Recovering Data from your Android Smartphone
An Android smartphone is essentially a miniature computer with a memory card. Its file storage and deletion methods are similar to a multitude of other storage devices. Data loss on your smartphone can occur for a variety of reasons. The file system can become corrupted or the system formatted, or you may have hit the delete key by accident. When you delete a file from your Android smartphone, you have essentially told the miniature computer to consider the space that is holding your files to now be “free space”. You see, there is a big difference between wiping out the file and designating it as free space. Your file is actually still on your smartphone. Now you just need some help to access and restore the file.  
 
  Turn the smartphone off as soon as you realize you have deleted the file. Because the miniature computer has designated the file space on the memory card as free space, any new reading or writing activity by the computer will overwrite the previous files stored here. When the phone is turned off, no reading or writing activity will take place. Now that you have completed the first and most important step, you can work toward retrieving those files with a little bit less stress.

RECOVERING FILES FROM THE INTERNAL MEMORY

To begin the recovery process, you will need the help of a file recovery program to help you locate and restore the files. This program should be installed on your computer, not onto the phone. To recover the files you must first connect your Android smartphone to the computer on which the software has been installed. Once the phone is connected to the computer, you can begin the process.
Next, launch the recovery program and have it scan for the deleted files. Once the scan has been completed, the recovery program will list the folders and files found. You can choose which files to recover from here and save the files to another storage device or onto the computer.
If the program's search for your files turns up empty handed, you have one more course of action left to find those files. You see, every file has a particular digital file extension. Examples of these include .jpg, .gif, and .pdf. Many high quality recovery programs come with the ability to specify a search for a particular file extension. This also allows you to search for less common extensions that may not be included in the first general scan. Specify the types of file extensions you wish to search for and then let the program complete its scan one more time. As before, the program will display the files and folders found, allowing you to pick and choose which files you would like to restore.

RECOVERING FILES FROM THE SD CARD

Recovering music, photo and video files from your smartphone follows a similar course to restoring the files from the internal memory. The only difference is the undelete tool is used to search the phone’s SD card instead for the particular file types stored on the card.
There are a multitude of recovery programs available on the market, so how do you choose the right one for you? Recovery programs, such as those offered by R-Tools allow you to try out the program in Demo mode to see just how effective it will be at recovering the deleted files from your smartphone. R-Tools undelete programs can recover files from the internal memory as well as video, photo and audio files from your memory card. Other recovery programs, such as Stellar Photo Recovery allow you to recover photos, videos and music files from an Android smartphone, but this one does not offer a free demo to let you try out its effectiveness for your file loss.
That wasn’t so difficult, right? Now that you have safely recovered those important files, it is time to take a few preventative measures to make sure you don’t end up having to restore your files again. Start backing up those files and storing them on another device so you never have to worry again - turn it into a regular routine to back up your files each day or week and all of your important files will stay with you for as long as you like.
 

 

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