How can I run Recuva against an Android device, since no drive letter is assigned?

Recuva
1

I'm trying to run Recuva, or a similar tool, against the main drive in a Samsung S5. The device was accidentally reset and contains files I desperately need to retrieve.

I see that plugging it in does not assign the device a drive letter, and Recuva doesn't recognize it. My research tells me that Android devices used to allow USB Mass Storage, which would allow me to access the contents of the drive directly. However, that doesn't seem to be an option anymore.

1. Is there some way that I can mount that system as you would a flash drive, so I can run Recuva against it?

2. Is there some way to make an exact mirror of the disk that would allow me to run recovery tools against it independent of the physical device? I've seen mention of this on other community forums but haven't found a way of accomplishing it.

Thank you!

2

In short, you can't. Google had the ability to mount as a drive and recuva/most-data-recovery-software requires a drive letter.

I have seen some solutions (android apps) that claim to bring back the drive letter but most/all only allow the mounting of the external sd card.

3

Well, I've been doing a lot of research and it seems that Recuva just isn't the right tool for the job. For anyone else who has to deal with this issue, I'm exploring the options of making an image of the disk and running it through other recovery tools.

Thanks for the help.