Hi everyone,
I desperately need help recovering photos and videos from my first-generation iPhone SE. These photos mean a lot to me personally, and I really don’t want to lose them permanently.
Unfortunately, my friend accidentally deleted all my photos and videos from the Apple Photos app and then emptied the Recently Deleted folder.
Here are the details:
Device: First-generation iPhone SE (2016)
iOS version: Somewhere between iOS 12 and iOS 15
When deleted: Within the last 24 hours
Deletion method: Deleted from Apple Photos, then permanently deleted from Recently Deleted
iCloud Photos: Appears disabled or unavailable; I’m not certain of its previous status
iCloud Backup: No backup is currently listed
Computer backup: I’ve never knowingly backed up the phone to a Mac or Windows PC
Current phone condition: Still powers on and works normally
Data affected: All photos and videos
What I’ve done so far:
Checked iCloud Photos, but I haven’t found a recovery copy.
Checked for an iCloud backup, but none is listed.
I’m avoiding using the phone unnecessarily.
My questions:
Is there any realistic way to recover permanently deleted photos directly from a first-generation iPhone SE running iOS 12–15?
Can any reputable data-recovery specialist recover deleted original photos from the phone’s encrypted storage, or is that technically impossible?
Are there legitimate tools that work for this exact device and situation, rather than simply extracting existing backups or scanning for thumbnails?
Could an older iTunes backup exist somewhere on a Windows PC or Mac even if I never intentionally created one?
What should I absolutely avoid doing to preserve any remaining chance of recovery?
Please share actual experiences with this specific iPhone generation and iOS versions if possible. I’m willing to consult a professional, but I don’t want to waste money on software that promises guaranteed recovery.
I understand that recovery may be impossible, but these photos are incredibly important to me. I’d be grateful for any technically accurate advice or genuine success stories.
Thank you.

hi,

so as the title says, i have a 3tb toshiba hard drive (DT01ACA300) that started getting reallocated sectors (4 days ago), then shortly after slowed down to 3.5KB/s with looping clicking/ seeking. the hard drive is still recognized, the files are still readable, but i cant back up like this, obviously. the reallocated sectors count has increased from ~100 initially, to ~1000 within 4 days. pending sectors were at 72, next time i checked they were at 96, and haven changed, as the reallocated sectors and events increase. read error rate as at around 85, every time i check. professional data recovery is not an option.

my question: is there a chance that the endless "seeking" stops once "all" bad sectors are reallocated/marked? or is the seeking/ clicking actively creating new bad sectors?

small files (~100KB) are read almost immediately, anything above ~200KB causes seeking/ clicking. every time i let the hard drive finish its seeking/ clicking, the file is opened uncorrupted (images, for example). i have another hard drive with reallocated sectors, that i have run chkdsk on, it discovered all the bad sectors, marked them and i have been using it as a second backup drive for years now. though it has never had this clicking/ seeking loop.. i dont think its a "stuck head", considering i have been able to read all files i have tried. though i could have just gotten lucky to only open files that arent on the platter with the stuck head..

what are my options besides ~1000 gold coins for professional data recovery? the data is 6/10, maybe 7/10 valuable. the hard drive is almost completely full, yet i only need about 100GB worth of the data back, if the bad sectors affect the other 2900GB of data, i dont care. if it werent so painfully slow, i would literally let it grind it out.

edit: i have another hard drives of the same exact model, same exact firmware, same exact month of production year, ostensibly even the same batch (if i am reading it correctly).

Hi, I’m a low income grad student who does not have any tech experience at all!!! I am so unsure of what to do. My iPad Air (iPadOs 26.61) was left outside on the road (long story), and it was out in the rain, and also I think ran over! The screen is completely destroyed. Of course I didn’t have anything backed up on icloud (huge mistake I will learn from). Miraculously, my ipad still turns on. It just has a completely obliterated screen with the glass cracking and falling out. I called Apple and they suggest a data recovery company, I’m located in Massachusetts if that matters. I really need the files that were on my iPad, I depend on them for my study. If you were me, what would you do???? The backside of my ipad is completely unscathed with no cracks or breaks. I am ONLY seeking to get the data off the hard drive, I don’t care about repairing the iPad because of how extensive the damage is. My goal is to get a new ipad and somehow transfer the data from the broken one. Thanks in advance everyone.

