Database Info

[Q] PANIC

If I break forum etiquette in some way please excuse the lapse - this is my first post to any forum. Honestly, it's a bit intimidating but I'm more than a little desperate right now. Near panic would be a better description of my state.
My Droid Incredible is stuck in a continuous boot loop. 24-48 hours after downloading a sleep sound generating app (if this is relevant), I was trying to use a different app and a pop-up stated "internal error" and would not load the app. I tried another and same result. I tried to kill all running apps with advanced app killer and same result. I turned off the phone thinking that it would correct when turning it back on but no luck. Now it just power cycles in a continuous boot loop. There has been no solution through tech support or a store visit. I don't care about the phone. At this point I would like to strap it to a steak and throw it in a lion cage. I do care about the data its holding - none of which is backed up in any way. There is no sd card and no back-up in my gmail account. I need to try and rescue the following data: voice memos from the HTC app, notes from the 3bannana (catch notes) app, photos, videos, apps, bookmarks from the dolphin HD browser and the Android browser, pdf downloads, text messages, call log settings, etc.
I have tried to boot the phone with a sd card installed. I have tried to view the data from a Celebrite machine at the Verizon store - it sees the drive but not the data. I tried to get into a "safe mode" menu by depressing down volume+center click+menu. Nothing has worked.
Is there any desktop software (or any other solution) that would enable me to restore (rescue) the data from the phone while it is in this state?
If there isn't, please just make something up so I can continue for a while in a delusional state of hope and get over this gradually.
Thank you for your wisdom and mercy.

Kandinsky1 said:
If I break forum etiquette in some way please excuse the lapse - this is my first post to any forum. Honestly, it's a bit intimidating but I'm more than a little desperate right now. Near panic would be a better description of my state.
My Droid Incredible is stuck in a continuous boot loop. 24-48 hours after downloading a sleep sound generating app (if this is relevant), I was trying to use a different app and a pop-up stated "internal error" and would not load the app. I tried another and same result. I tried to kill all running apps with advanced app killer and same result. I turned off the phone thinking that it would correct when turning it back on but no luck. Now it just power cycles in a continuous boot loop. There has been no solution through tech support or a store visit. I don't care about the phone. At this point I would like to strap it to a steak and throw it in a lion cage. I do care about the data its holding - none of which is backed up in any way. There is no sd card and no back-up in my gmail account. I need to try and rescue the following data: voice memos from the HTC app, notes from the 3bannana (catch notes) app, photos, videos, apps, bookmarks from the dolphin HD browser and the Android browser, pdf downloads, text messages, call log settings, etc.
I have tried to boot the phone with a sd card installed. I have tried to view the data from a Celebrite machine at the Verizon store - it sees the drive but not the data. I tried to get into a "safe mode" menu by depressing down volume+center click+menu. Nothing has worked.
Is there any desktop software (or any other solution) that would enable me to restore (rescue) the data from the phone while it is in this state?
If there isn't, please just make something up so I can continue for a while in a delusional state of hope and get over this gradually.
Thank you for your wisdom and mercy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have a custom recovery image and the partitions aren't corrupt you should be able to recover everything with adb.
If you don't have a custom recovery then it might be impossible to recover anything.
Have you rooted the phone and installed a custom recovery?
With respect to backups - GMail for example is stored in the cloud - so the data on your phone is just a clone - you won't loose your mail - other apps I don't know, you'll have to check each.
If you can't get stable adb access you will need to research a factory reset for your phone which should fix it (but will wipe your data).

djmcnz said:
If you have a custom recovery image and the partitions aren't corrupt you should be able to recover everything with adb.
If you don't have a custom recovery then it might be impossible to recover anything.
Have you rooted the phone and installed a custom recovery?
With respect to backups - GMail for example is stored in the cloud - so the data on your phone is just a clone - you won't loose your mail - other apps I don't know, you'll have to check each.
If you can't get stable adb access you will need to research a factory reset for your phone which should fix it (but will wipe your data).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately, I have not rooted my droid, have no custom recovery image and don't even know what adb is. As you can tell, I am a complete novice - but a novice in serious trouble if I can't recover the data. When you say stable adb access, what do you mean?
I was hoping to find some type of desktop recovery software that may be able to recognize the drive on the phone and then view and copy the data. Is it possible that this might exist. By the way is there a more appropriate sub-forum to place this post?
Thanks for your help,
Caleb

