Wiped iPhone on Restore - Any ideas?

[Maxx Mazda]

Now that the 6.1 JB is out, took it upon myself to update my 4S to 6.1.

Of course, I backed up the files, even used OpenBackup for my Cydia apps. I always delete all but the most recent iphone backup file to save disk space, I've got an SSD and my phone backups are like 20-30GB. So, I deleted my oldest one (which was too big for the recycle bin) but iTunes had already created a newer "blank" one, causing me to delete my actual good backup. Dumbass, I know.

So I used a file recovery program to pull everything back up, and used iPhone backup recovery and iTools to get my contacts, notes, SMS, etc back. What I really want are the photos and videos.

When I SSH into my phone, it's just the "new" file structure (jailbroken on 6.1 now) and no remnants of my old files. Is it possible to SSH in, or use another program to recover my lost pics and vids from the phone ? The ones I tried to recover from the HDD, about 80% are corrupted. As I understand it, when a restore is done without a backup, the files physically remain on the phone, just the reference TO those files is gone, awaiting to be overwritten. Looking for a way to recover these files.

TL : DR

- iPhone restored without backup
- Jailbroken and SSH is working
- Any way to recover files FROM phone even though it's been restored?

[eblend]

When you say "restore", I assume you selected the restore option in itunes? If so, it probably overwrote a good portion of your stuff on the phone anyways. Never had to do data recovery on an iphone....and being a closed apple system, it may be pretty difficult as you can't just hook it up as a USB drive to a computer.

Goodluck, but if I had to guess, you are pretty sol

[EK69]

http://www.wondershare.com/disk-utility/recover-deleted-photos-from-iphone.html

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-57324199-233/how-to-restore-photos-lost-after-installing-ios-5/

try this out?

did u sync ur pics to icloud? they might still be on there?

what i would do in the future is not rely on itunes backups etc to keep ur pics/videos

just connect ur iphone to the computer and u can browse the pics folder like a normal folder and manually copy them to the computer

[Maxx Mazda]

Originally posted by EK69
http://www.wondershare.com/disk-utility/recover-deleted-photos-from-iphone.html

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-57324199-233/how-to-restore-photos-lost-after-installing-ios-5/

try this out?

did u sync ur pics to icloud? they might still be on there?

what i would do in the future is not rely on itunes backups etc to keep ur pics/videos

just connect ur iphone to the computer and u can browse the pics folder like a normal folder and manually copy them to the computer

Wondershare tells me my iTunes is too old, and iExplore doesn't show anything pre-restore.

I don't sync my photos to the cloud, I guess I probably will in the future, although there are sometimes "inappropreate" photos that the wife sends me, if you know what I mean, that I don't want getting up there.

I always do manually copy photos, I did for all our vacations, etc. but it's the "random" shit in between I really want back.

[EK69]

Originally posted by Maxx Mazda


Wondershare tells me my iTunes is too old, and iExplore doesn't show anything pre-restore.

I don't sync my photos to the cloud, I guess I probably will in the future, although there are sometimes "inappropreate" photos that the wife sends me, if you know what I mean, that I don't want getting up there.

I always do manually copy photos, I did for all our vacations, etc. but it's the "random" shit in between I really want back.

lol then im guessing ur sol man
when u restore (u downloaded the ipsw file, then u held shift and clicked the restore button im guessing, typically thats how i did it in the past) it wipes the current iOS and kills the partitions, then recreates them and overwrites everything AFAIK (not just a simple upgrade)

yeah for those inappropriate photos i would probably choose not to sync to the cloud either...since itll upload everything and im not sure if u wanna trust iCloud with those sensitive pics :nut:

[Maxx Mazda]

I've been able to dump most of the stuff from the recovered files from my HDD that were overwritten. Got my notes, contacts (yay!) texts, etc back. Still only about 20-30% of my photos though. The rest were overwritten after being deleted, as such could not be recovered.

So, there's no way to get into the "hidden" filesystem of the iphone after it's been overwritten? Looks like I might have to add my contacts and notes back manually, and then say fuck it to the pics I lost. I've been hesitant to start loading my phone back up in case I end up overwriting data that's still there.

[EK69]

Originally posted by Maxx Mazda
I've been able to dump most of the stuff from the recovered files from my HDD that were overwritten. Got my notes, contacts (yay!) texts, etc back. Still only about 20-30% of my photos though. The rest were overwritten after being deleted, as such could not be recovered.

So, there's no way to get into the "hidden" filesystem of the iphone after it's been overwritten? Looks like I might have to add my contacts and notes back manually, and then say fuck it to the pics I lost. I've been hesitant to start loading my phone back up in case I end up overwriting data that's still there.

yeah looking at some google links looks like the way a full restore works is it deletes everything and recreates the file system on the internal memory, which means it basically overwrites everything (so nothing would be recoverable once its overwritten, doubt any ghost files remain). The data that was there is likely overwritten in this process.

i would say its a safe bet that whats lost is lost and u might as well just recreate everything and say fuck it to the pics u lost :banghead:

for contacts what i do is have them synced to gmail that way i dont have to worry about losing contacts ever again. Then when i setup my email as exchange it automatically downloads them from gmail. U could do the same thing with ur iCloud account i believe but i never bothered since gmail works universally so far (have done it with android, iOS and blackberry phones thus far). Until i figured this out i was always haveing to sync with microsoft address book or whatever its called but this way works easier. U can edit contacts in gmail and have them automatically pushed to ur phone and vice versa. Theres a specific contacts group they all go under so if u decide to go this route it will let u know when u look at the google information regarding this

if you sync gmail with IMAP i believe it can sync ur notes as well (ive seen it, but never done it myself). Gmail Exchange automatically sync contacts and calendar and email. iCloud lets u sync notes i believe. As for how to restore them from iCloud i have no idea haha :nut: but they do appear to be synced

[Maxx Mazda]

Managed to pull everything out of the corrupt files with the exception of the pics. Only saved 110 or so.

Back up and running now, got all my jb apps back too. I'll chock this up to a "dipshit" moment and move on. Live and learn.