PICTURES SEEM GONE!! Very nervous, please put me at ease.

[bxbshingo]

So earlier, I noticed that I had about 400 MB left on my internal space.

So I put my phone into my computer via USB, and planned on transfering my many pictures located on my internal to a hard drive. When I located the "pictures" photo where it's located, I noticed that my pictures (located in my "screenshots") folder, was empty! That's not true at all, as I had pulled them up in Astro and even though it took a while, they were there!

So I figured what the hell and cut and paste the folder over to the hard drive. It took a LOOOOOOOOOONG time, but when it finished, nothing was there! Luckily, it seemed like they were STILL on my phone. Weird.

Not luckily. Because now my PHONE suddenly has 9 GB of free space! And in that folder, it's STILL empty! Upon moving that folder back, it shows as EMPTY in Astro! What the HELL.

There's about 26,000 photos over the course of 3 years on there, and it seems to be lost in the void! I need as much help as I can, please help put me at ease and know I can get these files back. Thank you so much.

 

[srkmagnus]

On your desktop computer, can you see what the size of the folder is? If it's around the file size you remember it on your device then something is there, hopefully it's photos. Let us know you see.

 

[bxbshingo]

The Folder always said 0 Btyes and 0 in size since I put it in, but it was NOT a corruption issue. It showed up on my phone in Astro File Viewer, but just not on my computer. I tried to copy it anyway thinking it was just my computer. Nothing shows up there however. But now that I cut the folder and pasted it to a flash drive, saw it was nothing and pasted it back to my phone's internal, now THAT says empty! So confused.

 

[bxbshingo]

bump

 

[dakeb]

Sadly, I think you have accidentally deleted all your photos by overwriting them on the phone with the folder that you pasted to your pc in a failed cut and paste operation.

You shouldn't have had them all on your phone without backing them up. In future use something like dropbox to save them to the cloud. Your phone could have easily gone faulty or been stolen.

I always save photos to my removable sd card too, in case the phone needs a factory reset. I also save them to a network storage device.

Can you see your photos in your phone gallery? If not, they are lost.

Open up your photo viewer on your pc. If you can see them there you might have just got lucky, and then find where your pc library stored them. If not it's bad news I'm afraid.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk 2

 

[bxbshingo]

How do so many photos just vanish into the void, though? Even if it were a failed cut and paste...they never properly showed up on my PC at all. Just showed nothing, but they showed up on every single photo viewer on my phone.

 

[dakeb]

Using cut and paste is dangerous, always use copy and paste in case the paste doesn't work.

What you saw on your phone after the paste might have been thumbnail images compiled by the picture viewer, not the original images. These would have disappeared after your viewer rebuilt its library.

Can you see the photos in a picture viewer, either on your pc or on your phone now?

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk 2

 

[bxbshingo]

I can't see them. And I know for a fact these weren't the thumbnails, but the full files. It's confusing as to what happened. Now I feel as if I could possibly run a file recovery program on them, but the problem is none of them seem to be showing my phone since it's not assigned a letter drive.

 

[dakeb]

If you connect your phone directy to your pc with a USB cable is should be able to recognise it as a drive. This works with my Galaxy Note.

Remember, when you "cut" files, you are telling your computer or phone to delete the originals. They didn't just disappear, they were deleted.

Then you can use Windows Explorer to browse your phone, or assign it a drive letter.

 

[bxbshingo]

It simply shows up as it's Phone name, "SPH-L710" without me able to assign it a drive

 

[dakeb]

If you click on SPH-L710 in "My Computer" it should open the folders.

 

[bxbshingo]

If you click on SPH-L710 in "My Computer" it should open the folders.

It unfortunately gives me no way to scan any of them through any scanners, since it's using MTP and not USB mass storage.

 

[dakeb]

Try using the app "Airdroid" to access your phone from your pc using WiFi.

 

[bxbshingo]

Very awesome app, but how am I supposed to scan for deleted files with it?

 

[dakeb]

I doubt you will be able to recover deleted files on your phone, but browse the folder structure of your phone to DCIM/camera and see if any photos are in there.

In future you can use this app to transfer photos to your pc safely.

Have you looked in your pc recycle bin for your photo folder by any chance?

 

[bxbshingo]

I doubt you will be able to recover deleted files on your phone, but browse the folder structure of your phone to DCIM/camera and see if any photos are in there.

In future you can use this app to transfer photos to your pc safely.

Have you looked in your pc recycle bin for your photo folder by any chance?

I'm guessing it would be via drive C, since thats the paritition it would have been deleted on?

 

[dakeb]

Yes, the recycle bin on your desktop.It's a long shot.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk 2

 

[bxbshingo]

Apparently my micro SD Card is also marked as dirty, as there seems to be something wrong with the volume. I can copy files, but I cannot move them. Is there a way I can move the files off the card completely so I can format it? CHKDSK yielding "there was an error examining the free space".

 

[Shawn_S]

If the files are truly gone try a program from SanDisk called RescuePro. I've used it for photography with CF &SD cards. Also played with it a little on hard drives. NOTE: I've never used it on a phone so read up on it to see what the cons are.

Sent from my HTC6435LVW using AC Forums mobile app

 

[SebasCvdB]

And that's why you should invest in an app like Lookout for example.. It makes back ups too from all your pictures etc... I don't get why people don't make backups to begin with??