Kandinsky1 said:
Unfortunately, I have not rooted my droid, have no custom recovery image and don't even know what adb is. As you can tell, I am a complete novice - but a novice in serious trouble if I can't recover the data. When you say stable adb access, what do you mean?
I was hoping to find some type of desktop recovery software that may be able to recognize the drive on the phone and then view and copy the data. Is it possible that this might exist. By the way is there a more appropriate sub-forum to place this post?
Thanks for your help,
Caleb
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol ADB is the Android Debugging Bridge - in layman's term, it's a way to gain terminal access to your phone and do several other things with your phone. Mostly for debugging, but can be used for these purposes if you're rooted/installed a custom recovery.
That said, it would be at this point in time, virtually impossible to save your data that hasn't been backed up. Even if you had root, this might have been a bit more accomplishable (though usually a custom recovery never hurt ). If you're REALLY desperate, there might still be a way, though the chances of it working and providing good results is a mixed bag of results.
I'm assuming that if you didn't have an SD card in there in the first place that it has some built-in memory, right? Well, If not, then Catch notes would not have worked as it depends on an SD card to hold backups and (if i believe correctly) notes. Also, I'm assuming that you had some accounts set up on your phone (HTC/Google). If not, then I don't know how you've gone this long without it, but I'm almost positive you did have at least those two. In that case, the voice memos might be saved as well as the call log settings. Contacts might also be synced, so its more of the physical stuff we need to worry (texts/pdfs/bookmarks/pictures/videos)
Now, there are ways to recover using a computer. It all requires that you get your phone to work again (don't throw it to the lions yet!) So, we'll need to try and unbrick it. Follow the instructions here to try and get your phone back into factory state. It's true this will delete all your data, but as you are now, you have even less of a chance of recovering it.
From here, you're going to just skip past the setups and everything. After that, you're going to mount the phone as a disk drive. Now, this is where things can either go really good or really bad for you.
Get a recovery software for Windows, Linux, or Mac here. I honestly prefer Recuva as it has worked well for me in the past and this other program I had to pay for (can't remember the name. Search google and you might find it ;P), but Recuva should serve these purposes well.
The reason why these things work very inconsistently is that when you delete stuff in your phone/computer, they don't actually get "deleted". Rather, they are flagged as "not needed" and is left there until the phone/computer needs more space. It'll search out any flags, then overwrite them. In our case, that will work for and against us. Since we have to rewrite about 1 GB of data to reinstall the system (or was it +- 500 MBs?) we'll have to assume that about that much will be lost to us. That's why usually videos are unrecoverable. They are large and usually take up the most space, so they will be hard to recover if anything.
However, this works out for us as we can recover things like texts, contacts, your color note files, bookmarks, pictures, and whatever else you can dream of with a very high success rate. This is because they are small enough and if they don't get touched, you can probably get them in their original form. However, if parts of it is overwritten (i.e. texts, video) , you'll know cause the texts will have funky characters that dont make sense and the video wont load. Use this to your advantage and recover only small things first. Rule of thumb: if its small and seen by the software, most likely untouched. Grab these first.
I apologize for this really really long post. I just wanted to explain every part to you so you can understand the thinking behind why I'm asking you to do something as delete your precious data. However, like I stated earlier, there is almost 100% chance you won't get everything back and you could still possibly lose all your data should the software not see it. However, I feel this is much better than not having any chance at all and just staring at your phone waiting for it to grow brains and spit out the data in a conveniently-hidden SD card. So, I hope this works for you and if things go well, let me know! =]
~jojojohnson7410

In case hard reset didn't work...
You can follow the following section by clicking here:
How to revert to factory (stock, S-ON, no root):
Get S-ON by flashing THIS FILE (218.5kb) via recovery the same way you would flash a ROM. If you're not on the stock radio, you'll first need to FLASH THE STOCK RADIO. If you don't know how to do this, then you've never flashed off the stock radio, so you're good.
Revert your phone back to the stock, unrooted ROM. You have two options.
Option 1: Download HTC Sync and run the RUU. You can download the RUU HERE (180MB).
Option 2: Download THIS FILE (172.5MB) and place it on the root of your SD card. Reboot your phone into HBOOT (Bootloader, NOT RECOVERY!!!). Once the bootloader checks the image, it will ask you if you want to update. Select Yes and let the update run. After the phone reboots, you will have a stock, factory Droid Incredible running the November update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's all the way at the top. Do this only if the hard reset didn't work. If you need help using this or encounter any problems, let me know =] (oh, PM me cause sometimes I forget to check >.>)
~jojojohnson7410

