Google Photos disaster

[straygator7]

I finally encountered a serious problem with my Pixel 9 Pro XL, and it's a doozie. Earlier this evening, I powered off my phone for a routine power-down restart, which I try to do every week or so. When I powered the device back on, for some reason the Google Photos app triggered a complete new backup of all the photos and videos on my phone -- which is massive, amounting to almost 150 GB of photos and videos combined dating back to 1991, and including thousands from our 10 trips to Europe since 2012. I actually had minor issues with the original transfer from my Pixel 6 Pro, because some photos that showed up had to be downloaded from the cloud again, and I had been working on that for a couple of hours each day for the past few weeks, hoping to get all of the photos that are viewable on my Google Photos webpage stored on my new phone (which is why I got the 512GB model).

Inexplicably, after the auto-triggered backup was complete, I was unpleasantly surprised to find that (a) dozens of my oldest photos, including all from 19991 through part of our first Europe trip in 2012, did not reload onto my phone; and (b) some of the 2012 travel photos that did reload are visible only in thumbnail size under the Photos category on the app, but when I tap to open to display the photo in full, what happens instead is that the app skips to a later photo. In addition, it appears that most of the photos that were restored are no longer in the phone's storage, but will need to be downloaded again -- which means that even if I can recapture the photos to my phone from the cloud, I'll need to restart the tedious process of going through them one by one to download those that aren't in the storage.

Needless to say, this is enormously frustrating. I posted an inquiry to the Google Help site, but the response from their expert suggested three methods, none of which work because it assumes the missing photos are visible on the phone app and simply need to be downloaded from the cloud again, or that downloading them to one of the folders (Downloads, Pictures, etc.) will restore them to the Photos gallery on the phone. Can anyone offer help in the form of a procedure by which I can get those old photos that are still on my Google Photos webpage, but that did not get reloaded on my phone when that auto backup was triggered, restored to my phone? I've tried powering off the phone again, but now it just keeps showing that the backup is complete. Is there a way to make it run the complete backup again? Alternatively, is it possible that uninstalling and then reinstalling the Google Photos app on my phone might restore the full set of photos from my Google Photos webpage? Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

 

[B. Diddy]

It's possible I'm not entirely following the process that you've gone through, but it seems like a big part of the problem is that you've been trying to keep copies of the photos on the phone as well as in the cloud. If you did a mass copy of the photos from your old Pixel 6 Pro to the new Pixel 9 Pro XL and didn't use Google Photos in the cloud to do that (i.e., you chose to copy the photos over via USB connection during the phone setup), then each of those photos copied over to the new phone may have been considered new photos -- and therefore, Google Photos on the new phone dutifully started to back those up to your cloud.

When I switch phones, I never choose the option to copy photos over from the old phone. Since I always use Google Photos for backup, all of my photos are saved to the cloud -- and more importantly, I rely on the cloud to view those photos, rather than needing them all physically stored on the phone. If I occasionally need a photo stored locally (e.g., if I want to edit it using a 3rd party app, or upload it to some other platform that doesn't integrate well with Google Photos in the cloud), then I'll download the photo temporarily.

Is there a reason you need all of your photos saved to your phone's local storage? If not, then I would encourage using the Free Up Space option in the Google Photos app, which will delete any photo in the phone's local storage that the Photos app already knows has been backed up to the cloud.

Regarding the old photos that are on your Google Photos website -- are you saying they don't appear in your Google Photos app on the phone at all?

 

[notforhire]

Is there a reason you need all of your photos saved to your phone's local storage?

the most important reason to is redundancy. I mean, it's not like bad things ever happen to cloud storage accounts (MSFT, Google, AWS)

 

[straygator7]

It's possible I'm not entirely following the process that you've gone through, but it seems like a big part of the problem is that you've been trying to keep copies of the photos on the phone as well as in the cloud. If you did a mass copy of the photos from your old Pixel 6 Pro to the new Pixel 9 Pro XL and didn't use Google Photos in the cloud to do that (i.e., you chose to copy the photos over via USB connection during the phone setup), then each of those photos copied over to the new phone may have been considered new photos -- and therefore, Google Photos on the new phone dutifully started to back those up to your cloud.

