How would I best attempt to recover a voice memo that apparently disappeared after my iPhone lost power while recording it, for which I have reason to believe at least part of it still exists, particularly given that my phone is my only Apple device?

The first iteration of this post was removed before for being "nontechnical or off-topic", even though it wasn't. So, here is it written in a much more LASER-focused manner. If you want to read what was approximately what I wrote in the original Apple Support Community post with all its potentially-valuable context, here's a Reddit post about the issue I made before I came here.


So, here's the problem:

  • What happened?: I lost access to data.
  • Affected device: iPhone 8.†
  • Data type: Audio (~1 hour and 30 minutes), lossily compressed(?), recorded by the default Voice Memos app.
  • Reason for loss: Power depletion during the recording process.
  • Reasons I think it's recoverable: Media being recorded as of power depletion has re-appeared after power depletion before, usually immediately (not in this case) and sometimes after some time (I don't know if I can trust that). Media being recorded as of power depletion that disappeared with power depletion has given indication it still exists on the drive before. And from a software-engineering perspective, given that a typical use-case of the Voice Memos app is recording lectures of up to similar length, by which time they'll be ~100 MB, making temporary storage exclusively in RAM unlikely (especially for a handheld consumer device from 2017).
  • Complications: Any easily-accessible PCs at my current location (from which I could perform the recovery) run Windows.


†Yes, I know this model is verging on official obsolescence. And because it's potentially relevant to say here, this is not for the iPhone associated with this account, but rather for someone close to said person—I am asking this question with this account as they forgot their AppleID password, and all the quick means of account recovery ultimately seem to require you to have access to your phone, which they do not safely have. As this is based on a pre-existing lengthy post, it is still written in first person... Which it also is in truth, as this post is written by that person using this account.

iPhone 8

Posted on Dec 25, 2023 7:11 PM

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How would I best attempt to recover a voice memo that apparently disappeared after my iPhone lost power while recording it, for which I have reason to believe at least part of it still exists, particularly given that my phone is my only Apple device?

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