Android lacks the security

I read somewhere that Android keeps your personal data even after hard resetting the phone as it only delete the path of files nd original files are remain untouched. I just want to know if it is true or not..
Sent from my A110Q using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Isn't that true for just about every storage device? I think the issue is when you erase the storage media, traces of the files can be recovered from the storage. This is true for your phone and also your personal computer. If you formatted your hard drive, someone could still use a data recovery to recover your data. Short of totally destroying your physical media, there may be no 100% way of erasing all data. The realistic goal would be erasing the data to the point where an average person can't recover it.
Based on what I read from the article, the issue is that if you erase your phone, the data can still be recovered from the phone using off-the shelve tool. Apple is a bit better since later generation of iphone handles encryption better. If you want to avoid this situation, look into an android phone with encryption features.
Paul

Check the settings, you might have the option to encrypt your data in there. Takes around an hour if your device is fairly new.

Glompish said:
Check the settings, you might have the option to encrypt your data in there. Takes around an hour if your device is fairly new.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good way of making sure your 'deleted' files, if they're still there, are inacessable.
But can make backup and recovery a real *****....

paul.siu said:
Isn't that true for just about every storage device? I think the issue is when you erase the storage media, traces of the files can be recovered from the storage. This is true for your phone and also your personal computer. If you formatted your hard drive, someone could still use a data recovery to recover your data. Short of totally destroying your physical media, there may be no 100% way of erasing all data. The realistic goal would be erasing the data to the point where an average person can't recover it.
Based on what I read from the article, the issue is that if you erase your phone, the data can still be recovered from the phone using off-the shelve tool. Apple is a bit better since later generation of iphone handles encryption better. If you want to avoid this situation, look into an android phone with encryption features.
Paul
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes some of the data can be recovered but that is only as long as it has not been over written. The easiest thing to do is to wipe the device and use a Stock rom flash file to over write the system a few times formatting all partitions.

After hard-reset, data will be erased from device.
But, if your data was synchronized with Google cloud services, they will remain alive after Android hard-reset.

All user data have been lost after hard reset

I imagine that after a factory reset, all information stored on the device previously will be erased, however, i believe that information synced with email accounts or applications will be saved

A factory reset is theoretically the best way to clear data and should work for most phones, see Settings > Backup & reset > Factory data reset. However, a company called Avast Software did a study recently and found they were able to recover photos from 20 handsets bought on Ebay. They say the owners did a factory reset but I'm a bit skeptical that maybe they claimed to but didn't.
Marc

i think the same thingh.

google keeps all of our information in its database... we are not its user but just product...

As zelendel said, data can be recovered after a factory reset. Have a look at this thread 'Deleting data' part.

Question about Data recovery prevention in Nexus 5

Hello,
I have decided to replace my nexus 5 because it has developed dead pixels. But i have my personal data like videos, photos and other sensitive information on the device. After doing some research I've realized that its very easy to recover data even after Factory Resetting the N5 or formatting in recovery with help of Disk Digger and other similar sorta apps.
So my question is how will i be able to prevent the recovery of my data if Google employee decides to recover it ? [Because on phone the customer care executive told me my phone will go through a thorough inspection]
I don't want my data to be recovered.
Please suggest me a surefire way to prevent the recovery of my data on nexus device.
PS: Nexus is rooted and running on Android L dev preview

Data is recovered because data is never deleted. It just empties the index for the data in the file system (more details on that in my n5 data loss and recovery thread via signature)
Data is only gone for ever when you actually overwrite it.
So factory reset then put say 12 GB of video on there. That will overwrite old data. Then delete that.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

rootSU said:
Data is recovered because data is never deleted. It just empties the index for the data in the file system (more details on that in my n5 data loss and recovery thread via signature)
Data is only gone for ever when you actually overwrite it.
So factory reset then put say 12 GB of video on there. That will overwrite old data. Then delete that.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thank you so much. I just need a little clarification about overwriting the data, Do i need to overwrite and delete data just once or should i do it several times to be completely sure?