When I switch phones, I never choose the option to copy photos over from the old phone. Since I always use Google Photos for backup, all of my photos are saved to the cloud -- and more importantly, I rely on the cloud to view those photos, rather than needing them all physically stored on the phone. If I occasionally need a photo stored locally (e.g., if I want to edit it using a 3rd party app, or upload it to some other platform that doesn't integrate well with Google Photos in the cloud), then I'll download the photo temporarily.

Is there a reason you need all of your photos saved to your phone's local storage? If not, then I would encourage using the Free Up Space option in the Google Photos app, which will delete any photo in the phone's local storage that the Photos app already knows has been backed up to the cloud.

Regarding the old photos that are on your Google Photos website -- are you saying they don't appear in your Google Photos app on the phone at all?

Let me try to clarify by answering some of your questions:

1. When I upgraded from the P6P to the P9PXL, I did not use a connecting usb cable, but followed the instructions by signing into my Google account and transferring all the data directly from backup in the cloud.

2. After that set-up process was completed, all of the photos in my Google Photos online account were transferred and could be viewed on my new phone, exactly the same as on my Google Photos webpage. However, many of those photos were not stored on the phone, but needed to be downloaded to become files residing on the phone.

3. I want to have all of my photos stored on the phone for two reasons: First, I've encountered situations in which I had no internet connection (mainly while traveling in remote areas of Europe, but occasionally in rural sections of the Southeast USA), and thus could not access photos from my Google Photos account to show or share. Second, I like having all the photos stored on my phone as another backup, in addition to my computer and a usb thumb drive. That's why I chose to purchase the 512GB model of the P9PXL.

4. So I started the process of going through and downloading the photos that were not already in storage on my phone. As part of that process, I also used the opportunity to do some overdue editing to many of the photos. As you may surmise, it was a tedious, time-consuming process; but I proceeded on the assumption that I'd only need to do it once.

5. Yesterday, after I powered off my phone and then later powered it back on, I noticed right away that the Google Photos app had for some reason triggered the "Backup" function and indicated that it was backing up all of the photos again. When that process finished and showed "Backup complete," I discovered that dozens of my oldest photos were no longer visible in Google Photos on my phone. More puzzling, the last few dozen of the photos that were still visible as thumbnails could not be opened for full display -- i.e., when I tap on any of those thumbnails to open the photo, what comes up on the display is a more recent photo; and it always jumps to the same photo,.

Evidently, when the phone went through that unprompted backup after I powered on, the reloading of images from the cloud was interrupted and cut short before all the photos had been transferred.

After doing some online research, I think the best and least complicated solution might be to simply uninstall the Google Photos app from my phone and then reinstall the app, which should cause it to reload all of the photos from my Google Photos cloud storage. Of course, I'll need to start the photo-by-photo downloading process all over again, but at least it should restore all of the photos; and the edits I made in the first pass should be preserved on those that are in the cloud. Does that sound like a safe and sensible approach to you?

 

[jbjtkbw007]

What happens to your locally stored photos should something catastrophic happen to the phone? Guessing that's when you rely on the cloud? I know the cloud has issues, but I've been using OneDrive ever since it was SkyDrive back on my Windows Phone days and I've never lost photos. Ever. They have redundancy built in for when there may be an issue with cloud services.

I repair iPhones and the number of people that rely on the phone to keep all of their photos is crazy. Then something makes it inoperable and they are just SOL. Nothing they can do at that point because they didn't trust the cloud.

 

[notforhire]

What happens to your locally stored photos should something catastrophic happen to the phone? Guessing that's when you rely on the cloud? I know the cloud has issues, but I've been using OneDrive ever since it was SkyDrive back on my Windows Phone days and I've never lost photos. Ever. They have redundancy built in for when there may be an issue with cloud services.

