Hi everyone,
I've encrypted my HTC One M8 and I thought this would mean that plugging the phone in via USB would require a screen unlock. However I've just plugged my phone in to empty the internal storage and I can access all my photos/screenshots/camera data straight away..
I wanted to encrypt my phone to prevent a thief being able to see all of my photos in the event of a loss/theft. Why is this happening and is there any way to achieve this? Encryption seems pretty pointless if I can just see everything anyway..
Cheers guys.
My mistake, I realised I changed the screen lock settings so the device was unlocked when copying. Encryption works as expected.
Please can a mod delete at their soonest convenience, thanks!
Related
I have a real cry for help!
Somehow all my pictures disappeared from my Galaxy Nexus. My only possible explanation (since it could not have decided to delete them itself!) is that I must have been a complete idiot and last night when I thought I was deleting a video I had just taken I must deleted the camera directory itself. This is supported by the fact that there was no ‘camera’ directory when I looked this morning. I then took a new photo and the directory reappeared. I have plenty of experience with PC’s but I’m a newbie with smartphones. I figured if I don’t write any more files to the phone then most of the actual data should still be there so I hoped to do some kind of undelete.
I’ve done some research and it looks like the ‘feature’ of only connecting as an MTP device (rather than USB mass storage) is potentially a killer blow. Without an assigned drive letter it seems that none of the usual recovery programmes will recognise the phone.
In theory an alternative might be to take a complete image of the phone contents and somehow recover the data from here?
I am pretty desperate as I have five months of pictures/videos of my kids etc, and most of that data must still be on the phone – but how to get to it?
Finally – yes I am a complete plonker, I shouldn’t have made such a stupid mistake and I should have backed up the phone or the pictures. I have learned my lesson. But given that, is there anything I can do?
BTW - the phone came from 3 network (via a reseller) and I have not touched it with respect to unlocking/rooting etc. It is in the state I received it.
HELP please!
Thanks very much...........
I believe the MTP vs. USB Mass storage would be a driver thing. There are many different versions of drivers so its possible there are ones that will mount the phone with a drive letter. I can think of some other things to try (Boot into fastboot mode by turning phone off then powering on by holding power, volume up and volume down at the same time and holding till it vibrates). You could also try Disk Management under windows to see if you can assign a letter
In the future I highly recommend setting up a google account and using Google Photo/Instant Upload to keep a backup of your photos. You dont even have to sync anything else
Thanks for your suggestions, much appreciated.
I’ve now tried going into fastboot mode and connecting to PC but no joy – Windows recognises there is a device connected (usually ID’d as an OMAP4440) but can’t find a driver.
Disk Management also doesn’t show the Nexus as a drive and therefore won’t allow a Drive letter to be assigned.
Try these (obviously no guarantees and I havent used any personally)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fahrbot.apps.undelete
http://android-photo-recovery.com/tutorials/deleted-file-recovery-for-google-nexus-phones.html
EDIT: Found another:
http://www.wondershare.com/disk-utility/recover-deleted-photos-from-nexus-s-and-galaxy-nexus.html
Thanks again, I appreciate all suggestions. Yes I have come across these and unfortunately they don’t solve my issue. The last two are amongst those I’d seen reported as not working as they need a drive letter. I had installed both anyway but found that to be true (
The first requires root access which I don’t have. If I understand correctly, to root I’ll need to unlock the bootloader first, and unlocking will erase all the data anyway??
Unfortunately, you are out of luck. You cannot mount the storage on a GNex in USB Mass Storage mode, and I am pretty sure that none of the "undelete" programs that run in Android support ext4 (which is what our GNex internal storage is formatted).
If you are running 4.0.1 or 4.0.2, you can still get root access without losing your data (but not on 4.0.4), but I can't see how it will help you given what I mentioned above.
I am on 4.04 so sounds like I can't get root access without overwriting, can I roll back to 4.01/2 without overwriting the data? (sounds unlikely but I have to ask - I upgraded from 4.02 without losing data....).
If not, is there a way to get a data image without rooting? That way at least I have the data preserved if at some future point it becomes possible to do an undelete on Ext4 data??
Gavdroid said:
[snip]
can I roll back to 4.02/3 without overwriting the data?
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Click to collapse
Unfortunately no.
