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I have a rooted HTC Desire HD with a Custom Rom. Now, I want to permanently delete the stored images on my internal memory (/data). Everytime I run the app Disk Digger, my old crappy photos seems to show up. I tried flashing again and again and doing a a factory reset again and again but the images seems to be always there. All i want is to remove that images from my internal memory so i can safely sell my phone. Can anyone help me? BTW, the exact location where the disk digger digs is /dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.2/by-num/p26.

Can someone help me here?

  • It is not the best suggestion: fill your memory full, then empty it. Repeat that procedure as much as you can. This will overwrite new data onto your old data which will decrease chance for someone else could recover your data. –  Jul 04 '13 at 19:27
  • This is the wrong site for this (I've flagged for migrating it), but it's very likely if the phone is linked with Google that they are redownloading the pictures because they see they've been deleted – Canadian Luke Jul 04 '13 at 19:41
  • I have only Internal memory. I removed my SD. You mean I will fill my internal storage with files until it becomes full then i will do factory reset? Is that what you mean? –  Jul 04 '13 at 19:44
  • Krev, are you a linux user or windows? –  Jul 04 '13 at 19:53
  • iam windows @angs –  Jul 04 '13 at 20:00
  • I don't use android, but google says that Disk Digger is a recovery tool as well.Even if you remove a file from a storage unit, it is not really deleted and still stored on the storage.If you overwrite a new data on that specific memory location, the data will be harder to be recovered. As I know the "secure delete programs" overwrites onto old data many times that makes too difficult to recover, however there is never guarantee. If you can access that memory through your computer, try such programs to remove it http://www.howtogeek.com/72130/learn-how-to-securely-delete-files-in-windows/ –  Jul 04 '13 at 20:06
  • The similar happened on my Galaxy Note 4. I deleted a bunch of image files via rm command in Terminal. The files were no longer visible in Terminal. But somehow the image browser can still see them as intact files. I tried 'ls and grep' all over the phone directories and could not find them anywhere. (I could be missing some privileged folders though). I figured they must still be lingering in some system cache of sort so I tried restarting the phone. After reboot, image browser consolidated its catalog again and the images supposedly removed were gone. –  Jun 29 '15 at 23:37
  • WHAT MAKES RECOVERY OF DELETED DATA DIFFICULT / IMPOSSIBLE? – Irfan Latif Apr 13 '20 at 04:13

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Perhaps the reason why your old photos survive flashes is because there may be a secondary internal flash memory that is separate from both the memory used for the OS (root) and the removable microSD slot. (I know my phone is like this.) Not sure why they would still be there after a factory reset though. Have you tried removing them using a file manager app like ES File Explorer, ASTRO, etc?

Another suggestion would be to verify that the photos aren't owned by root. If they are you could try removing them using the Android Terminal EmulatorAndroid Terminal Emulator app with root privileges, or try connecting your phone to your computer and delete them using the Android Debug Bridge.

  • I tried it deleting but it always fails. I tried with Terminal Emu, ES File Explorer, File Manager but It can't be deleted. –  Jul 04 '13 at 19:48
  • That's weird. Are there any warnings or errors when you do so? When you used Terminal Emu did you run rm as root ie using su? Do you have the Superuser app installed? –  Jul 04 '13 at 20:07
  • Yes. Oh yes, i forgot the su command. Sorry. maybe i'll try. I'll update you. –  Jul 04 '13 at 20:15