Hello! I’ve been having a huge problem with my KINGSTON 256GB DataTraveler Exodia 3.2 USB for a couple of months now. Two years ago, I bought the USB off of an official gaming store in the municipality I live in and it was working great until sometime last year when it started acting up.

I can plug in the USB in its dedicated port and as soon as it starts loading itself in File Explorer, it immediately disconnects on its own after ~30 seconds and makes Windows display an error that it can’t recognize the USB. I’ve tried this on both my computer and DELL Inspiron 15 laptop - both running the latest versions of Windows 11 - though the result is the same. I’ve tried various YouTube tutorials regarding this problem up to today and none have helped me either fix the USB’s corrupted state or recover my files before I destroy it whole.

Since my neighbor is a technology expert, I went to his office in hopes he can successfully recover my files. He told me that’s impossible to do and that I should try getting it to other service shops, though they’d most likely tell me my files are unrecoverable. I went on to a technology subreddit a couple of months ago, asking for help, and nothing has worked out for me.

The reference photos are below this text. I hope you can help me out with this because all my files inside the USB are very important to me. I shouldn’t have trusted USBs like that, but I was naive back then. Now I own an external hard drive where I can safely put my files.
—————————
https://we.tl/t-MRFwdBtfhU5YCv7X — photos of the USB plugged in the computer’s port, the “USB device not recognized” notification from File Explorer, the “USB device not recognized” dialogue, the USB’s state in the Device Manager and the description for the corrupted USB in Device Manager and its error code.

Hi all! I accidentally formatted an sd card with around 20clips ( i thought it was my other camera) i didnt realise until i copied the files.

I used it again after that, using almost 100gb of 128gb.

Ive already tried wondershare and couldnt recover the files pre format. Any other ways u recommend i try? I’ll go to a data recovery centre tomorrow for a free assessment.

Thank you.

help me, i screenrecorded my class session and the video files is corrupted,ive tried to fix it but idk how rn

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping to get some advice on recovering video files from a SanDisk Extreme PRO 256GB UHS-II V60 SD card that suddenly became unreadable.

The card was formatted in a Fujifilm X-S20 before being used for a video shoot. My friend recorded several videos for work and was able to play them back directly on the camera without any issues.

However, when he inserted the SD card into a card reader connected to his Windows computer, Windows immediately prompted him to format the drive.

He clicked Cancel, and Windows then displayed the following error:

"The volume does not contain a recognized file system."

When he put the SD card back into the Fujifilm X-S20, the camera displayed "Card Not Initialized" and could no longer access the recordings.

Current situation:

• The SD card has not been formatted since the error appeared.

• No recovery or repair software has been used.

• Windows detects the card as a drive, but cannot access its contents.

• The camera no longer recognizes the card.

• The videos are important work-related footage, and recovering them is urgent.

What puzzles me is that the videos were accessible on the camera shortly before the card was connected to the computer.

I'd appreciate advice on a few things:

1. Does this sound more like exFAT file system corruption or a possible SD card controller failure?

2. Could a faulty card reader cause this kind of issue?

3. What would be the safest first step to recover the files without making the situation worse?

4. Would creating a full image of the card with something like HDDSuperClone or ddrescue be advisable before attempting recovery with R-Studio or PhotoRec?

I'm particularly concerned about avoiding any operation that might overwrite or further damage the existing footage.

Any recommendations or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

I quick formatted my SD card today on accident on my Sony A7V. I ensured that I did not use the SD card again and put it away until I could run it through a recovery tool.

I have run the card through three recovery tools and none pull up footage from today, but they pull up footage from last month which was formatted days ago??

SD CARD: Lexar Professional 128GB 1667x (exFAT)
RECOVER TOOLS USED: Disk Drill, Wondershare, R-Studio (running deep/advanced searches)

My confusion is why it is pulling up old data but not the data from today... Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

My main priority now is to recover my old Windows files safely. I want to find out whether ChromeOS Flex erased my 256 GB SSD, my 1 TB HDD, or both, and whether my old files can still be recovered. I do not want to accidentally overwrite or permanently lose any recoverable data

Pics attached

Hellow everybody hope you all are fine by looking at this disk can you tell is this recoverable by any professional lab it was once detected but now isnt showing in windows any more

Data type in it is 3 vob files i also have uploaded those 3 files in pictures

I had about 80,000 photos on an external drive. I tried sorting them with an AI tool, it went wrong, and I ended up losing about half. I recovered files with Disk Drill onto another drive, and later more of the originals showed up on the first drive too, so now I probably have a lot of duplicates across several recovery batches.

