Help: Camera Folder Disappeared Galaxy S4

[justdebra]

I've had my S4 for a month now with Verizon. I just noticed that my camera folder in my gallery is missing along with all my photos that were in it. Something similar happened to my last 2 phones. My 2 previous phones were both Samsung Reverbs with Virgin Mobile. I had over 500 pics that were somehow corrupted. They did not disappear but when I would try to open one, the phone would freeze. I spent 3 hrs at Best Buy swapping out my phone (I went through 11 phones while with Virgin Mobile for 2 yrs). The 2nd Reverb had the same problem. I just wasted 3 hrs! They came to the conclusion that my memory card was corrupt and I should replace it and take the old one, put it in my laptop and onto a flash drive and then run a program to find the virus. I did put them on a flash drive, but have not ran a virus check. I then upgraded with Virgin to the S3. Had no problems with the phone, but when I first got it I could not make calls and they double billed me to fix the problem. After going through so many phones with them and their terrible customer service I was fed up and went on a family plan with Verizon. Fast forward to July 13, 2013. New phone, new carrier, new memory card and now my camera folder is gone. I go to Verizon for help. By process of elimination they say it must be either a freak thing with my gmail account or one of my apps. They factory reset my phone. We take a few pics and now I wait to see if they disappear. I have not reinstalled any of my apps yet or set up email accounts. I don't use gmail for anything other than downloading apps on my phone and google +, which I don't even really use. The apps I had were 1) brightest flashlight, 2) stopwatch/timer, 3) backgammon, 4) my bank LBSFCU (fairly new app), 5) fooducate, 6) sms backup, 7) Zillow, 8) minions game (my grandkids downloaded), 9) another game Four across, 10) shazam. I think that's it. The first 3 apps have been on all my phones. The other 2 games were not on any previous phones and apps 4-7 were also on the Reverbs. Then there are the preinstalled apps but I've only used a few. Oh, also had Google voice and google translate apps. I don't see how any app or gmail would have anything to do with my camera folder but hey....what do I know? That's why i'm here. Please help if you can. Thank you!

UPDATE 8/14/13: After factory reset, took a few pics. Next day still there. I downloaded 3 apps and set up 2 email accounts. One Yahoo, one GoDaddy, Later, pics gone. Deleted apps, kept email. So far, pics still there. This is baffling!

 

[Golfdriver97]

I've had my S4 for a month now with Verizon. I just noticed that my camera folder in my gallery is missing along with all my photos that were in it. Something similar happened to my last 2 phones. My 2 previous phones were both Samsung Reverbs with Virgin Mobile. I had over 500 pics that were somehow corrupted. They did not disappear but when I would try to open one, the phone would freeze. I spent 3 hrs at Best Buy swapping out my phone (I went through 11 phones while with Virgin Mobile for 2 yrs). The 2nd Reverb had the same problem. I just wasted 3 hrs! They came to the conclusion that my memory card was corrupt and I should replace it and take the old one, put it in my laptop and onto a flash drive and then run a program to find the virus. I did put them on a flash drive, but have not ran a virus check. I then upgraded with Virgin to the S3. Had no problems with the phone, but when I first got it I could not make calls and they double billed me to fix the problem. After going through so many phones with them and their terrible customer service I was fed up and went on a family plan with Verizon. Fast forward to July 13, 2013. New phone, new carrier, new memory card and now my camera folder is gone. I go to Verizon for help. By process of elimination they say it must be either a freak thing with my gmail account or one of my apps. They factory reset my phone. We take a few pics and now I wait to see if they disappear. I have not reinstalled any of my apps yet or set up email accounts. I don't use gmail for anything other than downloading apps on my phone and google +, which I don't even really use. The apps I had were 1) brightest flashlight, 2) stopwatch/timer, 3) backgammon, 4) my bank LBSFCU (fairly new app), 5) fooducate, 6) sms backup, 7) Zillow, 8) minions game (my grandkids downloaded), 9) another game Four across, 10) shazam. I think that's it. The first 3 apps have been on all my phones. The other 2 games were not on any previous phones and apps 4-7 were also on the Reverbs. Then there are the preinstalled apps but I've only used a few. Oh, also had Google voice and google translate apps. I don't see how any app or gmail would have anything to do with my camera folder but hey....what do I know? That's why i'm here. Please help if you can. Thank you!

Welcome to the forums!
Do you have DCIM folder somewhere? Check out if your pictures are in there.

 

[Bizzle69]

Download Gallery Refresh from the Play Store... should fix this easily

 

[justdebra]

Welcome to the forums!
Do you have DCIM folder somewhere? Check out if your pictures are in there.

Yes, checked. Not there. Thanks.

 

[justdebra]

If the factory reset didn't fix it, how will this app?

Download Gallery Refresh from the Play Store... should fix this easily

I'll check out the app. Why wouldn't the factory reset fix the problem? What is the problem?

 

[dsignori]

UPDATE 8/14/13: After factory reset, took a few pics. Next day still there. I downloaded 3 apps and set up 2 email accounts. One Yahoo, one GoDaddy, Later, pics gone. Deleted apps, kept email. So far, pics still there. This is baffling!

That seems to be fairly strong evidence that it is related to one of those apps to me .. Add those 3 apps back 1 at a time, take pics after each app install (maybe reboot the phone after picture taking to be sure) and see which app is the culprit.

 

[RodBarnes]

FWIW: I just had this exact same thing happened. And I don't use ANY camera apps, just the base camera and gallery. I took about 40-50 photos and some video yesterday of an important family event. I took a few minutes to (thankfully) upload 8 of them to FB. This morning, when I went to go through the rest of them, they are all gone. My camera folder was missing from gallery and from the file structure. Complete gone, not just empty. I then took a camera picture trying to figure out what was going on and the Camera folder now appears and that one picture is there. But the rest are just gone.

This utterly, completely, irreversibly sucks. Can't trust the camera on the phone? Pretty worthless. Certainly, now, I will enable auto-upload. I hadn't simply because I trusted the camera and didn't want to always share everything. Now I am forced to upload them all and then remove the ones I don't want to keep.

Did I mention how much this sucks?

Anyone ever used this software before to address something like this? How to Recover Deleted Photos and Videos from Samsung Galaxy S4

 

[Maddog241]

I find this very interesting as I too had this happen to me about 2 months ago. I was showing pictures to some friends one night and when I looked the next morning the folder and pictures were just GONE. I store all on my SD card. I tried to search the SD in and out of the phone but was not able to find anything. I use Dropbox so I was able to recover everything from there, but it is odd how it was only the picture folder on the SD that was affected.

In addition, I don't use any camera apps either. I also don't have any of the apps the OP listed.

 

[Leo G]

Had this happen to mine. Had over 1000 photos on the phone and poof, gone. Didn't really realize what happened until I had about 6 photos in the newly cleared DCIM folder. Mt DSLR will add a new folder when it reaches a certain size and just thought this is what happened. Nope, all gone.

I had a good portion of them backed up on my computer. The thumbnail folder was still complete with pics that use to be in my DCIM folder.