I need, desparately, to undelete a video that I inadertantly deleted from my iPhone. While I would certainly like it cost me as little as possible, if if costs me, that's fine. It is that important. How can I do it?

This is where it would be handy if Apple allowed for removable storage, or easily using an iDevice as a USB Flash drive, as it is far easier to undelete files from something that is treated as a normal hard drive than from a sealed box with proprietary standards.

I cannot think of any tricks right now (I’ve been up for >20 hours, and thus am a bit fuzzy) but I will say that your odds improve greatly if you don’t do any writing to the storage like installing apps, syncing songs, etcetera. That includes the cache for the browser; even surfing the web may overwrite the file fragments that remain.

Was waiting to see jerv’s reply first

This page claims to offer a free download which will verify if the data has not yet been overwritten and that it can be recovered

http://www.wondershare.com/disk-utility/recover-deleted-video-from-iphone.html

If it shows up after that it appears you need to buy the product…i suggest waiting for another opinion than mine on this before using it.

I have no idea if this will work on your phone, but when I accidentally deleted photos from my camera, the jellies recommended Recuva, and I got them back! Hope it does the job. :)

Damn insomnia…

I use Recuva myself, though it still requires mounting the device as a drive. That is the tricky part, but I remember doing it, and having to trick the system in order to do so. I might be wrong, but I almost think that part of that trickery involved not having iTunes installed; don’t quote me on that until i manage some sleep though.

Another option; it’ll cost but I’ve seen some pretty good results from them in the past. And as @jerv said, don’t go writing to the drive it’ll only increase the chances of permanent data loss.

I used Recuva (as has been suggested above) a year or two ago to save some files I had accidentally deleted.

It worked well.

You have to remember though the second you delete it, while it doesn’t actually delete from the phone it does open that space up for other uses (which will over-write it). If you deleted the videos weeks ago or even days ago they could be too far gone to recover. If it’s important enough I would turn the phone off til you can use the software, to stop it from writing new files.

Is your device backed up to the iCloud and PhotoStream? If so, when you delete a pic or video from your device, it is still in your PhotoStream.

As for your second comment about being gone and only coming back to ask for help, Fluther isn’t High School… I’ve had several lengthy absences over the years, and I have never been rebuked upon returning, only greeted warmly. People come and go for various reasons throughout life. We all need to handle our own business, and it’s good knowing that the collective is still here when we want or need to come back.

@lillycoyote Any luck in retrieving the video yet? And it’s great to hear from you again.