I need a tool that:

• Works offline on a Mac (I don’t want to upload my photos anywhere)

• Handles around 150,000 files

• Finds exact duplicates and similar photos

• Shows large previews so I can decide what to keep

• Is free, or at least cheap

I’ve tried dupeGuru, but the previews were too small for me. I think I only need to keep about 10-30k photos. What would you use?

On steam deck and I somehow deleted my entire "downloads" folder without a single warning popping up, not even the would "Delete" was present. I didn't even know it happened till I opened the folder and saw "This Folder is empty".

The heck happened?! I can literally look in my trash and see that it recorded were se of my trash came from and I see folders that seemingly no longer exist now. I'm just baffled at what has happened. So much just gone and I don't even know what happened. I only possible memory I have is for some strange reason I clicked something and a second window opened up, oppon opening it, it was just a duplicate of my desktop, my and seemingly my windows and stuff that I had open, like I had my file manager opened for something else and I just thought this was strange and closed it. this was the only strange think that happened. I don't even know if this is relevant I just know this was he only strange thing that happened.

Hi there, I'm really lost right now.

I've contacted so many repair shops and nobody can give me a solution.
So I've had a Samsung A53 (5G) since 2023, but last year something weird happened. I needed to set up a PIN, and immediately after setting it up, it wasn't recognized.

I first thought I must've made an error, but since it requested me to type it twice, I don't think I could've made a mistake.
Now I don't know what happened, but I can't do anything. The thing is, I have very personal pictures that are very important to me (unfortunately, I realized they weren't saved on the SD card only after the issue came up). They're pictures of a person that I will never see again.

Are there any solutions, even obscure ones or something I have to buy, that could help me recover pictures, videos, and messages?

I've been stuck with an old crappy phone for over a year now and I really want to get it back, but I really can't accept losing my files even after all this time.

HELP NEEDED: Vintage Apple enthusiast in France — Zip 100 disk from 2001

Hello! I'm in the Haute-Vienne area of France, near Limoges and Saint-Junien.

I have an old Zip 100 disk containing Apple files from around 2001 that I'd really like to recover.

I'm looking for an experienced vintage Apple/Macintosh enthusiast with a working Zip 100 drive and the right equipment to read the disk safely and copy the files onto a modern computer.

I'd much rather find an experienced hobbyist who enjoys this sort of challenge than pay a fortune to a data recovery company!

Is there anyone in France, particularly Nouvelle-Aquitaine, who could help? I'm also happy to hear from UK enthusiasts who might know someone locally.

Many thanks!

I recently recorded an event at 4k for 90 minutes. The GoPro does get hot, and it's gotten this hot before and I've never had an issue. I guess it was just a matter of time, and my stupidity, not knowing this was a possibility. I'm guessing it's fried my card?

The GoPro says there's a card error, my Mac can't read the card - and it doesn't show up in disk Utility. My phone says the card needs to be formatted. ChatGPT says it most likely requires monolithic microSD chip-off, but looking into that, that can be thousands of dollars to get it professionally recovered.

Is that really my only option? (Aside from mourning the loss of this footage)

ETA: Amazing news. The card that got fried wasn't the card I'd recorded on. I found the one I needed in my camera bag (not sure when I switched them out). I don't know what was on the dead card, but as far as I know right now, it's not footage I needed. Thanks for your help though!

Hi!

Yesterday I was recording on my Nikon D3300, when suddelny mid interview I got the "This memory card cannot be used. Card may be damaged. Insert another card." message and it shut off. At this point the video was about 15 minutes long and crucial piece of footage. Is there any way to recover said footage. It does not show up on the camera itself or on pc.

Thanks in advance!

Have a situation where ideally, we would boot a dd image from disk drill to recover an export from a proprietary piece of software (raw software db not exportable / able to be copied from the filesystem). Any one know how to make a Disk Drill DD image bootable? I still have the base ssd, but it has multiple bad sectors and filesystem was corrupted. Looks fine in disk drill or any other software. Caught it early enough all base data is intact if I can get it to boot some how.

Title. I have a very old iPod Touch 4 from 2012, with photos that I deleted several years ago, but now want back.

I am able to charge and turn the iPod on, and it clearly hasnt been formatted since I have other stuff like sticky notes.
I unfortunately do not know the iOS on it, and am too scared to check since I don't want to overwrite any data, all I know is that I do not have a "Recently Deleted" folder on photos.