I repair iPhones and the number of people that rely on the phone to keep all of their photos is crazy. Then something makes it inoperable and they are just SOL. Nothing they can do at that point because they didn't trust the cloud.

local, cloud, SSD...redundancy is a good thing

 

[B. Diddy]

I agree that redundancy is a good thing. My main concern, though, is that using the phone's own storage as the main redundancy might be a little wonky, since the user might end up doing something that interferes with or confuses the built-in redundancy that Google Photos offers. For redundancy apart from Google Photos in the cloud, I would usually recommend an external hard drive, or perhaps a secondary cloud storage. And regarding concerns about the safety of photos in the cloud -- Google has had such a solid record in terms of Photos and Drive that I feel the chance of failure there is much lower than the chance of failure of the phone's storage.

I can understand the desire to have one's entire photo collection saved on the phone if lack of web access is frequently limited, though. I admit I'm spoiled, in that I rarely have to face that.

@straygator7, let me ask you this about the old photos that are no longer visible on the phone -- can you still see them on photos.google.com on your computer browser?

 

[straygator7]

. . . @straygator7, let me ask you this about the old photos that are no longer visible on the phone -- can you still see them on photos.google.com on your computer browser?

Yes, all the photos are still intact on my Google Photos webpage, and of course in the cloud. That's why I think that simply uninstalling the Google Photos app from my phone and then reinstalling it might solve the problem by restoring all the photos in the cloud to my phone. I just want to know if others more knowledgeable and experienced foresee any issues with choosing that route.

 

[B. Diddy]

Rather than uninstalling the Photos app, you should clear the app's cache/data in the Settings>Apps menu, then Force Stop it. When you open Google Photos again, it'll log back into your account.

 

[straygator7]

Rather than uninstalling the Photos app, you should clear the app's cache/data in the Settings>Apps menu, then Force Stop it. When you open Google Photos again, it'll log back into your account.

Okay, reporting back . . .

I proceeded as B. Diddy suggested, and can report that while the 20 oldest photos in my Google Photos account were not restored to my phone, and another 10 are doing that same weird trick -- when I tap on any of those thumbnails, it skips ahead to display the full version of a more recent photo -- it appears all of the photos dating back to our first Europe trip are now viewable on my phone. I'll need to go back through and download many of them again to get them into the phone's storage; but I'm retired, so it's a task I can handle. As for the other 22 photos, I can download and store them in other folders on my phone in case I ever need to retrieve or view them.

Thanks for the assistance in solving this problem. Unless I run into other gaps in the restored photos, I'll leave the remaining problems described above for someone with more patience to take up with Google.

 

[straygator7]

Post-disaster follow up:

Sometimes, patience can be the best cure. When I went to bed last night, more than 10 hours after the reinstallation of the Google Photos app on my P9PXL showed it was completed, the problem of the two dozen oldest photos that either were not restored to my phone's Google Photos app or were installed only as thumbnails that could not be pulled up for full display was still present. As a last resort, I tried uploading a few older photos; just like the other old photos, they showed up on the Google Photos webpage, but did not appear at all on my phone's app. I resigned myself to the fact that it was just a minor glitch I'd have to live with.

Lo and behold, when I opened my phone this morning, all those missing photos had been restored to my phone and were fully viewable in the app. Apparently, despite all indications that the reinstallation and backup processes had been completed hours earlier, the little mouse got back up on the wheel and starting running again overnight, with the result that the Google Photos app on my phone appears to be back to normal and fully functioning. Problem solved.

Thanks again to B. Diddy for providing the remedy -- and reaffirming my complete satisfaction with the Pixel 9 Pro XL.

 

[B. Diddy]

That's great! I wonder if it just took time for your entire library to get completely synced. A huge library can take some time.

 

[straygator7]

That's great! I wonder if it just took time for your entire library to get completely synced. A huge library can take some time.

