Help WHATSAP deleted and botched restore

[sjoefl01]

So my wife has been going through a lot lately. Somehow she lost all of the data from WHATSAP. There were a lot of seriously important conversations, audios, and videos. In her panic she followed some instructions to uninstall and reinstall the application. This only captured the data from 22 September back. (Today is 26 September) so she lost a lot of stuff she would really like to have back. I have read a lot about the files that hold that information on the phone until it is backed up and as best I can tell those files got trashed on the reinstall process.
I think I already know the answer but is there any way to go back and recover those 4 days or so after the backup but cleared by the delete install process. This is a big deal. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Hadron]

What exactly are her backup settings? The norm with WhatsApp is daily local chat backups, with the option of backing up to Google Drive at a user-defined interval. I'm guessing that the restore from 22nd Sep was a Drive backup (because otherwise it's a bit random that it's a few days ago), so the question is does she have a newer backup in internal storage/Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Backups? Media (audio & video) will be in Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Media. I'm hoping that maybe the chat backups or media are still there and just haven't been picked up in the restore, e.g. because a restore from Drive used an older chat backup, though from what you say it sounds likely that you've already checked this. If they are then do take a copy of these directories before attempting to restore, just in case anything goes wrong.

Otherwise, I'm afraid I don't myself know a method of file recovery that I know actually works. There are lots of "file recovery apps" out there, but reliable reports of success are much harder to find. You can't use simple file recovery software on a computer the way you would for files deleted from a USB stick because the MTP protocol android uses for sharing files over USB doesn't give that level of access to the storage. In principle file recovery software running on the phone itself might be able to do it, but a quick search of Play Store reviews reveals very mixed experiences (and, of course, none give enough information to work out what's different between those who say they've had success and those who say otherwise). You could try some and see, probably not too much to lose, but I cannot promise a solution.

 

[sjoefl01]

Thank you so much. That backup folder only has default stuff like wallpaper and such. She seems most concerned about the audio files. That is how her family likes to communicate. I have founds lots of ways to prevent this from happening in the future. Sadly none that have a method of recovery at this point. Maybe I will research some undelete stuff.
Thanks again.

 

[sjoefl01]

What exactly are her backup settings? The norm with WhatsApp is daily local chat backups, with the option of backing up to Google Drive at a user-defined interval. I'm guessing that the restore from 22nd Sep was a Drive backup (because otherwise it's a bit random that it's a few days ago), so the question is does she have a newer backup in internal storage/Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Backups? Media (audio & video) will be in Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Media. I'm hoping that maybe the chat backups or media are still there and just haven't been picked up in the restore, e.g. because a restore from Drive used an older chat backup, though from what you say it sounds likely that you've already checked this. If they are then do take a copy of these directories before attempting to restore, just in case anything goes wrong.

Otherwise, I'm afraid I don't myself know a method of file recovery that I know actually works. There are lots of "file recovery apps" out there, but reliable reports of success are much harder to find. You can't use simple file recovery software on a computer the way you would for files deleted from a USB stick because the MTP protocol android uses for sharing files over USB doesn't give that level of access to the storage. In principle file recovery software running on the phone itself might be able to do it, but a quick search of Play Store reviews reveals very mixed experiences (and, of course, none give enough information to work out what's different between those who say they've had success and those who say otherwise). You could try some and see, probably not too much to lose, but I cannot promise a solution.

I see a program called TENORSHARE that has some decent reviews but most of them seem to be on their web site (imagine that?). It is mostly those audio files and we located where they are on the phone. I wonder if this tool could recover those deleted files or if they are even in the same place.

 

[Hadron]

I expect that the audio stuff should be in the WhatsApp media folder, probably in the either the WhatsApp Audio or the WhatsApp Voice Notes subfolder.

I don't know the app, and am of course suspicious of recommends from their own website (you also get people who pop up in forums to recommend some app, whose entire posting activity seems to be recommending such an app, which I'm also very suspicious of). But it sounds like anything might be worth a shot.