help with internal memory recovery, broken LG Leon

[Blaze163]

Lali ho,

Long story short my LG Leon has a broken screen, totally beyond repair, never gonna work again. I've extracted my micro SD and SIM easily enough, only to find that some of my music and photos seem to have been stored on the internal memory, not the SD card. I acquired a data recovery app called ADR that should have done the trick, but it won't detect my phone. It's supposed to show up as an F drive or something but doesn't. It may be because I had the phone set to 'charge only' for its USB settings. And since the screen is totalled, I have no way to change that. Am I doing something wrong? Y'know, aside from leaving my phone where small children can get hold of it and f*** it into a wall? Is there any other way to recover data from the internal memory, or am I just gonna have to give up on this? It's only a few photos and MP3 files, nothing drastic, but I would like the photos of my daughter back.

 

[tech3475]

Did you have ADB enabled?

 

[FAST6191]

I don't know what the program would have done. A good one would probably have set it into debug mode via some exploit or factory option and then pulled things, a bad one will just be a frontend to some of the stuff I am about to discuss.

Equally most phones of that era or newer will use MPT/PTP storage modes which tend not to appear as straight lettered drives as much as "camera" or something in My Computer. Going further I have had a great many issues with the MPT/PTP tech not being all it could be/set out to be. Trying to debug that with a busted phone is no fun at all though so try something else to make sure it shows up/gives you the option.

Easy but slightly expensive way
Buy equivalent* version of phone (quick search says they are fairly expensive despite being poorly reviewed several years ago), swap motherboard over, use that to recover, maybe flog whatever results you like (original mobo or yours) on to recoup something.
I would also have to ask how broken is broken? If the screen took the brunt of things then even if it looks like 1mm wide crazy paving it is entirely possible that it could be replaced. If the frame starts being bent then yeah that tends to be full replacement but the things are more resilient than many think.

*I can't be bothered to look things up for this phone but I have had ones in the past that have different screen models within the same device line. To that end maybe look up what screen repair entails so you know what you are getting into.

More tricky.
If the phone supports video out of some form you might be able to get it going out of that and then navigate however you will.

Crazy tricky.
It is possible to lift NAND chips and solder them into something new, possibly tap into debug/test points and/or otherwise use a reader on them. I don't know how many people offer the service in the UK but it is seldom cheap and thus reserved for people with more money than sense or that have something truly valuable on it and no other way to get it.

 

[Blaze163]

I've tried every program I could find, none of them will detect the phone. I even had to borrow a friend's laptop 'cause mine uses Linux and I have no idea how Wine works, nor can I be arsed to find out. At this point to be honest I'm probably just gonna give up, redownload the music files, the photos I'll just have to get new ones, and the phone is about to become my new stress ball and get twatted with my Buster Sword. If it wants to be willfully disobedient it can suffer the consequences.

I suspect the core of the issue (aside from the obvious massive crack all down the screen) is that the phone isn't set to do anything via USB except charge 'cause it's usually just plugged into my PS4 overnight. Quite why it saved half my files to internal memory and not the MicroSD I will never know, I gave it no such instructions. But the repairs to bypass this issue with a new screen outweigh the cost of the phone by about a hundred million percent, and it's worth about 20 pence as scrap value in its current condition. Recovery seems basically impossible at this point, it's worthless, and I already have a replacement on the way courtesy of an almost insanely generous companion. So it's getting the same treatment my old and very VERY broken PSP got; fragmented with one of my multitudinous collection of sharp implements and its twisted wreckage thrown off my mate's balcony on the 16th floor.

 

[Jayro]

Lali ho,

Long story short my LG Leon has a broken screen, totally beyond repair, never gonna work again. I've extracted my micro SD and SIM easily enough, only to find that some of my music and photos seem to have been stored on the internal memory, not the SD card. I acquired a data recovery app called ADR that should have done the trick, but it won't detect my phone. It's supposed to show up as an F drive or something but doesn't. It may be because I had the phone set to 'charge only' for its USB settings. And since the screen is totalled, I have no way to change that. Am I doing something wrong? Y'know, aside from leaving my phone where small children can get hold of it and f*** it into a wall? Is there any other way to recover data from the internal memory, or am I just gonna have to give up on this? It's only a few photos and MP3 files, nothing drastic, but I would like the photos of my daughter back.

Wish you would have posted about this a week ago, I just gave away my spare LG Leon. I would have given it to you for free +Shipping.

 

[Blaze163]

Wish you would have posted about this a week ago, I just gave away my spare LG Leon. I would have given it to you for free +Shipping.

Appreciate the generosity but it only broke a few hours ago. My daughter's still in the naughty corner for her part in its destruction, that's how short a time has passed.

 

[tech3475]

If you have ADB enabled, it may be possible to extract the contents from recovery.

It looks like you're only options right now may be to either gut swap/repair the phone or hope for some kind of alternative to extract contents e.g. fastboot (if the phone was already unlocked).

 

[Blaze163]

If you have ADB enabled, it may be possible to extract the contents from recovery.

It looks like you're only options right now may be to either gut swap/repair the phone or hope for some kind of alternative to extract contents e.g. fastboot (if the phone was already unlocked).

I assume ADB is something to do with USB Debugging, that term kept cropping up as an issue on discussions for the programs I used. Whatever it is, if it has to be manually enabled then it won't be 'cause I've never heard of it.

 

[tech3475]

I assume ADB is something to do with USB Debugging, that term kept cropping up as an issue on discussions for the programs I used. Whatever it is, if it has to be manually enabled then it won't be 'cause I've never heard of it.

Yeah thats what it is.

I presume then your bootloader is locked? If so, a repair may be your only option.