[Stephen Ouellette]

I have a Galaxy S7 Active. Occasionally, i will take a picture and hear the confirming click and it appears as a tiny thumbnail on the camera app until another photo is taken. Then can't be found in gallery or using the file access on the phone or SD card.
I tried switching storage from the SD card to the phone-no difference. The photos just aren't anywhere to be found.
The phone also keeps changing this setting, so I set it to save photos to the phone, it changes to the SD card. (I also keep getting notices that my SD card is available for use, like it is mounting and un-mounting)

[SpookDroid]

Try removing the SD card completely. The camera app's default behavior is to switch to SD card storage every time one is inserted/detected. If yours is unmounting/mounting itself, that's probably why the setting changes itself, and it's also usually an indication that the card has been damaged/corrupted.

[Tim1954]

Perhaps give the gold contacts a gentle clean while the card is out...

[Stephen Ouellette]

I pulled the card, emptied it off, and then reformatted it. Haven't had an SD card notice since, so I suspect it was either some not properly seated or something had corrupted the card. (At one point I had a file locker program, but got rid of it, perhaps there were vestiges of the program on the card)

[SpookDroid]

And did that fix the picture saving problem, too?

[Stephen Ouellette]

I suspect so, as photos are saving instantly, whether I save to the internal memory or SD, and were not previously. Apparently photo storage kept defaulting back to the SD every time the SD card was recognized again and likely was trying to write to the corrupted SD card. Too early to know if it will resolve the issue, but given that the photos are saving faster, I am optimistic.

[SpookDroid]

Yeah, it probably was. Also, I strongly recommend NOT saving to SD Card. Save to internal memory and only move to SD card once you're sure you've backed up your pictures elsewhere (PC, cloud preferably). I've been 'burnt' by failing SD Cards (and Samsung doesn't seem to help things, there's something about their phones that just keep popping up with reports of failing SD cards).