My iPad 4 Retina was stolen, and when I got it back the guy stealing it had upgraded my IOS 6 to 7. I had nothing valuable on it, that's why I haven't used cloud, itunes backup, nothing. So no backup, anywhere.

BUT - my mom celebrated her 60th birthday a couple of weeks ago, and I took some pics and about 15 minutes of video. I've tried probably 12-15 different programs to try to recover the files, without result. As far as I know Apple uses some sort of encryption, so should I just give up or is it possible to save the content without spending hundreds and maybe even thousands of dollars on equipment or services?

After getting the iPad back I haven't used it because I read somewhere that my data could be overwritten, or something like that. But that might be pointless since the guy stealing it have installed loads of crap on it.. Not sure what to do here.

Anyone?

I think you are going to need a very well equipped DR Lab for this with something like a Cellbrite. You will need to contact DR Labs, and judge the response after you tell them your chain of events. If they say something like "I'll give it a go" or "I'll see what I can do" instead of being able to tell you a process and expected outcome... I would NOT take it there.

Personally, I do not like your chances. There may be some hope of unsoldering NAND chip and recovering something but this will take expertise and is likely to be VERY expensive.

I would be contacting everyone at the 60th and try to pool the pics together as a (albeit unequal) replacement.

A very unfortunate tale

Unslodering doesn't make sense. Data on Apple flash are crypted in new devices.

You probably overwritten most of your data, you can try recovery it somewhere in lab. But in my opinion result will be poor.

_________________
Odzyskiwanie danych

Hmm seems like it's pointless to try to get my data back, then. Not ready to spend lots of money to recover it either, so.. Kinda sucks. Thanks for the replies though.

You are right, it is why I mentioned expertise. But I was trying to convey that it is going to take a special DR Lab to recover anything..

Ie lab in FBI or NSA