Software Solutions for Recovery of the Lost Data from Mobile Phones, Tablets and Computers, Used in the Educational Process

Abstract

It is already known that during the pandemic the educational process took place most of the time online or at most in a hybrid format. Within these activities, there are situations in which, in addition to the online teaching, it is necessary to conduct and store courses, homework or other teaching materials on various types of devices (phones, tablets or computers). When they are disconnected incorrectly or become corrupt, errors occur, and the information may no longer be accessed. In the case of the Windows operating system if the disconnection of the PCs is performed by the users in an erroneous way, after reconnecting the storage devices, they still have access to the data. In the case of the Linux operating system if the disconnection is not the professional one, most of the time there are chances that at reconnection, the data that was saved on that storage device cannot be any longer accessed. The current paper presents two methods for recovering the lost information: one for the educational data recovery, and one for recovering contacts, which are often important in the communication process. These methods involve techniques for saving educational information/contacts from destroyed, corrupt or inaccessible storage devices when they cannot be used normally. A first application, proposed for PCs, uses the Master File Table and tries to retrieve information, by using an algorithm implemented in the C++ language, with multiple advantages over the algorithms found in similar applications. The second software application is developed for the Android platform and it was created to make a backup to the contacts from the smartphone and save them in a text (.txt) file. The software applications presented in the paper are useful especially for those who own computers and phones from older generations.