All of my Media disappeared out of no where

[Housetek]

I was looking through my phone this morning and realized every picture/video i've ever taken before January 26th has vanished.

I haven't downloaded any new apps or deleted anything.

I rebooted

I checked my trash bin and there was nothing to recover, i tried plugging it into the computer to look for the Files and DCIM folder only has the pictures from January 26th.
I tried running Ultdata recovery in debug mode and it only found the January 26th pictures. Then i googled and it said to delete .nomedia files which i did and that didnt do anything either, then i tried to clear the Gallery App cache and reboot and that also didnt do anything.

I have the birth of my kid and tons of pictures going back through multiple android phones that were saved. This is a nightmare.

Is there any way i can do a file recovery to get these back? I ran Malwarebytes and it found zero threats. All the media ive had transferred on this phone in the past decade is reduced to 6 pictures.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Which phone do you have? If it supports SD cards, were the photos on the SD card or Internal Storage?

Also, were you backing them up or syncing them anywhere on a regular basis? It's always a good idea to do so for any kind of important data on any device -- users shouldn't rely on a single storage location for important files, because you can never predict if/when something bad might happen to the device or its storage.

Just in case, go to photos.google.com on your computer browser, log into your Google account, and see if the photos are there.

 

[Housetek]

I have a galaxy Samsung s25. Unfortunately i do not have it sync to google drive/one drive/samsung cloud. It doesnt sync to anything, my google account is only used for work stuff.

The only thing out of the ordinary is i work in about 10degree weather, and for the first time since i owned my phone it ran out of batteries and i had to charge it and boot it up.

But just today i noticed all of my media is gone, the only picture i have left is from the 26th of January of the snow fall.

 

[B. Diddy]

Do you recall the directory where all of these photos were saved? Were the in /Pictures, /DCIM, or did you create your own custom directories for the photos?

 

[Housetek]

Do you recall the directory where all of these photos were saved? Were the in /Pictures, /DCIM, or did you create your own custom directories for the photos?

they were in the default pictures/dcim folder. When i ran a recovery tool, the only thing it found was a bunch of Emojis and the few pics i had from the 26th.

 

[B. Diddy]

Hmm. After it died in the cold weather and you restarted it, it started normally, correct? You didn't have to go through a setup wizard again?

 

[mustang7757]

I moved this to the s25 Forums


Have you looked in the Samsung app called My file's?

 

[Housetek]

I moved this to the s25 Forums


Have you looked in the Samsung app called My file's?

Yeah i looked and there was nothing. I also plugged it into the computer and tried to show Hidden files in the DCIM folder and nothing showed up

 

[Housetek]

Hmm. After it died in the cold weather and you restarted it, it started normally, correct? You didn't have to go through a setup wizard again?

Yeah after it died in the cold weather, i put it on the charger and it started normally. All apps work and just my pictures are gone. Apps like capcut and video apps where i had made videos b4 that werent finished couldnt pull up any of my old videos i've stitched together. I looked all over the internet to find if anyone else had the same issue. My only thought is the internal drive might be corrupt or something.

 

[B. Diddy]

Go to the Storage menu in the system settings or device management -- does it break the storage down into various categories including images? If so, does it also show that there is very little space taken up by images in general?

 

[mustang7757]

Yeah i looked and there was nothing. I also plugged it into the computer and tried to show Hidden files in the DCIM folder and nothing showed up

Are you logged into the Google photos app ?

 

[Housetek]

Go to the Storage menu in the system settings or device management -- does it break the storage down into various categories including images? If so, does it also show that there is very little space taken up by images in general?

yeah its like 107gb/512gb used in memory images is only 73mb

 

[Housetek]

Are you logged into the Google photos app ?

No im not logged into google image app

 

[mustang7757]

No im not logged into google image app

That's tough not sure what else to say.

 

[B. Diddy]

Yeah, I think I've exhausted any avenue I can think of. This is pretty unusual -- I could imagine this happening if the phone did a factory reset on its own, or if the images were saved to a microSD card that got corrupted. Sorry!

 

[Housetek]

yeah after 2 days of searching online, seems like this is a pretty rare one off. very disappointing tho, i appreciate the help

 

[VidJunky]

Not sure if you could try something like Recuva since it's media. There would be a little setup, you'd have to unlock the phone, connect to a PC, set your connection type to Transferring files/Android Auto, (I would try this type before the Transferring images option because it might give Recuva a better chance), and since all of the lost media was in the DCIM/camera direct the search to that folder.

I've seen ads for paid programs that claim to be able to recover stuff from phones but I don't know anyone who's used one successfully, or unsuccessfully for that matter.

You've set up a backup service since this happened? Given what was lost it's probably a good idea.

 

[Housetek]

Not sure if you could try something like Recuva since it's media. There would be a little setup, you'd have to unlock the phone, connect to a PC, set your connection type to Transferring files/Android Auto, (I would try this type before the Transferring images option because it might give Recuva a better chance), and since all of the lost media was in the DCIM/camera direct the search to that folder.

I've seen ads for paid programs that claim to be able to recover stuff from phones but I don't know anyone who's used one successfully, or unsuccessfully for that matter.

You've set up a backup service since this happened? Given what was lost it's probably a good idea.

Yeah i caved and got a paid google cloud account separate from my work drive.
I ran a few programs that said it recovered X amount of images but would cost me a sub to download them. But feels like a scam b/c i know theres way more media then the number it found.

 

[VidJunky]

Recuva is open source and you should find multiple mirrors with downloads for it. Be sure to follow the steps I suggested to prepare the phone to allow any recovery program access to your storage. These would be the same steps you should take when trying any recovery program.

If you would post the name of any program you tried and the result. This would help others in this situation avoid buying or trying a program that doesn't work. Let us know what you find.

 

[Housetek]

ultdata, dr disk, and easeus are the ones i've tried, they've only manage to pull Emojis and random blurry black junk and not nearly the amount of files that i lost.