I have a Note 9 running Android 9
I do not use a SD card, all photos/videos are stored on Internal Storage.
I do not use cloud storage such as Google Photos or Samsung Cloud.
I do not have any Cleaner Apps installed (to my knowledge)
I do not use any other camera apps, other than GoPro to export stuff into Gallery.
Nobody else has access to the phone
My photos and videos (9-10 months worth) that were NOT in separate folders within the Gallery seem to have been permanently deleted. I had created a few of my own separate folders within Gallery and those items were not affected. The Whatsapp, Instagram and GoPro Export system generated folders were also not affected.
When I first discovered the issue (when I'd went looking for a particular photo and noticed stuff was missing), I'd immediately went into the Trash. The Trash had very briefly displayed some of the files that were deleted, before refreshing and showing nothing. It was literally like a flash goodbye.
After looking closely at the file dates of the remaining photos using my PC, I noticed everything older than 15 days was what got deleted. And ironically, the date before the date of the last photos I still have is exactly 15 days from the date when I discovered the issue. So it basically seems that everything in the general Camera folder that was not filed into a separate folder somehow got relocated to the trash and went unnoticed for 15 days until being "permanently deleted", and that I just so happened to look at it the same day they all expired. Perhaps given the quantity of stuff that would have went into there explains why I saw it updating when I opened the trash. I don't really know if that would be possible but I definitely saw some of the old stuff go bye bye in the blink of an eye when I opened the trash !
So far I have tried all of the following:
Used FX File Explorer to rescan media - seem to have got a few odd thumbnails from the cache. No originals.
Cleared data/cache of Gallery and Media Storage
Checked DCIM camera folders on PC
Lastly, wiped cache partition
So, I learned a valuable lesson with backups. I'm 99.99% sure at this point everything is unrecoverable, but wanted to check here as well.
I'd honestly be willing to root the thing or take the motherboard off (and destroy it) but some data recovery experts I checked with said this would likely not be feasible given how the file storage system works on these new models and that rooting a Note 9 requires a full memory wipe anyway.
Anyway, last ditch effort here. Any other thoughts appreciated. I've seen quite a few people posting about this type of issue over the last several months so would be good to know how/why this might be happening assuming I did not accidentally do this myself without realizing it. Either way, thanks for reading. Cheers.
I do not use a SD card, all photos/videos are stored on Internal Storage.
I do not use cloud storage such as Google Photos or Samsung Cloud.
I do not have any Cleaner Apps installed (to my knowledge)
I do not use any other camera apps, other than GoPro to export stuff into Gallery.
Nobody else has access to the phone
My photos and videos (9-10 months worth) that were NOT in separate folders within the Gallery seem to have been permanently deleted. I had created a few of my own separate folders within Gallery and those items were not affected. The Whatsapp, Instagram and GoPro Export system generated folders were also not affected.
When I first discovered the issue (when I'd went looking for a particular photo and noticed stuff was missing), I'd immediately went into the Trash. The Trash had very briefly displayed some of the files that were deleted, before refreshing and showing nothing. It was literally like a flash goodbye.
After looking closely at the file dates of the remaining photos using my PC, I noticed everything older than 15 days was what got deleted. And ironically, the date before the date of the last photos I still have is exactly 15 days from the date when I discovered the issue. So it basically seems that everything in the general Camera folder that was not filed into a separate folder somehow got relocated to the trash and went unnoticed for 15 days until being "permanently deleted", and that I just so happened to look at it the same day they all expired. Perhaps given the quantity of stuff that would have went into there explains why I saw it updating when I opened the trash. I don't really know if that would be possible but I definitely saw some of the old stuff go bye bye in the blink of an eye when I opened the trash !
So far I have tried all of the following:
Used FX File Explorer to rescan media - seem to have got a few odd thumbnails from the cache. No originals.
Cleared data/cache of Gallery and Media Storage
Checked DCIM camera folders on PC
Lastly, wiped cache partition
So, I learned a valuable lesson with backups. I'm 99.99% sure at this point everything is unrecoverable, but wanted to check here as well.
I'd honestly be willing to root the thing or take the motherboard off (and destroy it) but some data recovery experts I checked with said this would likely not be feasible given how the file storage system works on these new models and that rooting a Note 9 requires a full memory wipe anyway.
Anyway, last ditch effort here. Any other thoughts appreciated. I've seen quite a few people posting about this type of issue over the last several months so would be good to know how/why this might be happening assuming I did not accidentally do this myself without realizing it. Either way, thanks for reading. Cheers.
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