Thread: how to recover data from internal storage

I have problem in Touch Diamond that is hanging before home page whan I restarted it !!!does not working
some one told me to make HARD RESET but I'm afraid to lose all my images that I capture it by its cam.
because hard reset give me a warning msg to be delete all data but I can not do it ?
Is it really will be lose all data thru HARD RESET????
Is there any idea to recover my images??????? I though to extract memory manually and put it in another devices and trying it?? or after Hard Reset I will use Recovery Program to get all deleted items if I lost it????????
please help me sooooooon

It's a standard warning that you will lose EVERYTHING (in ROM) at hard reset. Hard Reset restores the device back to the day you first bought it (or the day the ROM is installed, say upgraded from wm6.1 to wm6.5), similar to a Windows clean install on PC but without any method of recovery afterwards.

However, that does not usually apply to data stored on memory cards so my guess is that it shouldn't apply to Diamond's 4GB internal memory - different story if you have data encryption enabled. We have never needed a Hard Reset with the Diamond unit at work so I cannot confirm this for certain. Perhaps someone else with hard reset on their Diamond can verify this?

When I made a hard reset the internal storage data stayed untouched.
But I do not guarantee the same will happen to you.

thanks all,
any more confirmation of hard reset safety on internal storage ...........

Hard reset does not clears internal memory 4GB where has it just repairs your rom.

while hardreset if you chose FORMAT NAND AND RESTORE

While hardreset if u chose format nand and reset to manufacturing defalut( by pressing volume down button) then it will clear ur internal memory(4GB)

try hard reset:
1. Pull out the stylus.
2. With the device turned on, press and hold the VOLUME DOWN and ENTER buttons, then press the RESET button with the stylus tip.
3. Release the RESET button, but continue pressing the VOLUME DOWN and ENTER buttons until you see this message on the screen:
4. Release the VOLUME DOWN and ENTER buttons, then press the
VOLUME UP button to perform the hard reset, or press any other
button to cancel the reset.

Actually its very simple to recover your data using standard data recovery techniques.
Ill discuss the most common but there are others.
It is recommended done on a linux machine but windows will also suffice.
You should first understand that when a file is deleted by the operating system only a link to that file is removed. Now this data will remain untill it is overwritten by another file. So for this reason, the more you use the storage the less data you will be able to recover. When you format a device you are only formatting the file system, so your original data will still be there. But again, the more you use the phone and the more you store on it the less data there will be.

Firstly, you need to take an image of the device.
On linux you can use the dd command e.g.

dd if=/dev/sdb of=phone.img

or if u are running windows image with your favourite tool or download dd for windows from here Forensic Acquisition Utilities

Then once you have this image you can run a file carving program that will loop through and find all the known files from the image. I tend to use scalpel on my image first
you can download it from here
http://www.digitalforensicssolutions.com/Scalpel/

it is best to check the configuration file for filetypes you might specifically want to recover or just leave it as it is. run the command

scalpel -i phone.img -d scalpelOutput

When the program has finished the output directory will be populated with the recovered files along with a log.
To ensure maximum data recovery it is often best to use more than one tool, as we have our image stored there is no reason not too.
I tend to use testdisk also which is multiplatform tool you can download it here
TestDisk Download - CGSecurity

It has a very easy to use menu system, however remember to read the documentation so you know what your doing.

There is also a large variety of free and commercial tools dedicated to mobile forensics which tend to deal with investigating the device but will also recover data from them. Some can be found here Tools - Forensics Wiki although google is your friend.

Never think your data is lost after it is deleted! Think how long it takes to copy say a 4gb file. To erase this data properly every bit would need to be set to 0, which is just not effecient is it?
Happy hunting