Welcome to Android Central! Were the contacts associated with your Google account? Go to contacts.google.com on your desktop browser to see if they show up there. If not, then they were presumably saved to the local Device account, which doesn't backup anywhere automatically. That's why I always strongly recommend saving to your Google account.
Did you happen to have Google Photos installed to the device, with Backup & Sync turned on? Go to photos.google.com on your desktop browser and see if the pics are there. Again, this is a great Google feature that can save you headaches in the future.
For future reference, remember that mobile devices and mobile storage (i.e., SD cards) are not foolproof, and are not guaranteed to last forever. So if you store important or valuable data on a device like that, always make sure to back it up to a computer hard drive, to the cloud, or both.
11-29-2016 04:33 PM