Camera Photos Disappearing Galaxy Note 3 HELP!

[lucianus_luciferus]

I have been having a very similar problem. I take a picture. You view it. It syncs to drop box. I go back to show friends and it's a black square with lightning bolt through it and it says unable to load thumbnail file is either incorrect format, corrupt or been removed. What???? And to make it better it picks and chooses which photos to remove. So we went to my sisters wedding and only have about 5 pictures out of around 70. Plus I have a bloody thumbnail picture as stated above in my Dropbox too so am not happy about this and I note this does appear to have started happening since the update. What do we do to fix this problem? My phone is Samsung Galaxy note 2. I really hope someone can find a fix for this.or I will definitely have to change phones.

this sounds like your storage is corrupt.
try removing the battery for a few minutes

 

[David Kolasa]

I had this problem for months. Photos and videos would disappear. Since I disabled Google + the problem has gone away. Not a single photo or video has disappeared since. Google + is a mess. Samsung and Google support do not exist when you really need help. Try disabling Google + and I bet your file deletion problems disappear.

 

[harperc22]

- 1 - take off the back cover, remove the sd card, and put it back in ensuring it is properly seated, then restart the phone, this is what fixes mine when it does this.

 

[DennisOfVenice]

I got a Samsung Tab 3 recently. I was happy with it. My first tab computer, although I've been working with android with phones for a little while. I got lucky and my phone company gave me a Samsung S3 phone and Tab 3 for free. I had a 32 GB microchip on my old phone and put it in my new phone. I looked up the max memory for my new tablet and 64 GB is the max limit for external memory. I didn't have a 64GB card so I ordered one on ebay. Meanwhile I installed a 2GB card in my tablet and it worked great! A week later my 64 GB micro SD arrived and I installed it and right away experienced losses of files I tried to add to my tablet. They would copy on and then 5 minutes later they would be gone. I tried everything from reformatting it on both the tab and my laptop, and even adding the files from my laptop and nothing worked. The files would vanish. I did a lot of research on the problem and found that Android does not handle memory above 32GB. I removed the 64GB SD and installed a 32GB SD. Problem solved. Something about the Android Kernel not handling anything above 32GB. Samsung may be right about the tab handling a 64 GB SD chip but Android cannot yet handle anything above 32GB. This was one of the web places I visited looking for help with this problem. I think I saw that someone else here found this resolution also so I just want to confirm that this is the most likely reason for your problem. Hope this will help you.

 

[mark_lear]

My Note 3 already has Kitkat but I have exactly the same problem. The photos are in the gallery after I take them, but when I look for them later, they have completely disappeared!
Has anyone found an answer?

 

[Teresa Lentz]

I too am having the same problem... and i also have a 64gb memory card in my phone.. and just now all my pics are gone and this seems like the millionth time this has happened and it is very annoying as hell... i have taken pics that i wouldn't part with thinking that my pics are safe on my phone and every pic i have taken with my phone camera are now gone and i have nothing to show for my memories.. im about ready to go back to an iphone as much as i hate the thought.. i never had this problem with my iphone.. not a happy android customer

 

[Teresa Lentz]

I am gonna try this, and hope that it fixes my problem.. I've already disabled the Google +..... I shall see what happens in a few days.. Thanks for the tip..

 

[sarkycow]

I am gonna try this, and hope that it fixes my problem.. I've already disabled the Google +..... I shall see what happens in a few days.. Thanks for the tip..

You should also use a programme like dropbox, idrive, google drive, photobucket to back up all of your photos/videos.

My SD card failed and if I didn't have Dropbox I would have lost 5 months worth of photos.

I hope things get sorted out for you.

Sarks.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[tingxzxz]

Same problem happened to me but don't worry , your hidden pictures are still in your phone. Install ES file explorer and there press menu button at the bottom of your device (the menu and back button) and there turn on "show hidden files" and you will see ".hide file" there are your hidden photos

 

[Gagan Bangotra]

Dowload ES Explorer. go to settings. show hidden files. in SD card search for .hide (folder). Thats it.

 

[note2n3]

I am battling the same issue on my Note 2 with a 32G SD card inserted.
My camera setting is set to the SD

I have searched high and low for my pics and I am unable to find them.

 

[mettalife]

I have the EXACT same problem, and I initially thought my sons had deleted my photos, but I had a screen lock on and they are like 3 years old, and when I googled about this, I'm glad there are millions facing the same problem of disappearing photos for the Galaxy Note 3. Mine is a pristine condition Note 3 never dropped and I dun download nonsense apps. I have about a 100 photos saved in SD card, but one morning, I realise the whole 'Camera' photos were wiped out- GONE. Searched using file explorer but couldnt find them anywhere. This is a SERIOUS issue that Samsung needs to address. Terrible and the reliability is horrid for such expensive phones. I am not a fan of backing up into Cloud as with many others, there are photos which we want to keep private to our phones and not exposed to the internet, where once its out, you can never keep it private, ever.

 

[mettalife]

The 'show hidden files' are already checked. but the photos have disappeared. Damn Samsung.

 

[Touch0Gray]

btw, these files are not hidden they are actually deleted (hence the need for an undelete/recovery)

 

[Touch0Gray]

ok so I can't give a tiip of the hat to the software that actually worked for the , I get it....BUT to all you guys who lost files, try a good undelete program. The files are NOT hidden, they are deleted! When a file is deleted, it does not remove the file from the disk until it is over-written, it merely re-writes the file allocation table. A deep scan by the software recovered 337 files, not even all from this particular phone, some from my old phone!

 

[Robby Sharma]

Im having the same issue?!?!

 

[markvz]

I have the Galaxy note 3 and have taken pictures and video then go to look at them several minutes later only to have a keyhole type symbol in the file - NO picture but it will show the tag for the picture ) HELP any clues???

 

[rallyrob_123]

My s4 mini keeps doing the same thing, it's done it about 3 or 4 times in the last 3-4 months now. I've had my phone about a year now... I must've lost a few hundred photos!! It's driving me nuts!!!

I've got a none specific 32gd sd in it, an like everyone has said before it only removes/deletes/hides photos in the "Camera file" all
the others are still there, some 2000 photos nearly!!! But not the ones in the "Camera File"

 

[Pussens]

I had the same problem not only with pictures but with music.
First the music files could not be played and the information was all there. I do not keep logs, but my guess is that the cause was a zip I flashed to fix the extcard problem, which I did solely to be able to save text documents to the external memory. Music I put there before the flash was ok, not afterwards -no music player I tried worked. The text files I was able to save in it, though.
Now, the pictures, I had, EXACTLY the same problem that has been described several times here. Started 2 days ago. What I had done different that day was 1) while I took the pictures I was listening to music 2) hours earlier in the day I put the lengthy database of a dictionary - msdict- in the card 3) the database of another dictionary was updated from the playstore and in this process the phone crashed -twice.
I should point that I do use a highly rated sd card and the tests of my phone tell me it is just fine.
I fixed both problems by formatting the card from within the settings in the phone. Tested it with music and pictures. But I might have to re-do this post, because I have a feeling -I'm not technically savvy- that the problem with the media "developed" in the interaction between external memory and the device proper. My take is by enabling the movement of text I did something to the card. Huh?

 

[Jordan Burne]

My phone has done the exact same thing as yours complete with lightning bolt and all. I've lost all the important photos for my research yet the ones i take of say my desk to test the camera is 100% fine.