How to recover deleted photos from Sony Xperia Z2/Z3

The method introduced in this article can also be applied to Sony Xperia Z3 and Sony Xperia Z3 compact.

Sony Xperia Z2 is a handsome and robust lad that defies typical hazards like water and dust, but what of untypical ones, like an absentminded owner confronted with the all crucial “delete all” confirmation and decide to press on, and all the photos on the phone end up being deleted by mistake. Well, as incredulous as it sounds, it happens to the best of us, if you are in such a dire situation, relax, chances are good that you can recover the deleted photos, one way or another.

Recover deleted photos from Sony Xperia Z2 normally goes three ways:

1. Online backup saves the day. Before resorting to recover local files, which is normally time consuming and costly, see if there’s an online backup somewhere that slips your mind. Even if the idea of backing up everything has never dawned on you, with every major tech companies trying to shove its could service in everyone’s face it is possible that one of them may have you consented to upload your files even without your noticing. Check Google +, if you haven’t changed the default setting, Google + has this auto backup feature that constantly uploads the videos and photos captured with your Sony Xperia Z2 to your  Google drive. Also take a look at Picasa, drop box, and Sony pc companion if you have it installed on your computer. But if you are positive there’s no online backup being made in the past, we have to recover local files, this leads to these two scenarios:
2. We can easily recover the deleted files if they are stored on the SD card.
   When the operating system sends a delete command, its purpose is to free up memory spaces, so the “deletion” only marks the area where the deleted files stored on the memory as bank and being available for storing new data. The deletion doesn’t destroy the actual files. With photo recovery software, the deleted files can be restored without much hassle.
3. Recovery impossible if the deleted files are stored on the phone internal memory.

Well, harsh truth is harsh… the phone memory is where the Z2’s system files are at, it simply denies access request from all third party software, including our photo recovery.

So, obviously the first scenario is a false alarm and the third one is a lost cause, we will concentrate on how to recover deleted photos locally from Sony Xperia Z2’s SD card. If you are reading this article on your Z2 or a tablet, you will need a computer to pull this off.

1. Take out the micro SD card from Z2 and use a SD card adapter/USB card reader to connect it with computer.
2. Download Photo Recovery software, the software is available on both Windows and Mac platform.
   
3. Start the software, click on “recover photos, audios & videos”.
4. Select the drive letter that represents the card. Click on “scan”.
   
5. Thus the scanning process began. It could take a while to go through every corner of the memory card. The scanning gathers all the files ever deleted from the card since the beginning, categorize and lists the files by file types and extensions, while scanning, you can preview the detected files in the preview window.
   
6. After scanning completed, check the files/types you want and recover the deleted files.