3 GB of data wiped from device storage

[S1103]

My device and SD storage on my Galaxy S5 have been full, so I bought a larger SD card today. I plugged my phone into my laptop and backed up my SD card contents in TWO separate locations on my laptop. I then took the SD card out (which involves taking out the battery - I'm not sure if that's relevant, as I have done that countless times before, but just to be thorough), inserted the new one and copied and pasted my backed up contents onto the SD card. All my files from my old SD card are fine.

However, around 3 GB I had saved on my DEVICE storage has been completely wiped - I cannot view the files on my phone or laptop and there is suddenly 3.75 GB free on my device. I was extremely careful not to open the device storage or alter it in any way and I am absolutely furious. My storage was so full as I saw some (until recently) estranged family and, being the only adult with space on my phone, took all the photos - including of my niece's birthday. I also have taken photos of all my timesheets for work as evidence for missing payment.

To make matters worse, the app I use to back up my phone has been logged out since July apparently and so everything from the last month or so is completely missing.

I'm absolutely tearing my hair out, if anyone could please PLEASE suggest anything that might help I would be incredibly grateful!

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! How did you backup the SD card contents? Did you simply select all folders using Windows Explorer, then drag and drop them to the computer? Are you certain you selected the external SD card only? The way Android treats storage, you may often see the internal storage referred to as "Internal SD" or "sdcard0." So for example, if you selected the /DCIM/Camera directory on "sdcard0" and moved it to the computer, then this process would have deleted the camera photo directory on the Internal Storage (although the directory should be on the computer hard drive that you moved it to).

I moved this thread to the S5 forum.