Gavdroid said:
If not, is there a way to get a data image without rooting? That way at least I have the data preserved if at some future point it becomes possible to do an undelete on Ext4 data??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe there are utilities to "do an undelete" on ext4. The problem is how to get access to the data image. I don't really know of any way to pull off the data partition of a GNex to your computer, but it may be possible.
Have a look at this thread. I think shaaXo managed to find a way for your computer to see the memory on the GNex and likely dump it (although it is not very user-friendly).
That sucks. If it's deleted, it's gone for good. Sorry, buddy.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA
Thanks very much I will go through that post and see where I get to!
Edit! - uh-oh, taking a quick look it seems you need to use CWM, which I take to be ClockworkMod, which I thought required the phone to be rooted to install it? And if I understand correctly, rooting requires an unlocked bootloader, which wipes your data??
I will take a deeper look in case I've misunderstood (very likely), but am I thinking clearly here?
Hello.
My HTC Touch Pro 2 encountered the following problem:
Additional to the PIN (for SIM-Card) I have also set a 4 digit PIN to lock the device, which is activated automatically after 5 minutes.
After accidentally deep discharge of the battery (forgot my phone in the drawer of my desk for over a week) and loading the battery afterwards, the phone refuses to unlock the device. The inputting device lock code, which is 100% correct, does not work anymore- no matter whether I type it on the touch screen or keyboard.
Even after several soft reset - not change. The PIN (for SIM-Card) works but the device-Lock PIN does not. No possibility to unlocked the device – it tells me always “entered code is wrong”. Even after connecting to a PC, the computer does not recognize the phone - so I cannot even read out the data of the phone via a computer.
On the phone are important data, photos, entries that I will not delete!
HTC has got - as usual – no idea of their own devices and the German support on the phone told me that I should buy myself a new cell phone - very helpful!
A hardware reset / reset of the device, I do not want to do otherwise the data all are gone.
Is there a way to circumvent/ bypass the device lock and hack the data in some way out my phone?
The emergency plan, which I do not want to try by now, would be a hardware reset and subsequent data recovery using the software "File Scavenger ®" This works very, very good with defective USB sticks and accidentally deleted computer hard disc drives (deleted system volume information etc.) . Unfortunately I have no idea what kind of memory, the HTC Touch Pro 2 uses (it's been no SD card inserted in the device).
And I do not know how the phone reset works - simple device reset witch clears memory only (which would not be that serious) or if the entire memory will be overwritten (which would be fatal).
Maybe someone has a solution and can help me, how to get my data out of my cell phone. Thank you!
If you have the data on the SD card, why worry? Photos, music, etc should all be on the SD card, not the phone itself.
Either way, I doubt you'll be able to recovery anything. Good luck.
If your data is on the sd card/sim card then I would pop it out and do a hard reset on the phone. Put it back in and hope for the best after the reset.
If your data is on the phone you are screwed. When you do a hard reset it will do lots of writing to the nand memory, and overwrite anything you might try to scan for data recovery.
I have never heard of anyone finding a way to get into the data on these phones when the pin didn't work. It is also the reason I never used that feature.
onairgraphics said:
(it's been no SD card inserted in the device).
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OP mentioned that he does not have a SD card inserted into the device. I think that is why he is so concerned!
Any updates there OP?
Hi,
Yesterday I lock my phone with a pattern so I can get more "safe". But now I forgotten the pattern and I don't have data or wifi connection turn on on the phone.
I read that the best option is install a new ROM without wipe data in order to I can recover all phone data (because don't have SD Card, only a virtual SD Card that I create previous). If I made a hard reset is this virtual card remains?
If I need a ROM, how can I copy it into the phone? Plugging the phone on computer I can't access data maybe because the debug option or mass device is turn off.
Any suggestion?
hap17 said:
Hi,
Yesterday I lock my phone with a pattern so I can get more "safe". But now I forgotten the pattern and I don't have data or wifi connection turn on on the phone.
I read that the best option is install a new ROM without wipe data in order to I can recover all phone data (because don't have SD Card, only a virtual SD Card that I create previous). If I made a hard reset is this virtual card remains?
If I need a ROM, how can I copy it into the phone? Plugging the phone on computer I can't access data maybe because the debug option or mass device is turn off.