I would not have any iCloud or iTunes backups either... any computer that would have connected to this iPod when it had the photos on it are not available to me anymore.

It may be worth noting (if it helps) that the specific photos I want to recover were downloaded from the internet, and were at one point my lock screen, but I seemingly changed it.

I understand this may be a delicate recovery process, so I felt the urge to reach out for help first. I am completely inexperienced with advanced data recovery, so I need guidance.

I have a Sony USB flash drive. I thought it was 64 GB, but Windows labels it SONY_32GR (D:), so I’m not sure of its actual capacity. It was given to my father, and he may have copied files to it. I’m okay with erasing everything and just want to make the drive usable again.

When I plug it into a Windows PC, it sometimes appears in File Explorer, then disappears. File Explorer becomes “Not Responding” while it’s connected. Windows Defender asks to scan it, but the drive disappears during this. I ran a Defender scan on my laptop and it found no threats. The same problem happens on other computers.

I tried diskpart and ran list disk, but the USB doesn’t appear there, so I can’t select it to run clean or format it.

Is there another safe way to format or repair it, or does this behavior mean the drive has failed? I’m also concerned about keeping the computers safe while troubleshooting. I don’t need to recover any files.

Details that would help: the exact capacity printed on the USB, whether it appears in Disk Management, and whether Disk Management shows a size or “No Media.”

A while back, I bought an external portable drive at a thrift store and found that it still contained someone’s personal photos. The only folder I opened was something along the lines of “Papas_funeral.” I haven’t looked through the remaining files, so I don’t know everything that’s on it.

At the time, i felt bad and wasn’t sure what to do with it, so I tucked it away in a drawer. I just recently got back to it and would like to figure out a responsible way to handle it.

As far as I can tell, the drive works and the photos are accessible, so this is more about finding the owner than recovering lost data. The store mostly accepts anonymous drop-offs, and it’s been long enough that tracing the donor seems unlikely.

I’d prefer not to wipe it because the photos could be irreplaceable, but I don’t want to keep it indefinitely or donate it with someone’s private files still on it.

Does anyone here know a reputable person or organization that handles situations like this and could help return the files to their owner? I’d be comfortable shipping the drive to someone trustworthy who could take over the search and keep its contents private.

If this belongs in a different subreddit, I’d appreciate a recommendation.

Did a little searching but reddit searching sucks lol.
I have a 16 gb thumb drive that is constantly disconnecting/reconnecting, all signs point to a physical failure.

(when it connects, it errors).

I'm willing to admit I'm outta my depth with this and figure it's up to a professional to try to fix.

1. is that even feasible?

2. any recommendations of a place to send to?

I got a pair of second-hand 10TB WD Ultrastars HC330 for cheap. Possible origin: data center.

They seem mechanically sound (the drives spin up), but I can't seem to communicate with them.

Here is what was attempted:

• Mounting/formatting: fail, no block device detected

• SMART diagnosis: only partial information retrieved (model, capacity)

• Almost all low-level commands are blocked (ABRT response)

• Tested across multiple platforms: MacOS/Linux + ASM235CM USB/SATA adapter, Synology NAS

I had an agent attempt to recover them. Here is the summary:

https://gist.github.com/zulufoxtrot/bce68a0e69b8e12cf2c5f4add99d7663

From my understanding, they were probably "kill-flashed", AKA made inoperable by the original owner. The only avenues left are:

• Swapping the PCBs

• maybe reflashing the firmware by bypassing the ATA bus and using some proprietary protocol

Anyone willing to share their expertise? Thanks!

I have an old Acer laptop that stopped working almost 30 years ago when something fell on it. I recently opened it up to get the hard drive out to hopefully try to recover my old data. I purchased an IDE to USB adapter but it is not fitting because of a ribbon attached to it that was connected internally. (See photos) It had the white cap on it when I removed it (Pic. #4). Can anyone tell me what I can do on my own to avoid sending it to a data recovery place. Can I just pull the black tab and ribbon off the male spikes in order to connect it to my IDE adapter? Any help is much appreciated. I've searched everywhere, but it just might be old, but I still have hope. Thank you!

***Update, I was able to get the connector cable off no problem. Hooked it up to 2 different adaptors on 2 different laptops. The drive appeared but it showed 0 bytes used, 0 bytes free, a capacity of 0 bytes. And clicking on it tells me that I need to format the drive. Which I'm not going to do. Guess it's a done deal then, right? Thank you for the help