HTC One M8 - Lost all camera pictures?

[Fixd]

Hi guys,

So I recently went to a festival, and took my old Samsung Galaxy S2. Once I was home, I transferred a load of the videos I had taken onto my HTC, placing them in a new folder; HTC One_M8\Internal storage\Pictures\Global.

I noticed that after doing that, I no longer had any pictures on my HTC that had been taken with the camera, which I thought was odd. I have now taken the videos back off my HTC, and my pictures still aren't there.

The only pictures that are present are the thumbnails, which are not useful. Any idea where they might've gone / how to re-index them / find them?

Cheers.

 

[B. Diddy]

Have you tried looking for the photos using a 3rd party file manager app like ES File Explorer?

 

[Philipmom]

My pictures always show up in a file called DCIM. Try putting them in that. Also try ES Strongs file Explorer to search for it.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Fixd]

Thank you for your suggestions; using both explorers, the files were not found.

Not sure what to try next.

 

[Fixd]

Alright so I've just got off the phone from HTC, they were incredibly unhelpful. The representative was suggesting it was a fault with the camera, that it hadn't been saving the pictures correctly. I do not see how that is the case, as I have had this phone since it was released, and I've been capturing, saving and sending pictures and videos absolutely fine. He suggested that I performed a hard reset to see if that will fix the problem, but I'm not sure if it's worth it; any thoughts on this?

 

[Legobricke]

Might your photo's be in the google + cloud?

I have all photos upload to Google + account to be sure I never lose any of them...

I have had friends also lose all photo's due to bad phone or bad sd card.... but they have always been able to recover them from the Google + back up.

 

[Fixd]

I've already checked that, they're not there. I don't think the Google + Backup procedure had been set-up until recently, which adds salt to the wound.

 

[Fixd]

Any other suggestions? Is it worth performing a hard reset?

 

[B. Diddy]

Just to be sure--you used your file manager app to look at /storage/sdcard0/DCIM/Camera, right?

 

[whitelunchbag]

Have you tried plugging into a computer and searching the phone for *.jpg

This will show all photos on the phone, if they're still there

Posted by my Nexus 7 (2013)

 

[Fixd]

Just to be sure--you used your file manager app to look at /storage/sdcard0/DCIM/Camera, right?

Yes, I have browsed this location, as well as all other possible file locations for pictures and they aren't there.

Have you tried plugging into a computer and searching the phone for *.jpg

This will show all photos on the phone, if they're still there

I have also tried this, and it found none of my images. It did scour the .thumbnails folder in DCIM, finding thumbnails for a lot of, if not all, of the missing photos.


As an aside, in the system's storage information, it states that there's around 180MB of data in the "Pictures" section, while the "Other" section is comprised of 6GB. Now, I had close to 500 photos and videos (judging by the file names of any photos I take now), which would probably equate to a lot of this 6GB storage bulk. What do you think of this? Could it be possible that the photos have lost their indexing / image IDs?

 

[B. Diddy]

Do you have a LOST.DIR folder anywhere? Files that get messed up somehow may get moved there. If you see a bunch of files there, you may want to see if you can open any as a photo

 

[Fixd]

Do you have a LOST.DIR folder anywhere? Files that get messed up somehow may get moved there. If you see a bunch of files there, you may want to see if you can open any as a photo

I have two "Lost and found" folders, but both are empty.

 

[B. Diddy]

I don't have much else to suggest, unfortunately. You could try booting into Recovery Mode and wiping the cache partition, which won't erase any personal data. http://forums.androidcentral.com/ht...ow-reboot-into-stock-recovery-htc-one-m8.html

 

[WPilcher]

I don't have much else to suggest, unfortunately. You could try booting into Recovery Mode and wiping the cache partition, which won't erase any personal data. http://forums.androidcentral.com/ht...ow-reboot-into-stock-recovery-htc-one-m8.html

Alright, thank you for your help. Failing that, would a hard reset help?

 

[B. Diddy]

A hard reset won't help you recover any lost photos, because it will definitely wipe your phone.

 

[Fixd]

Thank you all very much for your help, especially B. Diddy; after discussing the issue with colleagues, one suggestion was to run a file recovery on the SD card alone, as plugging the HTC into a computer would lead it to being read as a device, rather than a drive, thus not allowing file recovery programs to run. Upon removing the SD card and plugging it into a card reader on my colleague's PC, it was evident that all of my photos were stored in a DCIM folder on there, rather than the phone itself. (Obvious, I know).

For some reason, during the process of placing the videos onto the phone, the SD card had been unmounted; the phone had no way of reading any of the data on there, as if the SD wasn't actually plugged in at all. By placing the SD card back in while the phone was off, before then booting it, removing the card, then placing it back in, the phone finally realised that it was present in the system, allowing it to finally find all of the photos again.

I hadn't considered the possibility of an error with the external storage, but I'm very glad to now have this resolved. Once again, thank you all for your suggestions.

 

[oditius]

And in the future, starting today.. Download Dropbox and set it up to automatically upload photo's and videos when on Wifi... Never loose a picture again...

 

[B. Diddy]

Thank you all very much for your help, especially B. Diddy; after discussing the issue with colleagues, one suggestion was to run a file recovery on the SD card alone, as plugging the HTC into a computer would lead it to being read as a device, rather than a drive, thus not allowing file recovery programs to run. Upon removing the SD card and plugging it into a card reader on my colleague's PC, it was evident that all of my photos were stored in a DCIM folder on there, rather than the phone itself. (Obvious, I know).

For some reason, during the process of placing the videos onto the phone, the SD card had been unmounted; the phone had no way of reading any of the data on there, as if the SD wasn't actually plugged in at all. By placing the SD card back in while the phone was off, before then booting it, removing the card, then placing it back in, the phone finally realised that it was present in the system, allowing it to finally find all of the photos again.

I hadn't considered the possibility of an error with the external storage, but I'm very glad to now have this resolved. Once again, thank you all for your suggestions.

Awesome! I'm kicking myself for not asking you before if you had an SD card--I was assuming that we were talking about photos on Internal Storage.

It's odd that the SD card would have stayed unmounted. I think that when you connect the phone to your computer via USB, the SD card essentially unmounts temporarily so that it can be read by the computer, but when you unplug the phone, I would imagine that the phone should re-mount the card. The next time you plug your phone into the computer, check the computer's System Tray (assuming you have a PC), and see if there is a "Safely Remove Device" icon. Click on it, and see if there is a selection to Eject the phone. If there is, then perhaps you didn't properly eject the phone last time, which caused the phone not to remount the card. Also, next time after unplugging the phone, go to Settings>Storage, and see if the SD card is still mounted, or if there is an option to Mount.