Given the circumstances and sequence of events, I think that's the only sensible explanation. So, another lesson I learned from this experience: Even when Google Photos indicates that the process -- download, backup, or synch -- is complete, it still pays to be patient and give the system time to fully integrate everything into its proper place. Thanks again!

 

[Super Spartan]

This is why I don't trust the cloud anymore! I got affected a few months ago with the bug from Google Drive that deleted users' files and lost many files and before that, years ago, OneDrive messed up my entire photo album organization where I put folders\people names\dates and move people it recognizes into their own folders making me lose years worth of organization.

 

[notforhire]

This is why I don't trust the cloud anymore! I got affected a few months ago with the bug from Google Drive that deleted users' files and lost many files and before that, years ago, OneDrive messed up my entire photo album organization where I put folders\people names\dates and move people it recognizes into their own folders making me lose years worth of organization.

for me, Google Drive and OneDrive are nothing more than emergency repositories. all of my "albums" are on my Galaxy phone. those albums save well to my SSD, too.

 

[PGrey]

A simple(ish) way to avoid this is to simply have a manual backup process, to a 2nd cloud storage location, that you launch at some rough interval, as your gated/protected storage.
The basic cloud-backed storage (I'm a huge fan of OneDrive, also from SkyDrive way back, like @jbjtkbw007 ,
, old MSFT engineer, pretty much zero issues along that whole span as well) covers most things taken since the last gated backup, as you have the phone-local storage backing up in some sort of automated mechanism to it.

In terms of the gated backup, pics and a handful of documents and such are about the only things I do this way, so it's truly not that tedious, or expensive, but it sure is nice to not wonder "what if something goes sideways on my phone/PC/tablet/whatever, and the sync wipes a bunch of stuff out"...

 

[straygator7]

Judging from some of the subsequent posts, I ought to clarify the problem I encountered, which I probably should not have characterized as a "disaster." At no point did I ever actually lose anything from my Google Photos account. Even if I had, I have all of my photos and videos (and other important files) safely backed up, not only in the cloud, but on two different computers and on multiple usb thumb drives. Those memories are far too valuable to risk losing. And it was because I wanted them all stored on my phone as well that the problem arose.

The mishap was entirely local to my P9PXL's Google Photos app. When I powered the phone off for a routine reboot, for some reason it triggered a complete reloading to my phone's Google Photos app of all the photos and videos from my Google Photos cloud storage. Those photos and videos include not only the ones I took with my Pixel phones, which are already automatically stored in the phone as well as the Google Photos cloud (except for those manually deleted from the device), but also hundreds more that I had imported to my Google Photos account from other sources, which consist mainly of photos my wife had taken with her camera or phone on our journeys and photos shared by friends.

The "disaster" for me, which became evident when the reloading process finished, was twofold: First, about two dozen of my oldest photos were missing from the Google Photos app on my phone (even though they were still in the cloud and could be viewed on the webpage). Moreover, all the hours I had spent curating the thousands of travel photos since acquiring my new P9PXL -- downloading to the phone's storage the hundreds that I had imported from other sources or that I had deleted from the device to free up space, then editing and putting them all in proper order -- was effectively wiped out, requiring me to start the process all over again.

In any event, thanks primarily to the helpful advice of P. Diddy, I've since been able to successfully reload all the photos from the cloud to the Google Photos app on the phone, and am making good progress with restoring everything as intended. (Fortunately, my edits to the photos were preserved in the cloud versions.) I'm grateful for all the expressions of concern and the helpful suggestions. This is a great online community, bound together by a mutual appreciation for a great device, and it has once again proven to be a valuable resource. Thanks for allowing me to benefit from your collective experience and wisdom.

 

[jbjtkbw007]

Glad you were able to resolve your issues. Again, I would never have my device as a main repository. Cloud backup restorals can take some time, but they will get there. Any time I perform a cloud sync when imaging a new device and their files are saved to iCloud or OneDrive, I have to let people know that it's not going to happen immediately. Microsoft tends to sync using bits to not suck up bandwidth and I'm not sure on iCloud and their method, but it's never instant.