An overview of data recovery

Data recovery is a powerful concept within digital forensics. It is the process of retrieving deleted data from a device or SD card when it cannot be accessed normally. Being able to recover data that is deleted by a user could help solve several civil and criminal cases. This is because most of the accused just delete the details on the device, hoping that the evidence will be destroyed. Thus, in most of the criminal cases, deleted data can be crucial, because it may contain information the user wanted to erase from the Android device. For example, consider the scenario where a mobile phone has been seized from a terrorist.

Wouldn't it be of the greatest importance to know which items have been deleted by them? Access to any deleted SMS messages, pictures, dialed numbers, and so on can be of critical importance, as they may reveal a lot of sensitive information. From a normal user's point of view, recovering data that has been deleted would usually...