Fred Langa answers: What is the best software to recover deleted Android files, by a PC?

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I can relate to that. If the deleted files are on a removable card, it’s easy. If they aren’t… not so easy. More great stuff from Fred Langa, over o
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Why not try to recover files in Android itself…
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.defianttech.diskdigger

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Microfix

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Well, any recovery solution for Android, like DiskDigger, by definition has to be somewhat limited … because Android’s filesystem layer is rather variable. Actually the entire mass storage subsystem is, because you can’t actually rely on it not having SSD TRIM active, for example. (Sure an eMMC is too dumb for that, but…) And then you get various kinds of ext* or f2fs or xfs or … and then there’s the encryption, which depending on version may be nonexistent, optional, mandatory, partial, or done on another layer…

So in the general case your best bet might be a Linux PC with a full forensics suite loaded, and then you’d do something like poke around with adb to bind the Android device’s /dev/block/dm-2 (for example) to a random filename on your PC, so you can copy it to a disk image file with dd or whatever.

Depending on model you might even succeed with copying the encrypted data and unlocking it in the image, it’s typically Linux’s dm-crypt after all… but settings will vary and you need the key too.

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Backup beats recovery every time. Any device can malfunction, and they usually do so at the point when your most critical files or photos have not been backed up recently. (Murphy’s Law of Technology.)

The best cloud solution to this possibility (losing access to files or data stored in an Android phone) is already available to anyone who has any Google accounts. You have Google Drive, and possibly a lot of storage space up there. With good organizing, this can become a backup repository for all sorts of data, photos, files and even non-DRM-limited video downloads from your phone.

With good planning, contacts and other phone data can also be backed up to the cloud. This is not set up to happen automatically on most Android phones, so you have to make sure you set it up yourself.

I also download my photos from the Google Drive to my Ubuntu Linux PC and back them up with my Linux data locally.

Android Backup is separate from Google Drive. But unlike iPhones, Android phones don’t automatically back up everything to the cloud by default. Belt and suspenders approach is always best.

-- rc primak

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I use Syncthing with a NAS at home and some PCs.  My phone/tablet syncs with the NAS every time they are on WiFi and sometime (while traveling) over data.  The NAS syncs to a PC just-in-case and I have Syncthing set to keep any changes for a month so that i can “undelete” or undo a change to a photo, file, whatever.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nutomic.syncthingandroid&hl=en_US

It is also great for syncing my car stereo (running Android) music files with my music collection each time I get home.  Anything I bought in Google Play gets copied to my stereo (saves data use and avoids music interruptions while driving).

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