Recovering deleted messages from a digital answering machine

[Karlin High]

One of my clients brought in a Uniden TRU9480 cordless phone and made an unusual request: can messages deleted from the phone's digital answering machine be recovered? My first response: No. But then she said...

The messages are from her husband, who died in a heavy equipment accident this past summer. She is left with 3 children, ages 4, 2, and 7 months. Her 2-year-old son accidentally deleted the messages. She badly wants the messages recovered so in future years her children can hear what their dad's voice sounded like. (Yes, she knows it will probably be expensive.)

I have experience recovering deleted files from flash devices like USB drives and SD cards. And there are many labs doing data recovery work on failed hard drives. But a cordless phone like this... I'm not sure where to start. I've sent an email to Uniden in hopes of getting a "wiring diagram" of the circuit boards, which might help a data recovery lab identify memory chips.

Does anyone know of a data recovery place that would take a job like this?

 

[SpaceSquad]

I don't have any experience...but have you had her unplug or disable the voicemail system? Wouldn't want to overwrite anything and make matters worse.

 

[Markverhyden]

One of my clients brought in a Uniden TRU9480 cordless phone and made an unusual request: can messages deleted from the phone's digital answering machine be recovered? My first response: No. But then she said...

The messages are from her husband, who died in a heavy equipment accident this past summer. She is left with 3 children, ages 4, 2, and 7 months. Her 2-year-old son accidentally deleted the messages. She badly wants the messages recovered so in future years her children can hear what their dad's voice sounded like. (Yes, she knows it will probably be expensive.)

I have experience recovering deleted files from flash devices like USB drives and SD cards. And there are many labs doing data recovery work on failed hard drives. But a cordless phone like this... I'm not sure where to start. I've sent an email to Uniden in hopes of getting a "wiring diagram" of the circuit boards, which might help a data recovery lab identify memory chips.

Does anyone know of a data recovery place that would take a job like this?

Crack the case of the base unit and see if there is a removable flash card device. It's new enough that might be a possibility. Otherwise I doubt Uniden will know in information. So much of that stuff is third part contracted, both design and build.

If I was willing to spend money I would just start calling the regular data recovery companies. Some many get involved in solid state devices.

 

[lcoughey]

Proprietary storage, proprietary file system and proprietary files may result in a very expensive recovery...if the system was used after the deletion, the odds go down and the price goes up.

How much is it worth to the client?

 

[Karlin High]

Thanks, everyone. I have the phone base in my office; no one will be using it. My client does not think any messages were left on the phone since the deletion.

She mentioned the amount $200 USD as what she'd be willing to pay without hesitation. In my experience with hard drive recovery lab prices, she should multiply by 4 at least.

And, someone on eBay had a same-model base-only for sale for about $15 USD. I bought it for experimental purposes.

 

[frostbyte5014]

It couldn't hurt to contact the manufacturer and see what they suggest. I know the larger data recovery centers that recover data from solid state hard drives should be able to recover the messages. The other problem is what format are they recorded in. The manufacturer could shed some light on this. The recordings may not be deleted but marked in someway as to not show as new recordings. There may be a trick to make them appear as new messages again. Also look to see what type of flash memory it has and do some research on it. There may be some pinouts and information on functions.

 

[wavey]

Found the manual, (if you have not already) it does say messages are deleted permanently, but there is contact info at the end. http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rc...jZpwK4yB0GYVFVg&bvm=bv.57752919,d.d2k&cad=rja

Good luck

 

[lcoughey]

Thanks, everyone. I have the phone base in my office; no one will be using it. My client does not think any messages were left on the phone since the deletion.

She mentioned the amount $200 USD as what she'd be willing to pay without hesitation. In my experience with hard drive recovery lab prices, she should multiply by 4 at least.

And, someone on eBay had a same-model base-only for sale for about $15 USD. I bought it for experimental purposes.

You are right, it would cost a lot more with most data recovery labs, including mine. Needing a custom solution is not going to be cheap.

 

[RedFoxComp]

I would bet it can be done but I can't imagine it being less than $1k and likely quite a bit more than that. Sounds like a whole lot of research and custom work.

Make sure you let her know that if she has allowed new messages to be recorded since they were deleted she is out of luck.

 

[Rob_NNCC]

Ok, so, you want to take it apart and google all the chips in there. It will likely be a 8 pin or a FLASH chip. Once you figure out what chip it is, unsolder it and put it on a break out. Then using the data sheet for that chip and a bus reader (like http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/bus-pirate-v3-assembled-p-609.html?cPath=61_68 )
and do a full dump on all addresses for the chip.

Then using your $15 demo hook the bus reader up to get an idea of how it does addressing and asks for the messages. Mimic that to get the addresses on the chip dump your did, figure out the codec, play.

 

[Karlin High]

Rob_NNCC: Thank. You. That Seeed Studio place is fascinating!

A process like you describe is sort of what I was imagining. It's beyond my skill level, but I know several people that would probably be capable.

 

[sammyizimmy]

Success! The messages have been recovered. Through a friend of Karlin‘s I got to work on this project and I will post a quick summary describing the procedure we followed.
open the answering machine and desolder the AT45DB321B flash memory chip.
The flash chip has an SPI interface; we connected it to the GPIO of a Raspberry PI to clock out all the data and save it to a file using a Python script to bit-bang the data out.

