt14 ???
Hey guys, I was very busy the last few month and couldn't afford to lock myself out of WhatsApp again due to the limitation on the 2FA. So I have tried it as well with an older WhatsApp version from February 2021 and it still didn't work. I will go for the solution of rooting my phone once get the key and then unroot it again. Then I can use the offered Whapa Extractor to extract the old backup. Although since I can't merge the new database with the old one I will just keep the encrypted old database one for references. It's sad and I wish there would be another solution, since I am now forced to use google drive to backup my data for the future.
Unless you know a better solution to backup Whatsapp locally and can guarantee that a restore will be possible in the future. I would even pay for that.
Certainly, titaniumbackup is the best option.
VD171 said:
Certainly, titaniumbackup is the best option.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does it also work when I restore it to a different android phone?
First of all I know I'm really stupid for doing this, I blame sleep deprivation.
2 days ago I imported all the photos from my z flip 3 to my ipad. After completing the import I used the option at the end of the import to delete off the phone. Found out tonight that the imported photos were only at ~400x400px.
Now I can't find the photos anywhere on the phone.
I have checked the recycle bin/trash in the photos and files apps but there is nothing in there. I have also tried Tensorshare Ultdata recovery, but no luck with that either. https://www.tenorshare.com/products/android-data-recovery.html
Would it be worth rooting the device to allow for a deeper scan of the file system, the phone is completely stock currently. If not is there anything else I can try or should I take it to a data recovery company?
Thank you taking the time to read and for any assistance you can share.
ghostgundam742 said:
First of all I know I'm really stupid for doing this, I blame sleep deprivation.
2 days ago I imported all the photos from my z flip 3 to my ipad. After completing the import I used the option at the end of the import to delete off the phone. Found out tonight that the imported photos were only at ~400x400px.
Now I can't find the photos anywhere on the phone.
I have checked the recycle bin/trash in the photos and files apps but there is nothing in there. I have also tried Tensorshare Ultdata recovery, but no luck with that either. https://www.tenorshare.com/products/android-data-recovery.html
Would it be worth rooting the device to allow for a deeper scan of the file system, the phone is completely stock currently. If not is there anything else I can try or should I take it to a data recovery company?
Thank you taking the time to read and for any assistance you can share.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
rooting it would format data, which in turn would generate new encryption key when you boot next time so you would be in even more of a mess sadly, if you didnt have online backup taking it to data recovery company might be your best choice
Thank you very much for the reply and advice, I dived a bit deeper and it turned out that the import was successful, there was a duplicate thumbnail image that was showing first.
Sounds like you solved it, but having gone through some fun data loss in the past, I wanted to leave this here for posterity.
If you need to recover data, do not root. Do not reboot. Do not delete or add anything unnecessary. The best results come from doing the least. When an image is deleted, it is similar to tearing up a physical photo and throwing it in the trash. The data still exists, but can be fragmented. The more you do, the more likely some or all of that data will be overwritten and become unrecoverable.
After searching through about 100 different recovery programs, I had the best results with https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.defianttech.diskdigger
It is the equivalent of the recovery programs for a computer, so it will show you thumbnails from that Facebook account of the ex you stalked 6 months ago in the results. It will also find almost anything that was deleted through normal means. Last time I used it personally was a couple years ago, but the reviews seem to imply it is still pretty effective.
Similar to what you described, you will also end up with a lot of thumbnails and previews. The easiest way to handle that is to run all of it through https://dupeguru.voltaicideas.net/ with the Picture option and the setting to "Match pictures of different dimensions" enabled. This will group all of the thumbnails and the originals to let you get rid of the junk.
Disclaimer: This is only personal preferences. I am a professional, but both apps listed in this post were downloaded free and used without any premium or paid features. This is not a sponsored suggestion.