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Retrieve Stored SMS from SD Card

  • 06-12-2011 8:56pm
    #1
    JaneLane
    Registered Users Posts: 85 ✭✭


    This will need some explaining...

    I had a Samsung Europa phone (my first android) and one day out of nowhere it decided to go haywire and deleted all of my messages, call logs and generally started acting funny. As you can imagine this was quite traumatic as I had a lot of important text messages on there! Heavily dependent on my phone, I bought a new one, this time the Samsung Galaxy Y Pro. (Notice the cheap - entry phones here! tongue.gif)

    While my Europa was still working, I did a back up using Safe Backup and Mobile Backup 2 (can't be too careful!). Having little faith, I assumed all of the previous messages were gone forever but after setting up my new phone and noticing the lack of space on the SD card, I decided to investigate.

    I found a LOST.DIR folder which I did some research on and deleted that. However there is a folder entitled 'private'. A sub folder of this is called '1000484b'. Inside this again there is a folder called 'Mail2'. Clicked it and low and behold there are a lot of DATA files and after viewing them in Notepad (although surrounded by symbols) I discovered that they were my old SMS messages!

    So to get to the point (finally!!!), is there any way that I can have these messages displayed on my new phone (Galaxy Y Pro), either saved on the SD or the internal phone memory? I'd sacrafice space for apps to have these messages back, thats how important they are! biggrin.gif

    Any information you have would be very helpful!

    Thanks! :)


Comments

  • #2
    GreenWolfe
    Registered Users Posts: 1,731 ✭✭✭GreenWolfe


    JaneLane wrote: »
    This will need some explaining...
    While my Europa was still working, I did a back up using Safe Backup and Mobile Backup 2 (can't be too careful!). Having little faith, I assumed all of the previous messages were gone forever but after setting up my new phone and noticing the lack of space on the SD card, I decided to investigate.

    I tried Mobile Backup II on my Wildfire. What happened when you tried to restore them? My SMS'es (the few I had on it, I don't use it much) were stored on the root of the SD card (/mnt/sdcard) in "Backup-SMS.txt". Safe Backup produces the DATA files. In my case these files and directory structures was placed in a directory on the root of the SD card called "2011.12.07-3_10_45" (changing for date and time when backup was carried out).

    Could you clear up some details for me? Just for me to be sure, did you use the same SD card in the Europa as in the Galaxy Y?

    In any case, you seem to have DATA files so I'll go with Safe Backup. The structure on my phone is as follows -

    /mnt/sdcard/2011.12.07-3_10_45
    /mnt/sdcard/2011.12.07-3_10_45/Call Log
    /mnt/sdcard/2011.12.07-3_10_45/Contacts
    /mnt/sdcard/2011.12.07-3_10_45/SMS
    /mnt/sdcard/2011.12.07-3_10_45/.nomedia
    /mnt/sdcard/2011.12.07-3_10_45/backupinfo

    in Call Log
    /......./calls (this is a file, not a directory)

    in Contacts
    /......./contacts (this is a file, not a directory)

    in SMS
    /......./data (this is a file, not a directory)

    All I can suggest you can do is making sure your data for Safe Backup is in this format, and trying to restore using Safe Backup.

    For Mobile Backup II, I suggest you make sure the SMS backup text file is in the root of the SD card and try to restore using Mobile Backup II.


  • #3
    JaneLane
    Registered Users Posts: 85 ✭✭JaneLane


    That's really helpful, thank you! :) I'll give it a go and see how I get on, thanks again!


  • #4
    zing
    Registered Users Posts: 2,095 ✭✭✭zing


    While not much help in getting your old/current messages back now you might want to look at something like SMS Backup+ going forward (https://market.android.com/details?id=com.zegoggles.smssync&feature=search_result&pli=1). Backs up all your SMS messages & Call log into folders within gmail. I switched phones recently and had all my messages, etc.. in place on the new phone before I switched my SIM card into the new phone. Very handy.


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