How to Recover Data from Xiaomi: The Complete Guide

Accidentally removing important photos, contacts or documents on a Xiaomi smartphone is a stressful situation that many users are familiar with. Fortunately, the Android operating system and the proprietary shell MIUI or HyperOS provide several layers of protection and mechanisms to return lost information.

Modern Xiaomi devices, whether it’s a budget Redmi or a flagship Black Shark, store data in special memory sections. When you delete a file, the system marks the space as free, but the content itself remains on the disk until it is overwritten with new data, which is why the first rule is to immediately stop active use of the gadget.

In this guide, we will take a look at all the current techniques, from built-in cloud services to the use of specialized software for PCs, how to work with a shopping cart, use a Mi Account and what steps to take if there are no backups. Data recovery is a delicate process that requires care and strict follow-up instructions.

Use of the Recycle Bin in Gallery and File Manager

The easiest and often ignored way to return deleted files is to check the built-in Recycle Bin. In the MIUI and HyperOS shells, deleted media files are not permanently erased immediately, but moved to the buffer zone, where they are stored for a certain time (usually 30 days), after which they are permanently destroyed.

To check, open the standard Gallery app and go to the Album tab. Scroll down to the end and you'll find the Deleted folder. If you've been looking for photos or videos, they're probably right here. All you need to do is select the right frames and click the recovery button.

The same is true of documents and archives: Open File Manager and find the basket icon, usually located in the menu or on the main screen of the application, which stores deleted files of all types. You can no longer recover files deleted from the recycle bin using standard system tools, so this step is critical.

⚠️ Note: Do not store deleted files in the Recycle Bin for too long.If the device's memory is full, the system can automatically start cleaning old deleted items, even if the 30-day deadline has not expired.

Users often forget that the shopping cart is also in the Google Photos cloud service if it is installed and synced. Check the Library → Recycle Bin section of this application. Sometimes files are deleted from the Xiaomi gallery, but remain in the Google account if sync was enabled.

Recovery through Mi Cloud Service

Xiaomi smartphone owners have access to their own cloud storage, Mi Cloud. This is a powerful tool that synchronizes contacts, notes, voice recorder, calendar and messages by default if you are logged in to your Mi Account. To recover data through this service, you need to go to the official cloud site via a browser on a PC or other device.

Sign in to your account using the same credentials as your phone. On the home page of the web interface, you'll see icons of different data categories. Choose the right one, such as Contacts or Gallery. If sync is enabled, your data will be available for download or recovery to the device.

The Mi Cloud feature is that it allows you not only to download a file, but also to roll back the status of contacts to a certain date. This is useful if you accidentally deleted a whole list of numbers or edited them incorrectly.

To activate sync in the future, go to Settings → Mi Account → Mi Cloud. Make sure that the sliders opposite important data (Contacts, Messages, Recorder) are activated, which ensures that even when you lose your phone, the information remains safe.

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Enable Find Device in Mi Cloud in advance, not only to help locate a lost phone, but also to remotely back up data before locking or resetting.

Backup and Restore through Google Account

Google’s ecosystem is the foundation for most Android smartphones, including Redmi and POCO. If your device has been enabled to sync with Google, then contacts, calendar events, Keep notes, and even passwords are stored on the corporation’s servers, an independent data storage channel from Xiaomi.

To check for backup, go to Settings → Google → Backup. This shows the date of the last copy and the list of applications that have been saved. To restore contacts, simply add your Google account to a new phone or after resetting, they will download automatically.

Google Photos, unlike the standard gallery, stores the history of deleted objects for up to 60 days (for Google One subscribers) or 30 days (for ordinary users), even if the phone is broken, you can log into your Google Photos account from any device and download lost photos.

Apps and data are also restored via Google Play, and when you first set up your phone, it will offer to restore data from the cloud, which will not only bring back the apps themselves, but in many cases, their settings and progress in games, if the developer uses the standard Android API.

Use of third-party software for PC

If built-in methods fail, computer software comes to the rescue, programs like Dr.Fone, Tenorshare UltData, or DiskDigger (PC version) scan the device's internal memory, looking for "residual" traces of files that have not yet been overwritten by the new data.

Such programs often require the inclusion of a mode. USB-To activate it, go to Settings. → About the phone and press 7 times on the item Version MIUI (or OS). Then in the advanced settings, a paragraph For developers will appear, where you need to enable debugging by USB.

The recovery process is usually like this: you cable your smartphone to your computer, run the scan, and wait for the results. It will show you a list of files you can preview before you recover. The effectiveness of the method depends on how much you used the phone after you delete it.

⚠️ Warning: Many recovery programs are marked as paid.The free versions often only allow you to scan the device and show preview files, requiring payment for the recovery process itself.

Recovery of data from SD-map

If your data (photos, music, documents) were stored on a MicroSD card, the probability of their successful return is much higher, in which case the files are not scattered in the sectors of internal memory, but are on a physical medium that can be connected to the computer as an external disk.

Remove the card from a Xiaomi smartphone and paste it into a PC card reader. Use proven data recovery tools like Recuva (free and efficient) or PhotoRec. Select deep scan mode to find even files whose file system has been corrupted.

It is important to save the recovered files to your computer’s hard drive, rather than back to the same one. SD-Recording new data to a map can permanently wipe out the sectors where deleted files were located, making recovery impossible.

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Reconstruction with SD-The card is more successful than with internal memory, since the card is not subject to active system encryption and cache overwriting in the background.

Professional Recovery and Service Centers

In cases where data is of critical value (family archives, business documents) and software methods do not help, it is worth turning to professionals. Service centers have equipment for working with memory at a low level (chip-off recovery), although for modern smartphones with soldered memory it is a difficult and expensive process.

Specialists can disassemble the device, check the status of the plumes and the memory controller. If the problem was a software failure of the controller or damage to the file system, professionals can create a sector-by-sector copy of the memory and try to collect data manually.

Consider that modern versions of Android use encryption by default, so if the phone was reset to the factory settings (Wipe Data/Factory Reset), the encryption keys are destroyed, in which case even professionals will not be able to recover the data, since they are just a set of unreadable digital noise.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)