The Python script essentially sent the following bytes: [0xe8, 0x80, 0x04, 0x01, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0] which tells the flash chip to send us the data in continuous mode starting at the first register in the first page of memory. After that, each cycle of the clock outputs the next bit from the chip for the entire contents of the chip (4,325,376 bytes specifically) before rolling over and starting at the first register again.
The audio format seems to be a form of the G.721 format.
Install Vox Studio by xentec(I can't post links so google for it) and open the file as a Elan Informatique 32K ADPCM @ 8000 Hz sampling frequency then save as a WAV or whatever floats you boat.
If you don't want to pay $500 for Vox Studio you can do this, download g72x++.tar.bz2 (I can't post links so google for it) unpack and compile with build.sh. Use it with this string of commands in Bash:
cat <Raw data file> | decode-g72x -64 -u -L | sox -r 8000 -b 8 -c 1 -e u-law -t raw - -t wav <output file> ; cat <output file> | sed 's/\x0\x0\x0\x0//g' > tmp ; mv tmp <output file>

 

[Karlin High]

When I said "I know several people that would probably be capable," that meant sammyizimmy and the "friend of Karlin's" he mentioned. And I was not disappointed. If their day jobs didn't keep them busy designing control systems for industrial powerplants, who knows what would happen to Central Missouri... something involving robotics, Tesla coils, and alternative crypto-currencies maybe.

Thanks again, fellas. I got the WAV file, burned a CD, and put it in the mail today; my client's going to get a special Christmas present.

 

[lcoughey]

Great job! Was it done for $200 or less?

 

[freedomit]

Success! The messages have been recovered. Through a friend of Karlin‘s I got to work on this project and I will post a quick summary describing the procedure we followed.

open the answering machine and desolder the AT45DB321B flash memory chip.

The flash chip has an SPI interface; we connected it to the GPIO of a Raspberry PI to clock out all the data and save it to a file using a Python script to bit-bang the data out.



The Python script essentially sent the following bytes: [0xe8, 0x80, 0x04, 0x01, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0] which tells the flash chip to send us the data in continuous mode starting at the first register in the first page of memory. After that, each cycle of the clock outputs the next bit from the chip for the entire contents of the chip (4,325,376 bytes specifically) before rolling over and starting at the first register again.

The audio format seems to be a form of the G.721 format.

Install Vox Studio by xentec(I can't post links so google for it) and open the file as a Elan Informatique 32K ADPCM @ 8000 Hz sampling frequency then save as a WAV or whatever floats you boat.

If you don't want to pay $500 for Vox Studio you can do this, download g72x++.tar.bz2 (I can't post links so google for it) unpack and compile with build.sh. Use it with this string of commands in Bash:

cat <Raw data file> | decode-g72x -64 -u -L | sox -r 8000 -b 8 -c 1 -e u-law -t raw - -t wav <output file> ; cat <output file> | sed 's/\x0\x0\x0\x0//g' > tmp ; mv tmp <output file>

You know when you talk to your clients in tech speak and at the end they give you that look that they didn't understand anything you said......that's how I feel after reading this post.

Good work anyway

 

[sammyizimmy]

Great job! Was it done for $200 or less?

Was a joint hobby project so, yes because we already had all we needed on hand).

 

[MannyNeno]

Please sammyizimmy, I need to contact you. I did the same thing with my Radio Shack 43-3870. I lost my Dad's last message. I would be great if I could hire you to do this for me. Please let me know if you could do this.

 

[biprgriff]

Was a joint hobby project so, yes because we already had all we needed on hand).

Sammyizimmy, Oh boy. Me too. I'm hoping against hope that perhaps I can ask for your help. This could be a real business venture for you. I accidentally deleted the last messages my wife has been saving for 8 years from my Dad and my Mom..she especially wanted them for our daughter, their granddaughter. Needless to say my wife is upset & distraught and I'm in the doghouse. It's very uncomfortable in here and I'd do anything to get those messages back. I want to hire your expertise to get these messages out of our AT&T E5965C base for my family. It appears VTech makes most of the AT&T cordless phones - I don't know how similar that would be to Uniden. Please.

 

[Roger Bara]

Success! The messages have been recovered. Through a friend of Karlin‘s I got to work on this project and I will post a quick summary describing the procedure we followed.
open the answering machine and desolder the AT45DB321B flash memory chip.
The flash chip has an SPI interface; we connected it to the GPIO of a Raspberry PI to clock out all the data and save it to a file using a Python script to bit-bang the data out.

The Python script essentially sent the following bytes: [0xe8, 0x80, 0x04, 0x01, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0] which tells the flash chip to send us the data in continuous mode starting at the first register in the first page of memory. After that, each cycle of the clock outputs the next bit from the chip for the entire contents of the chip (4,325,376 bytes specifically) before rolling over and starting at the first register again.
The audio format seems to be a form of the G.721 format.
Install Vox Studio by xentec(I can't post links so google for it) and open the file as a Elan Informatique 32K ADPCM @ 8000 Hz sampling frequency then save as a WAV or whatever floats you boat.
If you don't want to pay $500 for Vox Studio you can do this, download g72x++.tar.bz2 (I can't post links so google for it) unpack and compile with build.sh. Use it with this string of commands in Bash:
cat <Raw data file> | decode-g72x -64 -u -L | sox -r 8000 -b 8 -c 1 -e u-law -t raw - -t wav <output file> ; cat <output file> | sed 's/\x0\x0\x0\x0//g' > tmp ; mv tmp <output file>

Sounds great! I would like a little more detail and or your help in trying to extract data from a similar device.

Thanks!

Roger

 

[altrenda]

This post is over 6 months old, yet its at the top of google for the topic.
Is sammyzimmy still active? Is there any hope for these people who are trying to contact him?