How to recover lost data on Android (rooted or not)

Who amongst us hasn't accidentally deleted photos or videos without realizing it? No need to panic: there are ways to recover your data whether you're rooted or not. Time is always of the essence though: do not save anything else to your device until you attempt recovery. Turn off your Wi-Fi and 3G/4G connection so no automatic updates occur and overwrite your data before you've had a chance to get your lost files back.

code — Lost data is only really lost if you don't try to get it back first. / © Android

If you are NOT ROOTED

If you don't know what this means, you are most likely not rooted

The first thing to do is to connect the phone memory (internal or external) as a Mass Storage Device to your computer, ie, via USB. Although you can connect your Android directly, you can also use a Micro SD Card Adapter to attach your microSD via USB. If external memory is the issue, I'd recommend an adapter because not all Android phones manage memory in the same way and the cleaner the connection between your precious data and the recovery, the better.

Then download Recuva (you can use either the paid or free version), which is a program to recover files. You can also use other programs, like Coolmuster or Wondershare Dr. Fone (which requires root), but Recuva is a great free tool.

AndroidPIT Recuva Scanning — Watching your lost files reappear is as close a thing to pure joy as is humanly possible. / © Piriform

Note: Normally, for most of these programs to work, your memory must be formatted as FAT32, NTFS or similar. If your memory card format is not recognized for some reason, you can just do a complete copy of its contents to your computer, reformat the memory card as FAT32 and then dump the copied files back on it and continue the process.

When you run Recuva, the first thing to do is select the type of file you want to recover: Pictures, Videos, Music, Documents, etc. The option to restore from a specific location is available and you can even set a specific folder to attempt recovery from. Note that Recuva will only display locations it can actually recover data from. Just follow the prompts in the program.

AndroidPIT Recuva File Type — Recuva will let you search for specific file types that you may have deleted. / © Piriform

Important: When you finish recovering your deleted files try to save them on a different device from the one on which they were originally lost: this can sometimes cause conflicts and damage recovery. So if you are recovering files from your smartphone, record them on the hard disk of the PC and then transfer them over later, once they're safe and sound.

If you have ROOT

Download Undelete.
The application is very simple. The first thing to do is to select the storage device from which you want to retrieve your data (can be internal or external memory).
Then you scan the selected device.
The process may take between 2 and 10 minutes, depending on your memory size and the amount of stored data.
When finished you will be presented with retrievable data in several tabs: Files, Pictures, Music, Videos, Documents and Files. Recovered data returns to its place of origin, ie wherever it was saved before they were lost.
This option may only work partially (if there is a problem with your memory). In that case, proceed to the Recuva steps above, or use Wondershare or another root recovery program.