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I have a Samsung Galaxy S8+ on which I wrote a lot of text in a simple text editor app I got from the Google Play store. I saved this in a text file, and later, I used the Samsung My Files app to locate and open a different text file. I noticed at the time that two instances of the text editor were running. That seemed interesting but not like a problem.

But then I tried to open the first file to write more and found out the entire contents were replaced by the text from the second file. I did not backup the file before this happened, but the text it was replaced with is much smaller, so there could be chunks of original text remaining in freed sectors.

I installed a bunch of android data recovery applications on my Windows PC that said they could recover overwritten files, but I haven’t got one to show me either unused sector contents or deleted temp files from the text editor. Can anyone recommend recovery software or another method that might work?

Coulda Shoulda
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  • If you had used Samsung Editor, there were some chance to restore it using Samsung backup but as you've used third party app Simple text Editor, unfortunately, it already have a few reviews mentioning the overwrite problem you've faced with no supporting reply from the dev. With that in mind, considering the restricted Storage access as Media Storage in Windows started with Android 6/7, Recovering files had become a very limited area, prior to that, the storage was available to be accessed like a Memory card/Pen Drive which was easy to recover. – Lalit Fauzdar Apr 17 '22 at 07:10
  • For this, AFAIK and experienced, the typical Recovery software won't show this file as deleted or won't provide you the previous version of the same file currently over-written. – Lalit Fauzdar Apr 17 '22 at 07:11
  • Does this answer your question? Can I access the Memo data without rooting? – alecxs Apr 17 '22 at 08:10
  • Does this answer your question? Is it possible to recover deleted files without root on Android 12? – alecxs Apr 17 '22 at 08:13
  • get (decrypted) block partition image and search for plain text in HxD editor – alecxs Apr 17 '22 at 08:33
  • Thank you. I do not have Smart Switch installed, and I don't want to install anything on the phone in case it writes over the data I am trying to recover. Getting the block partition image hasn't worked (with adb) because the phone isn't rooted. I think rooting will be my next step. – Coulda Shoulda Apr 17 '22 at 19:32
  • Do not try to unlock bootloader! take some hours time and read careful each and every sublink you can find in depth starting from my link, before even think about trying to root. you should understand that there is no solution so far, you will be the very first.. – alecxs Apr 18 '22 at 09:06

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