[ahmedy]

I renamed some downloaded mp4 video files last evening and I woke up today to find almost half the files have disappeared (almost 30gb of data). The files are not hidden somewhere as the corresponding amount of data has been freed up.
I checked for viruses but everything seems to be okay. I did not change the file extensions so that is not the problem, as not all the videos have disappeared.
I am using a Huawei Nova 3i with android 8.1.0.
Please somebody help!

[Javier P]

Welcome to the forums. Where did you download those files from? Are you using an SD card to store them?

[ahmedy]

I have an SD card installed but am not using it for storing downloads. The files were downloaded from many file-sharing sites which I have been using for almost a year and this started happening last week with single files.

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! If you keep your downloaded files in the /Download directory only, then some phones have an automatic cleaner app or feature that can be set to periodically clean out the /Download directory. See if your phone has that and turn it off.

And keep in mind that just because a movie is on a file-sharing site doesn't mean it's legal. If it's not in the public domain, then it's probably violating all sorts of copyright laws.