My photos disappeared while transferring from my Nexus 6P to my PC

[AC Question]

I plugged in my Nexus in MTP mode, pulled up the photos on file explorer, selected all, selected Move to, and chose my Pictures file on my PC. The transfer took 30 minutes, but when I went to look at the photos in my picture file, all that was there were the file names ex. IMG-20160923, but no photos when I clicked on the file names. The only actual photos that transferred were ones I had taken in burst mode. I have lost hundreds of photos into the ether. Please HELP.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! First, did you definitely use the Move command, rather than the Copy command? Always use the Copy command, in case something goes wrong with the file operation. If the target files get corrupted, at least the source files remain. Move will delete the source files even if the target files weren't created properly.

Do you recall if those were actual files that you were moving, or were a lot of them folders titled "IMG-[xyz]"? I'm not exactly sure what they represent, but I think folders in the /DCIM/Camera directory represent photos that you may have deleted at some point, and the folders might act as placeholders in case you restore those photos from the trash.