When you erase a file on Android device, it is not actually deleted. It is still present on the internal disk but inaccessible to the system. Fortunately, plenty of utilities are available to recover such deleted files.
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When you delete a file by mistake under Android, there are many ways to recover it. We will see an example with a photography.
Files are not really erased
What happens in practice is that the file is no longer listed by android as a file accessible from a application such as Gallery (Photos and Videos) or Play Music (music tracks).
Files accessible by the user are listed by the Android system in a file allocation table. When the file is erased, it is the index pointing to the location of this file on the storage medium that is erased or moved from the table. The processor is therefore no longer able to locate said file. However, it is still present on the storage medium and can therefore be recovered by various tools.
The only restriction: as soon as Android knows that a file has been “deleted” (in other words, that it is no longer listed in its file allocation table), it is able to recover the corresponding space to store other files. However, if you intervene within a reasonably short time after such an erasure, or if you have used your tablet little, chances are that the erased file is still there.
A large number of tools available, with more or less extensive capabilities
There are a lot of tools to restore deleted files on Android. These applications bypass system restrictions and thus can access parts of the storage memory that are not accessible from the device interface.
The easiest way is to go to the Play store and type a query such as “Recover Deleted File”.
In this case, we installed on the test Android tablet the 1D application proposed here: Recover deleted file / File recovery, App Manager and Phone Cleaner.
Launch this application and choose “Restore Now”.
Recovery of deleted photos
Warning: since it is free, the application we have chosen displays many sometimes misleading advertising panels and you just have to ignore them one by one by clicking on the cross or by clicking on the Close button.
We are offered here to restore two types of files: photos or videos. If you want to recover more diverse file types, you will probably need to use a paid app such as TenorShare UltData for Android, GT Recovery or Droid Kitor advanced utilities for Android.
In this case, we want to recover a deleted photograph and therefore choose “Search for deleted photos”.
The application displays the various photo files deleted but still present in the storage memory. Select the ones you want to recover and then click “Restore Now”. As you can see, these photographs are accessible in the Gallery in the Others album.
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