Matt,

You'd have to use something like the IUWEshare iPhone Data Recovery they advertise, or perhaps something similar for Android, or check the Apple or Google stores to get something that runs on the phone itself rather than in Windows.

This sort of software searches data storage that uses a Windows file system, finding any data & trying to assemble that into usable files. The data itself is stored in small chunks, & when a file's deleted, or something goes wrong, what's more-or-less a table of contents for the storage no longer knows what's stored where, although that data is usually still there until it's overwritten.

With a cell phone a few things make that more difficult... One, it doesn't use a Windows file system, and two, unless the phone's rooted you don't have access to all of the files. Then you have the difficulties connecting a phone to a Windows device [PC/laptop] etc. If what you want to recover is stored on a micro SD card, you can always remove it & use a card reader. If what you want to recover, e.g. photos, is in the cloud, you *may* be able to recover stuff you've deleted depending on the cloud services provider.

Matt, It appears that you may have to download iPhone Data Recovery if you are trying to recover items from your Phone instead of this software which appears to be for Photos only.

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[ Matt ],

They have their own, free:

[ http://iuweshare.com/free-iphone-data-recovery.html ]
.

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[ TK ],

Actually, the "safest" would be a program that WRITE PROTECTS the medium being recovered, like SD-card switches, and floppy diskette sliders and stickers.

I suppose we could use [ diskpart ] to accomplish that, but it WRITES to the media to accomplish write protection.

Does anyone know of an operating system "switch" that write protects any medium?
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Peter Blaise, technically it does not have to formally write protect anything all it has to do is unmount the drive and access it directly denying all other operating system processes from even seeing the drive or partition then it can effectively create a drive image... it's the same sort of thing that happens when you do a boot time defragment of a drive or a scheduled boot time chkdsk on the system drive because chkdsk cannot repair a filesystem that is in use by other processes. The only process that can access the chosen drive/s is the one that unmounts it and blocks the other bootup process activity until it is finished.
If the program has exclusive access to a partition and performs no write operation on the locked partition then it is practically write protected for the exclusive access duration.

TK, Very nice details here! Thanks for doing all the work!!! I also do not like several problems you have discovered here!

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[ TK ],

I'm just responding to your comment on "safety", which you missed by saying that a program that dismounts the drive or looks at a drive not that Windows has not mounted yet can WRITE to the drive, such as ChkDsk and various boot defraggers.
___________

Does anyone know of a way to write protect media, mechanically or via software settings?

Thanks.
.

Peter Blaise, I did not miss anything. Those other boot time operations are examples of how a system drive is accessed exclusively by a program, from then on it's upto the program if the drive ever gets written to as windows filesystem driver no longer has access to the drive.

Fact is what you are wanting to achieve, which is not necesary for the safe image making process, is a forensic operating system which windows is NOT and cannot be without severly hacking drivers.

If you really want to make a normal read/write drive read only you would have to create a custom driver that by default prohibits writes to the attached device. The file disk.sys could be hacked to have an additional RO parameter that is enabled on a disk being installed on the system and then if you want it to be read/write enabled you'd go into device manager and deselect the RO advanced setting.The big problem with this and other driver inf file hacking is it breaks driver WHQL signing so the system has to run either with manual advanced disabled driver signature enforcement or windows would need to be configured for test signing mode to permit the use of self-signed drivers and system files. You could also hack the firmware on a USB hard drive caddy so it keeps any attached drive unwritten to. But to my knowledge there is no built in simple software switch to enforce read-only on normal drives in any released version of microsoft windows.

HellsBells, in the right corner of this site you will find this:

System Requirements:
Windows 10/ 8.1/ 8/ 7/ Vista/ XP/ Server 2012/ Server 2008/ Server 2003

Publisher:
IUWEshare
Homepage:
http://iuweshare.com/photo-recovery.html
File Size:
5.70 MB

Price:
The program is available for $69.99,
but it will be free for our visitors
as a time-limited offer.

MikeR,

Hi, please correct me if I'm wrong. About PhotoRec.. You say 'computer users who aren't geeks might appreciate the insights provided here by PhotoRec', etc. AREN'T GEEKS(??)) To me it looks every inch 'geeky'!:) Imagine every day life situation when one goes to hospital because there's something wrong with them, the doctors perform an X-ray of their body and present it asking: show me where the the pain is, AND - you can either fix it yourself, OR we'll fix it for you!? Now, most sensible thing would (surely) be to go under general anaesthetic, let them deal with that X-ray, fix what's wrong, and wake up happy:)??

In other words - PhotoRec, as clever and efficient as it might be, or indeed is - is not a Tool most users are familiar with, unless they know exactly what they're doing conducting this D.I.Y operation.. Am I little bit right?:) Looking at 'step-by step' on that website You provided the link for - gave me (and perhaps others) that very impression.. Not for the first time, and nothing has changed there since I looked at it last time and attempted to use it.. Shame, I would gladly donate some money to them if they could kindly change that 'DOS-like' GUI for something more 'modern' and approachable!?

Finally - I too find IUWEshare Photo Recovery Wizard 1.8.8.8, rather useless. After hours (and hours) of searching for 'lost photo Files' - it found nothing in Folders with missing images, some remaining DB Files at best. Have to uninstall.