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Help Trying to use vroot so I can recover deleted files but vroot wants to do a full restore on the phone

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Hello,

I'm trying to recover lost text sms messages and other files on a MyPhone infinity lite (a Philippine phone) running Android 4.4.2 Kitkat.

Everything I've read says not to do anything that can overwrite the deleted files. I originally tried Wondershare Dr Fone and MobileGo. Neither could do anything until I tried the one-click root function. Although it said it couldn't root the phone at least it was able to connect to the phone and do a backup and see some deleted media files, etc. but when I tried to recover sms messages and whatsapp chats it said the phone needs to be rooted.

My next attempt was a program called super one-click. It would try to root and just hang up.

Most recently I tried vroot. When you run it, it goes through an initial phase where it says the phone may restart, etc. the phone restarted a couple of times and got to a point where it said root next and was apparently ready to root the phone. When I clicked to root the phone it said phone may restart and do not operate phone. It ran through and then couldn't root the phone. I tried a second time same result.

While it was running the screen was off and I didn't want to touch anything while it was working. When it was done though, I opened the phone and there was a message saying a desktop computer has requested a full restore and if I didn't initiate this not to do it because all data on the phone will be replaced. Then it asked if I wanted to allow it.

It seems like this prompt and my lack of response is what caused vroot to not work. My first thought was to run it again and allow the full restore but then I have 2 questions:

1. Does this count as operating the phone while it's rooting?

2. If the full restore replaces all the data on the phone and I'm trying to avoid overwriting the deleted files, is this something I should allow? It seems that vroot requested it but I don't want to overwrite the deleted files.

Thank you for any and all help.
 
I think your texts are gone, sorry.

The only people who I ever see saying any of the recovery programs work are spammers or paid shills here to promote the recovery software.

If you're adamant you still want to try and you want root, look up something called Towelroot. The root exploits it uses work on most KitKat devices with a kernel build date prior to June 2014.

Hopefully, you will get some succes, but in my experience, most of the recovery apps which claim to be able to do this sort of thing are bogus.
 
El Presidente said:
I think your texts are gone, sorry.

The only people who I ever see saying any of the recovery programs work are spammers or paid shills here to promote the recovery software.

If you're adamant you still want to try and you want root, look up something called Towelroot. The root exploits it uses work on most KitKat devices with a kernel build date prior to June 2014.

Hopefully, you will get some succes, but in my experience, most of the recovery apps which claim to be able to do this sort of thing are bogus.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the feedback.

There is so much out there on the net that I'm overwhelmed. I'm curious that when you root a device, what does it actually do? Does it just change permissions so you can REA h the root folder? Or does it install a new program (again overwriting "potentially" deleted files)? I'm so unsure.

The nice think is that the recovery programs at least offer a trial version that allow you to see what it can recover before you have to pay for the program. So if I root and run the trial version I'll know if there's really anything there before spending any money.

Does towel root overwrote anything and is it user-friendly? I'm really not very tech savvy and I don't want to brick the phone.

Thank you again, El Presidente
 
PS Im also trying to run everything from the PC rather than loading the program directly to the phone. So I'm looking for PC based rooting if possible.
 
Android is a compact, real-time Linux.

The name of the admin user in Linux is root - so rooting is the exact same thing as having Administrator privileges on your PC.

Right now, only your phone manufacturer and carrier has such rights.

The act of rooting installs a permission-management service library and a corresponding control app to the otherwise protected /system area. The two together are generically called superuser, but the app you see may have a different (but similar) name.

Once you have that, you can attempt to perform restricted or admin actions - the attempt gets stopped by the superuser process and you get a pop-up alert to confirm your intention.

You may hear people say that the name comes from getting access to the root filesystem folder - or /.

Access to the lowest level comes from an unlocked phone, with superuser granting access to remove read-only permission on the /system or other areas.

It's a popular myth that root means root file access and no one will argue because it sounds good.

But - you have root access to sd card and that doesn't make you the admin ok.

So yes - rooting changes your protected /system area by adding two files, with nothing else changed - until you change it.

If your phone's root forum here lacks instructions on how to replace your stock recovery (the thing that recovers carrier OTA update files and installs them) with a custom recovery then that probably means that no custom recovery is available for your phone.