Theoretically, there is no surefire method of deletion short of physical destruction of the storage medium. But overwriting the data, even once, will make it too costly and difficult for most people to even bother.

rachel_taylor said:
thank you so much. I just need a little clarification about overwriting the data, Do i need to overwrite and delete data just once or should i do it several times to be completely sure?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When you write a file to your device, it is written to a block. Let's say you write a file to block 1 then another to block 2. The file system knows which file is in block 1 and 2. When you open the file, the file system tells the is where the file is and retrieves it. If you delete the file in block 1 and 2, the data remains but the file system forgets ota location so it appears gone. Most data recovery methods involve scanning the actual block s and record what it finds to allow access.
If you then write a file to block 1, what used to be there is gone. Standard recovery methods cannot retrieve it.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Wakamatsu said:
Theoretically, there is no surefire method of deletion short of physical destruction of the storage medium. But overwriting the data, even once, will make it too costly and difficult for most people to even bother.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So if i erase (format) and fill up the storage with random data like 10-15 times it would be impossible to restore even for a expert? right?
Im sorry ive become really paranoid about this

rachel_taylor said:
So if i erase (format) and fill up the storage with random data like 10-15 times it would be impossible to restore even for a expert? right?
Im sorry ive become really paranoid about this
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not impossible per se, but it becomes prohibitively expensive (in terms of time and cost) to do so. You don't need to do it 10-15 times though...3 to 5 should be sufficient (and I'm talking really paranoid here, 3 to 5).

rachel_taylor said:
So if i erase (format) and fill up the storage with random data like 10-15 times it would be impossible to restore even for a expert? right?
Im sorry ive become really paranoid about this
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If a person had a million dollars, he could rent electron microscope time and have a trained tech scan your flash media sector by sector and hope to get something useful. I just say, if a dude wants to spend that kind of money to find out the PIN to my bank account with next month's rent in it, he can have at it.
In short, a person has to be SURE that it's worth it or he won't even bother.

Jeez.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Best way to securly wipe s10+ to sell?

I googled this and from what i read, so long as i log out of all services and set my lock screen to none, I then make sure that strong encryption is enabled then do a reset and this way it secure wipes?
Is this correct or am i best doing something else?
James

As I know, the best way to securly wipe s10+ to sell is using Samsung data eraser software. Such software can help us wipe all personal info on your S10+ phone without recovery. Then you can sell it without data leaked. Hope this will be your help.

The main way that data is stolen from wiped phones is because people fail to actually wipe them - as long as Strong Encryption on your S10 overwrites your entire storage then your data (Probably) no longer exists on that phone. Unless they can find the encryption key, but that would (should) be wiped on factory reset.
When you delete data, it isn't actually deleted, it's memory region is just marked as free real estate for new data to be written. Once it's replaced it's gone, otherwise its recoverable. Encryption should do the trick, as the data in memory marked as open will be scrambled without the key.
If you're feeling particularly paranoid however, you can also load dummy data onto your phone for an extra layer of protection, there are several tools for doing this, some of which are on the play store, before wiping it a second time.
Good luck with the sale!
(EDIT: Nazhais suggestion popped up as I was writing, but yes, data erasing software is probably the way to go.)

Samsung Data Recovery

Hello,
I wanted to know if there is any way to recover old data from a wiped phone (pictures, notes, Whatsapp data). My phone had a max incorrect attempt limit which would wipe the phone data if reached. I tried to use my backup that I had but Google is requiring my old PIN code for my lock screen. I can't remember the PIN, as far as Whatsapp is concerned, apparently the backup did not save to Google drive ( I think it may have been set to save locally). Any help would be appreciated!

D4rkSh4dow said:
Hello,
I wanted to know if there is any way to recover old data from a wiped phone (pictures, notes, Whatsapp data). My phone had a max incorrect attempt limit which would wipe the phone data if reached. I tried to use my backup that I had but Google is requiring my old PIN code for my lock screen. I can't remember the PIN, as far as Whatsapp is concerned, apparently the backup did not save to Google drive ( I think it may have been set to save locally). Any help would be appreciated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am trying to help where I just googled for what the answer might be and there seems to be a bunch of ways to recover deleted data (although I'm sure the level of success depends on how well it was deleted and wiped clean and overwritten multiple times with all zeroes, etc.).
Here are some of those hits which "might" help (you'll have to test them).
How to retrieve lost files on Android: Your guide to Android data recovery​
Why It’s So Hard to Recover Deleted Data on Android and What to Do About It​
The ultimate Android data recovery guide​
Hope this helps.