SD Card from phone - missing photos.

ItHurtsWhenIP

Hi folks - A neighbour came to me with his old phone (Sony Xperia) which had been acting the maggot a bit recently, so he had gotten a replacement (Samsung I think). When he was checking his old phone before shutting it down, he went looking for the photos that he was sure were on there but he couldn't find them (there were a few of his kid that he was now very worried about losing).

Of course there are no backups and he wasn't using Google Photos or any other cloudy service :rolleyes:.

So he came to me and I took out the SD card and put it in my laptop and hit the SD card with TestDisk, PhotoRec and Recuva. They all only recovered a couple of pictures (and none were what he was looking for). TestDisk and PhotoRec also recovered nearly 400 xml files, about half of which were 1KB and the other half 11KB.

The 1KB files all seem to contain (I've not opened them all, but a large random selection):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<devices>
   <version>1.0</version>
   <device>
      <CustomerID>26</CustomerID>
      <store name="Vodafone"
             url="http://content.ftmd.sonynetservices.com/IE/en/web/static/node51_CCIE_LCen.html">
         <launchstoreexternally>true</launchstoreexternally>
      </store>
   </device>
</devices>

The 11KB files seemed to be like settings ... here is a snippet:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<devices>
  <version>PC10</version>
  <Revision-version>4</Revision-version>
  <device>
  <identification>
    <model>D2203</model>
    <marketingname>Xperia&#8482; smartphone</marketingname>
    <vendor>Sony</vendor>
    <brand>Xperia</brand>
    <typeID>PM-0380-BV</typeID>
    <class>Phone/Android</class>
  </identification>
  <storage>
    <type>CARD</type>
    <max-full>90</max-full>
  </storage>
  <display index="0">
    <height unit="pixels">480</height>
    <width unit="pixels">854</width>
    <colors>268288</colors>
  </display>
  <image>
    <format id="JPEG" preferred="true">
      <maxheight>5120</maxheight>
      <maxwidth>5120</maxwidth>
      <extension>jpg</extension>
      <extension>jpeg</extension>
      <mime-type>image/jpeg</mime-type>
      <mime-type>image/jpeg</mime-type>
    </format>
    <format id="BMP" preferred="false">
      <extension>bmp</extension>
      <mime-type>image/bmp</mime-type>
    </format>
    <format id="GIF" preferred="false">
      <extension>gif</extension>
      <mime-type>image/gif</mime-type>
    </format>
    <format id="PNG" preferred="false">
      <extension>png</extension>
      <mime-type>image/png</mime-type>
    </format>
  </image>
  <audio>
    <format id="AMR" preferred="false">
      <extension>3gp</extension>
      <mime-type>audio/amr</mime-type>
    </format>
    <format id="AMR-WB" preferred="false">
      <extension>3gp</extension>
      <mime-type>audio/amr-wb</mime-type>
    </format>	
    <format id="WAV" preferred="false">
      <extension>wav</extension>
      <mime-type>audio/x-wav</mime-type>
    </format>
    <format id="MP3" preferred="false">
      <extension>mp3</extension>
      <mime-type>audio/mpeg</mime-type>
    </format>
    <format id="MP4" preferred="true">
      <extension>mp4</extension>
      <mime-type>audio/mp4</mime-type>
    </format>
    <format id="MIDI" preferred="false">
      <extension>mid</extension>
      <extension>midi</extension>
      <mime-type>audio/midi</mime-type>
      <mime-type>audio/midi</mime-type>
    </format>
    <format id="3GPP" preferred="false">
      <extension>3gp</extension>
      <mime-type>audio/3gpp</mime-type>
    </format>
    <format id="m4a" preferred="false">
      <extension>m4a</extension>
      <mime-type>audio/mp4</mime-type>
    </format>
    <format id="flac" preferred="false">
      <extension>flac</extension>
      <mime-type>audio/flac</mime-type>
    </format>
    <format id="ogg" preferred="false">
      <extension>ogg</extension>
      <mime-type>audio/ogg</mime-type>
    </format>
  </audio>
...

I checked the phone memory as well and the only photos recoverable from there were cached from apps (Facebook profile pics and the like). He was certain that the photos he had were on the memory card.

I'm also not certain, but he may have inserted the SD card into his new phone. This wouldn't have caused the Samsung to ask if he wanted to format it or anything - would it?

If those programs couldn't recover the files, are they a lost cause? A data recovery service would be out of this price range of this person.

Any thoughts?

ED E

Check the Sony again. The default location is often the internal storage even if theres an SD present.

If you use the expand internal memory feature (Added in marshmallow) it wipes it in order to span the volume onto it. Im not sure if Touchwiz will present this option to the user or not.

ItHurtsWhenIP

ED E wrote: »

Check the Sony again. The default location is often the internal storage even if theres an SD present.

If you use the expand internal memory feature (Added in marshmallow) it wipes it in order to span the volume onto it. Im not sure if Touchwiz will present this option to the user or not.

Got the phone again. It's KitKat and there is no expand memory options that I can see.

There's only 1.75GB of internal memory with 75MB free. The SD card is 7.39GB with 7.32GB free.

I presume it's a lost cause at this point? As I said a data recovery outfit would be beyond his means.