Without custom recovery, you can't make image backups to save you from any mistakes you make playing under the hood - so you have to proceed with caution no matter how much Internet advice you see on how easy or great some mod is.

Root gives you great power and can make your phone ten times as fun. I do it myself, so does @El Presidente.

It also gives you the power to convert your phone into a useless paperweight.

I've been hearing some bad things about vroot, so I'd keep an eye out for other methods.

On phone or from pc won't make a quality difference.

The root programs you're trying work by finding an unguarded moment in the system and getting two files in place before it can be stopped.
 
Towelroot is very user friendly as far as I'm aware, it's just an apk download. Install, then run on your phone and it does the rest of the work for you.

In addition to what EarlyMon has said, the apps that he mentions are installed to /system. I supsect the data you want to recover is on /data, so it's highly unlikely what you want will be overwritten (which is what I'm guessing you're worried about).

Also, vroot & Kingoroot (if you've tried that), install a tonne of crapware. They also send a tonne of personal info (including your devices IMEI) to their servers in China.
 
Hi EarlyMon,

That was a lot of info! Whew!

El Presidente recommended towelroot which I looked up and it's an apk that you put directly on the phone. So my fear again is the if there are any recoverable files I may end up overwriting them with towelroot.

Most of what you said about custom recovery, etc is a little beyond my understanding as I'm completely new to this whole rooting thing. I'm trying to understand it but a lot of it is still so foreign to me that it's long over my head at the moment.

I guess when it all comes down to it for now, I'm looking for a yes or no on how to proceed without overwriting anything I may be able to potentially recover from the phone memory. I don't think I even need superuser apps since Im just rooting the phone so a recovery program can scan and see what's there. Am I correct in this?

In fact, I may want to unroot the phone after just so I don't brick the phone down the road before I understand all this stuff. The bricking part real scares me.

Does android write apps to the same place as data and messages? If not then downloading towelroot shouldn't be a big deal. But if it just randomly places downloaded apps anywhere in memory it could put it right on top of the deleted files obliterating them.

Any further guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for everything.
 
Thanks, El Presidente.

I'll give it a shot then and download the apk for towelroot. Can it all be undone after (unrooted)? Having that much access to the phone and not knowing enough about it scares me because I'll go in and play with it and probably brick it.
 
All apps that you install or update and all private app data goes into the /data partition.

The operating system libraries and pre-installed apps all go into the /system partition.

A rooting app will go to /data but its superuser output will go to /system.
 
I'm confused.

It seemed like El Presidente was saying programs go to system but now EarlyMon is saying they go to data.

If the missing files are in data will downloading towelroot risk overwriting them?

Thanks again
 
El Presidente said:
In addition to what EarlyMon has said, the apps that he mentions are installed to /system. I supsect the data you want to recover is on /data, so it's highly unlikely what you want will be overwritten (which is what I'm guessing you're worried about).
Click to expand...
We said the same thing.

Superuser installs to /system.

Towelroot will install as a user app to /data.

It's highly unlikely that the Towelroot app will overwrite the old data.

I think it's highly unlikely that you're going to recover much in the first place, but I'm chiming in because I'd like to see you succeed.
 
EarlyMon said:
We said the same thing.

Superuser installs to /system.

Towelroot will install as a user app to /data.

It's highly unlikely that the Towelroot app will overwrite the old data.

I think it's highly unlikely that you're going to recover much in the first place, but I'm chiming in because I'd like to see you succeed.
Click to expand...

Ok, thanks guys. I really appreciate all the time you've spent helping me here. I'm going to attempt to use towelroot. I'm not going to install the superuser at first as I don't know if I need it to run these recovery programs. If need be I'll install it if the programs can't recover. I will say that the trial programs did show recovered whatsapp attachments so maybe there's hope for the sms messages as well.

I did see fully free apps on the play store for recovering sms and contacts and they all say they require rooting. So keeping my fingers crossed that it's not only a marketing claim by those making a buck off all of this.

Finally, I did do a one-click backup on Wondershare MobileGo. The only thing it didn't back up was 16 of 33 installed apps and the app data (it does say that rooting is required for the app data). Once rooted if I do this backup again will I be safe as far as restoring the phone of something goes bad?

Thanks again. You guys ROCK!
 
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