Lost files after hiding

[Android Central Question]

So there was a folder which had 1500 pictures inside (it was hidden). After I unhided there were 500 new files inside, but the old 1500 were missing. After renaming the folder, the rest 500 pics also disappeared. Which is the worst, the phone storage space also got more free space after that.

Is there any way to recover these, they are really important pictures. None of the recover apps have not workd yet.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Which phone? Is this a native folder-hiding feature, or a 3rd party file/folder locker? Was the folder on an SD card or Internal Storage?

 

[Cardriver123]

LG G7 ThinQ.
It is a 3rd party hider (file hide expert). Has always worked.
I had 1500 pictures in gallery (guess they weren't hided for some reason) so I decided to unhide. After that I had the 500 unhidden ones but 1500 ones were gone like for real gone.
Then I hided again and now all the files are gone.
The folder was 15 GB and now I have 15GB more space also it shows.
Internal storage.

 

[B. Diddy]

Have you contacted the app developer? file.hide.expert+fhe@gmail.com

Looking at the reviews, it looks like you're not alone. This was one of the responses from the developer on the Play Store page: "search the folder /mnt/sdcard/.hermit/recovery_area for the files with .hider extension.And then create a new folder somewhere and move all those hidden files into it. You can re-hide that folder and then unhide it in the app. You can also manually rename the files by removing the .hider extension if there are just several files."

 

[Cardriver123]

I know how failed hidden files look, there should be no media file and it still takes space on disk. But right now the folder is empty and the files are GONE for some reason.

 

[B. Diddy]

Sorry, but I'd still suggest contacting the developer, since it's their app that's probably responsible. Good luck!

 

[Cardriver123]

I tried again with test folder. I changed the folder name, then hided the files, now files are again forever gone.
Do you know how to recover because these files that first got lost are REALLY important and can not be recreated

 

[methodman89]

I tried again with test folder. I changed the folder name, then hided the files, now files are again forever gone.
Do you know how to recover because these files that first got lost are REALLY important and can not be recreated

I do not see your response regarding sdcsrd use as the storage area. This alone could be the issue.
If you have truly deleted, but didn't have any backups going, then you didn't treat them as if unreplaceable, because they are gone.
Post a screen shot of what you described.

 

[B. Diddy]

I do not see your response regarding sdcsrd use as the storage area. This alone could be the issue.
If you have truly deleted, but didn't have any backups going, then you didn't treat them as if unreplaceable, because they are gone.
Post a screen shot of what you described.

OP mentioned Internal Storage in post 3.

I have to agree with methodman89 -- if the photos were really important to you, it would've been a good idea to back them up somewhere (like a computer hard drive, or a cloud storage system). Never use your phone as the sole storage place for crucial data, because you never know when something like this might happen.

The only thing I can suggest now is to read this guide: [Guide] Recovering Deleted Files - Android Forums at AndroidCentral.com

 

[methodman89]

I know how failed hidden files look, there should be no media file and it still takes space on disk. But right now the folder is empty and the files are GONE for some reason.

Download Data Size Explorer from the playstore. Run both internal and sdcsrd if you have one. Look for the files this way. Good luck

 

[Cardriver123]

The files don't show up anywhere, I was able to write a 20gb file on the disk and it didn't say no space it just went there until the storage filled up

 

[Cardriver123]

All 2000 files were taken in last 1.5 days so I wasn't able to copy them yet.

 

[B. Diddy]

I know this doesn't help you for the photos you lost, but in the future, turn on Google Photos backup, so that your photos are automatically backed up: https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6193313?co=GENIE.Platform=Android&hl=en. You can set it so that it only backs up when you're connected to wi-fi, if you don't have unlimited data on your wireless plan.

 

[Cardriver123]

I know that I won't get them back.
What I guess happened is that they were whited/blanked but they were still there just owerwritten by blank file. Now I have overwritten the folder like 2 times already.
So we just went out and did another shoot day that wasn't in the plan