Any suggestion?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i dunno, this story sounds fishy. You want to get past a lock screen that you dont know the pattern, you want to be sure u get all the data off it. it also cannot connect to any networks. sounds like its a stolen phone
What I'm telling is true and the phone wasn't stolen at all! I put a pattern that passes on all boarder points, but I don't remember where exactly point I started drag. I have more 3 attempts, but I now that after them, if I wrong I will need a solution.
After the final attempt a button will appear that says Forgot pattern? At that point you will need to enter the google account and password associated with that phone. This should close this topic. Of course if you do not know that info then we can safely assume this phone was found or stolen.
The phone is mine. The problem is that by default I have data and wifi turn off. If I can turn on of them on I will login into my google account, of course. If you know how, it will solve the problem.
open up the lock screen while it shows the pattern, hold down the power button and turn off airplane mode
Darunion said:
open up the lock screen while it shows the pattern, hold down the power button and turn off airplane mode
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The airplane mode is off. The problem is that I can't access the settings to turn on the data or wifi.
Your problem is quite unusual as very few ever turn off data AND wifi. You may have no choice but to call your carrier for help or to perform a hard reset and lose all data.
While updating to lollipop i accidentally relocked and unlocked the bootloader resulting in a full memory wipe but i had my college work on there so i really need to recover the data lost but upon connecting the phone to the pc it appears as "portable device" which is not detected by recovery tools as well as the android apps as the undeleter root couldn't recover the data i need so is there a way to
1- connect htc one m8 to the pc as usb storage (aka removable disk)
2- another way to recover files
Thanks in advance
The issue is that Android now mounts internal storage by MTP, as opposed to the old Mass USB storage format. So computer's can no longer read the memory like its a USB drive. I think at some point (probably not even for this phone) I saw a method to dump the files in order to perform a file recovery, but it was pretty complicated and looked like a PITA.
You can try some apps on the Play Store that claim to recover files (using the phone itself, not a computer). But I've never used any, can't vouch for them, and don't know if they really work. Also keep in mind, the more you use the phone, the higher the likelihood that the files you want will be overwritten by other data.
Good luck. But in the future you have to remember to backup important personal data before making any major changes or mods to the device. I never fail to be disappointed at how many folks never bother to backup their important data; than freak out about it once its lost. Most of the time, at that point its too late. You should have been backing it up all along. If its important to you, back it up.
Well sir thank ypu for your help i don't think ill be able not to use the phone all that long as well as im now facing that the wifi wont open which is really annoying
Hi! So I'm currently having issues with my HTC One m8 as it started acting up recently when I was taking photos, it would crash and reset and continue this process if I opened more than two applications open. All of a sudden it crashed while I tried to back all my photos online and then would no longer switch on past the htc boot screen and would freeze in a bootloop. Ever since I have been unable to reach the normal screen of my phone to try and retrieve photos. In terms of resetting the phone manually that's easily doable and getting on to the recovery settings is no problem.
I'm trying to avoid a hard reset, and been looking online and saw something about using Fastboot USB, which I have currently on my phone screen while plugged in to my computer. Is there a way I can retrieve photos directly/indirectly from this before hard resetting my phone? Or should I bring it to the shop?
Any help is super appreciated!
From a not so tech savvy student
Is the phone modified (TWRP installed, root)?
It is not yet rooted no, should I root it?
EWStudent2 said:
It is not yet rooted no, should I root it?
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Click to collapse
No, that wasn't the point of my question.
With a modded device, you can access storage in custom recovery. Or you can also adb pull files from internal storage (I believe). You can't do either of these, if the phone isn't modded.
And you can't unlock the bootloader, and root the phone at this point. Unlocking the bootloader by definition, wipes all data on the phone (for security).
You are sure the save location is internal storage, and not the removable SD if you have one (internal storage is default)? If it is on SD, it will not be wiped. Probably not the case, but just mentioning it, in the unlikely event it is the case.
Otherwise, I don't think there is any way to retrieve the photos, unfortunately. You should be backing up your data on a regular basis, not waiting for a disaster then trying to retrieve the data. This comment assumes that it's all your photos you are talking about (no backup was done previously); and not just the ones taken since the last backup (since just losing a few photos is usually not a heartbreaking event).