is it possible to recover deleted photos?

JuliaDerchter

I made a very dumb mistake. I was very tired, and wanted to delete the recently made photo. I went to Gallery (the GOS-supplied app), saw the pic, selected it and clicked the trashcan symbol. I was surprised to see the deleting took a while. But after that, I realised that the pic I selected, was not the photo itself but actually the whole album 'Camera'. Which is now deleted.

There is something to say about the Gallery app: with a mass-deletion action, maybe something like 'this will delete xxx photos, are you sure?' would be great, and/or a section where recently deleted items are kept for maybe 30 days or so. But that won't help me now.

Is there a way to undelete photos? I have put the phone in airplane mode immediately. My laptop is Linux. I found the PhotoRec software, for undeleting files on any kind of drive connected to the computer. I am worried it won't do the right thing, as the encryption of the files might make them unfindable. Does anyone have experience with undeleting files on a GOS phone?

ryrona

JuliaDerchter Unfortunately it is not possible. Any software to undelete files need to have raw access to the storage device. GrapheneOS does not offer this possibility at all, no app can be granted raw access to the storage device. The same is true if you plug in your phone to a computer, it can only communicate with the phone over a file transfer protocol, raw storage access cannot be granted. GrapheneOS would need to be modified to give this access, but flashing a modified version of GrapheneOS will wipe the encryption keys, destroying all data permanently, so that will not work either.

I think the best thing you can do is to take this as a reminder to always regularly do backups of important data. You could have lost your photos too by having your phone stolen, or your phone maybe just stopped working entirely. Backup is the only safe way, and with end-to-end encrypted cloud backup services this is easy while still reasonable private.

But I agree, it should be an easy change and very valuable if the confirmation dialog said how many files will be deleted. It will probably prevent many similar mistakes.

PaulDavis

Can't you go to the trash and undelete, or did you choose the permanent option?

ryrona

PaulDavis Trash?! Is there trash bin support in GrapheneOS? I thought everything was always permanently deleted. I have never seen any trash bin anywhere.

freelancer

Not sure if there's a way to recover but the gallery app is based off of the AOSP app and that'll probably remain the same so added features probably won't happen. Just here to add in some advice by recommening getting Aves Libre for the default gallery app since it has a "trash/waste/recycling bin" option, or the google photos app if that's your mojo. I hope you find a solution to your problem, and that your data loss is not permanent.

JuliaDerchter

thanks for your quick reactions. the file transfer protocol vs. access to the raw data worried me indeed. I have begun to come to peace with the loss of everything. I had indeed waited too long to find any kind of backup procedure for the photos. There does not seem to be an easy solution for it that also keeps the photos browsable in the backup. But taking too much time in in the research-phase is now coming back to bite me.

I will try, probably in vain, with the PhotoRec software, but as @ryrona says, without access to the bytes in memory it will likely not do much.

freelancer

JuliaDerchter I also want to share my struggle with data loss and GrapheneOS, I backed up my phone with seed vault and thought that would suffice, only for them backup to be corrupt/malformed and to lose everything just like you did. Upsetting but I came to terms with it, this is a very common and known issue with this backup service. Please manually backup your data if you don't want to be a victim to data loss once again.

JuliaDerchter

I indeed gave up, nothing worked. Now off to work on mental acceptance of the situation. When that is concluded, I'll start working again on the search for a system analogous to Apple's iCloud or Google Photos. I have seen people brewing up scripts with Syncthing and restic, (an abuse of Syncthing I guess) or other variants I did not quite understand. Ente could be nice but I'd like it to be more private.
Thanks you all for thinking along <3