A sudden reset on a Xiaomi or Redmi smartphone can be a disaster if you don’t back up important files. Photos, contacts, correspondence and documents that would seem to disappear forever can often be restored if you act correctly and without panic. Modern Android operating systems and the MIUI shell (HyperOS) have built-in protection mechanisms that many users do not even know.
Before you start taking action, you need to understand what exactly happened to your device. If you have a full Factory Reset, the file system marks the place where the data was stored as free to record. It is critical that you stop using your smartphone right now so that the new data does not overwrite the deleted information. The less you do on your phone, the better the chances of a successful recovery.
In this article, we will take a look at all the ways you can get your data back after you reset your settings on Xiaomi. We will look at cloud services, local backups, and custom PC software. Even if you didn’t manually backup, chances are that sync worked in the background.
Checking cloud storage Mi Cloud and Google Drive
The first and easiest step is to check cloud services that may have been running in the background. Xiaomi account owners often forget that they have gallery or contacts sync enabled. Go to your phone settings, look for Mi Account and check sync status. If the sliders were active, your data may be on the company's servers.
The same is true of the Google ecosystem: virtually every Android smartphone is tied to a Gmail inbox, automatically stores contacts, calendar, notes and sometimes photos. To check, go to photos.google.com or contacts.google.com from your computer, logged in to your account. Recovery from the cloud is instantaneous after logging in to the reset device.
⚠️ Note: When logging into a Google account on a newly dropped phone, you may need to confirm via a Google account. SMS or code from an authenticator application. SIM-The card is active, or use backup codes.
It is also worth checking the Settings → Google → Backup section, which displays the date of the last saved copy of the application data and system settings. If the date is current, then when you first set up the phone after the reset, the system will prompt you to restore the data from this point.
💡
If you have changed your password from your Mi or Google account recently, remember the old password – sometimes the system may request it to authorize old backups.
Search for local backup in device memory
The MIUI shell has a built-in function to create local backups that are stored directly in the phone's internal memory. Many users do them periodically without thinking about the consequences of reset. The problem is that Factory Reset often deletes these files, but doesn't always disappear physically immediately. However, if you backed up the SD card, you're incredibly lucky.
To search, use the file manager. You need to find the MIUI → backup → AllBackup folder. This is where the archives with the.bak extensions are stored. If you find a file there with a date preceding the reset, you can restore contacts, messages, call logs and system settings. The recovery process is started through the Settings menu → About the phone → Reservation and Restore.
- 📂 Open the Explorer app and go to the root folder.
- 📂 Find the directory. MIUI/backup/AllBackup.
- 📂 Check for files with recent creation dates.
- 📂 If files are found, use a regular recovery tool.
This is complicated if the backup was in the internal memory and was deleted along with the rest of the data, in which case the system's regular tools can not see it. However, there are methods of deep memory scanning, which we will talk about later.
Where exactly do you look for hidden backup folders?
Use of specialized software for PC
If the clouds are silent and there are no local copies, data recovery software comes to the rescue, and works by scanning the file system for tails — data that is marked as deleted but not yet overwritten by new files. Xiaomi often requires superuser rights (Root), which, after a reset, tend to fly off.
One popular program is Dr.Fone or Tenorshare UltData, which allows you to scan your device in USB debugging mode, you need to connect your phone to your computer with a cable, enable developer mode and allow debugging, and it will try to find deleted photos, videos and documents.
☑️ Preparation for PC scanning
There is also a utility Recuva (for memory cards) and PhotoRec (for advanced users). SD-Take it out, put it in the card reader, and scan it with a computer, and it's much more effective than scanning the phone's internal memory through a cable, because it's like a normal disk.
| Programme | Type of data | I need a Root. | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dr.Fone | Photos, Contacts, Messages | Preferably. | Low. |
| Recuva | Files from SD-map | No. | Low. |
| DiskDigger | Photos and videos | Yes (for deep) | Medium |
| PhotoRec | All types of files | Depends on access. | Tall. |
Remember, no program is 100% guaranteed. Success depends on how much you used your phone after a reset. Android's default encryption (FBE/FDE) makes passwordless recovery almost impossible for current versions of Android 10 and higher. If the phone was reset, the encryption keys could be destroyed, making the data unreadable even when the memory chip is physically removed.
Recovery through Google services (Contacts, Photos, Drive)
Don't underestimate the power of Google services. Users are often surprised to find their data in unexpected places. For example, photos could be saved in Google Photos even if the sync of the Xiaomi gallery was disabled, documents could fly to Google Drive, and passwords could go to Google Password Manager.
To check your contacts, open your browser and go to contacts.google.com. On the left-hand menu, there is a button called "Settings" where you can undo changes. It allows you to roll back the status of your contact list back in time (by 10 minutes, an hour, yesterday or up to a week ago), a powerful tool if you accidentally delete contacts or they disappear after reset.
- 📸 Check the cart in Google Photos - deleted photos are stored there for 60 days.
- 📄 Go to Google Drive and check the “My Drive” and “Recent” sections".
- 📞 Use the Contact Backup feature on Google Contacts.
- 🔑 Check passwords.google.com to recover passwords.
Also worth a look at is Google Keep for Notes and Google Calendar, which syncs almost instantly when you have the Internet, and if you re-enter your Google account after you reset, the data should be automatically pulled up within minutes.
Specifics of working with the Android file system
To understand why data is difficult to recover, you need to understand how memory works. Today's Xiaomi smartphones use a file system called f2fs or ext4 with over-encrypted encryption. When you reset, the system doesn't erase the bits immediately, it just labels the cells as free and generates a new encryption key for the user partition.
This means that old data can physically stay on the memory chip, but without the old key, it is a set of meaningless digital noise. Which is why recovery methods that worked on older Android (versions 4-6) are virtually useless on Android 11, 12, 13, 14. Encryption has become a security standard that protects your data even in the event of a device being stolen.
⚠️ Warning: Programs that promise to "magic restore" everything and everything without root rights to new Android are likely fraudulent.Do not enter card details or pay for questionable licenses.
However, some metadata or files that have not been encrypted (such as a portion of the cache or files in public folders before being reset) can theoretically be found, but the chances of recovering entire messenger databases (WhatsApp, Telegram) after being completely reset without a backup tend to be zero due to end-to-end encryption.
Preventing Data Loss in the Future
The best way not to look for a way to get your data back is to make sure it doesn't have to be restored. Set up automatic sync right now. At Xiaomi, it's done through the Settings menu → Mi → Mi Cloud Account. Enable gallery, contacts and notes sync. It'll take a couple of minutes, but it'll save you in the future.
Use the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of data, on two different media, one of which is located elsewhere (the cloud). For photos, the perfect bundle is: the original on your phone + a copy on your PC / hard drive + a copy in Google Photos or Yandex.Disk. Regular copy creation is the key to security.
💡
Automatic synchronization with the cloud is the only reliable way to protect against data loss when a smartphone is reset or broken.
It is also recommended to periodically check the health of backups, try to restore a couple of photos or contacts to another device to make sure that the backup is not damaged.