[mlb225]

My phone was plugged into my laptop charging while I was using it last night. All of a sudden, the phone restarted and when it came up, it appears it has been reset. None of my information is there - no contacts, no apps, no photos, nothing! I don't understand this as a lot of this data was saved to my SD card. I imagine if I set it up with my gmail account again, my contacts might repopulate, but I don't want to do that (or anything) until I know what's safe to do at this point. Any chance I'll be able to recover any of this? Thanks!

[Golfdriver97]

Welcome to the forums. I have heard of spontaneous resets, but that is very rare. As for why it happened, I do not know. Go ahead and set up your device again. If this happens even once more, other options might need to be considered.

[mlb225]

Thanks. I have no idea what happened. I even looked at info on how to do a hard reset and although I was using my phone, holding my daughter (and probably dozing off, lol) - I can't imagine how I would have accidentally hit all of those buttons at one. And I just remember seeing the Samsung screen and when it rebooted, it was bare bones.

It's odd that none of the apps or anything saved to my SD card are showing. Would I be better proceeding with setting it up again or just wait until I can get to an AT&T store? Is there any hope I'll be able to retrieve any of my photos, calendar appointments, etc.?

[Golfdriver97]

If you want to take it in, probably not a bad idea. This might or might not be an indication of a problem.

From an AOSP M8

[Rukbat]

Put the SD card into a card reader. Plug it into your PC. Download PhotoRec. If the data still exists on the card, PhotoRec will recover them. (If you can't get it running from the step by step on the site, post here again and I'll walk you through it in PM or a chat or something. (I just helped a gal get back her baby's newborn pictures from the card - over 300 of them, IIRC.)

[mlb225]

Thanks - I didn't make it to the store yesterday but figured I'd just go ahead and set up my email again. I thought my contacts would follow but they haven't. In the mean time I put my SD card into my laptop - couldn't open anything (hadn't seen your message about PhotoRec yet), but once I put it back in my phone my photos were back! It also reloaded my saved memos which had some important info saved. No calendar appointments saved so looks like I'm out of luck there, but I do need to take it in today. It's basically telling me I have no space left on my phone, even though none of the apps I previously had are there. I'm just grateful my photos reappeared. I had recently done a shutterfly dump but it was having issues so I had 4 copies of some photos, 3 of others, 2 of some and then it only made it through March of last year. Just having those was a relief (lots of my daughter with my mother before she passed away), but it's nice to have them all back.

I'll eventually get this all figured out in time for us to get new phones...but now I realize how dependent I am on my phone (and the info stored there) and will be more diligent about backing everything up.