HTC M7 photos, media, and downloads deleted, how can I get them back?

[AC Question]

HTC M7 photos, media, and downloads deleted

my photos music and every other file seems to be deleted from my phone. but when i checked the phone storage detail i seems to have around 8 GB of space used for "others" which im sure missing files. where did they go?
i have treied deleting the .nomedia file and rebooting but it didnt work. Help

 

[AlphaTango414]

re: HTC M7 photos, media, and downloads deleted

Are you using a file manager app to look on your phone storage?

 

[bipx]

re: HTC M7 photos, media, and downloads deleted

yes.im using a file manager app the default one and es file explorer . couldnt find with either. even tried wiping cache partition.

 

[B. Diddy]

re: HTC M7 photos, media, and downloads deleted

Welcome to Android Central! What if you connect the phone to your computer via USB and use Windows Explorer to look through the phone's directories?

 

[bipx]

re: HTC M7 photos, media, and downloads deleted

it says its empty

 

[B. Diddy]

re: HTC M7 photos, media, and downloads deleted

What directories were the files stored in? Were the photos in /DCIM/Camera (or /DCIM/100Media, which is what I think HTC does)? Were the downloads in the Download directory?

See if there is a LOST.DIR directory anywhere. Is that full of files?

 

[bipx]

re: HTC M7 photos, media, and downloads deleted

What directories were the files stored in? Were the photos in /DCIM/Camera (or /DCIM/100Media, which is what I think HTC does)? Were the downloads in the Download directory?

See if there is a LOST.DIR directory anywhere. Is that full of files?

yes thats where the pictures were stored.but right now its empty except for a picture i just took. nope even the downloaded files are missing.although the file names and thumbnails without image were there none of the files could be opened. same case with music the names were all there but couldnt be played. after restarting my phone even that disappeared

 

[bipx]

re: HTC M7 photos, media, and downloads deleted

i tried connecting it my computer again it says my phone only has total space of 25.4 GB when i check my phone it says it has 32 Gb total space, so that 7 gb of data isnt being read by the computer

 

[B. Diddy]

re: HTC M7 photos, media, and downloads deleted

i tried connecting it my computer again it says my phone only has total space of 25.4 GB when i check my phone it says it has 32 Gb total space, so that 7 gb of data isnt being read by the computer

The computer won't be able to read the protected system files and preinstalled bloatware app files, which probably accounts for that 7 GB.

You haven't mentioned yet if you looked in the LOST.DIR directory (if it's present).

 

[bipx]

Re: HTC M7 photos, media, and downloads deleted

nope couldnt find a LOST.DIR

 

[bipx]

Re: HTC M7 photos, media, and downloads deleted

The computer won't be able to read the protected system files and preinstalled bloatware app files, which probably accounts for that 7 GB.

You haven't mentioned yet if you looked in the LOST.DIR directory (if it's present).

normally it shows 32 GB as total space though

 

[B. Diddy]

Re: HTC M7 photos, media, and downloads deleted

normally it shows 32 GB as total space though

Oh right--you mean in the Properties when you right-click it in Windows Explorer?

I'm starting to wonder if there's a problem with the eMMC onboard memory chips.

 

[bipx]

Re: HTC M7 photos, media, and downloads deleted

also all new files get stored in a folder called sdcard which is strange because my phone doesnt have a sdcard and i dont remember seeing this folder before

 

[B. Diddy]

Internal Storage is often referred to as sdcard (or sdcard0) in the file manager, because it acts like an SD card, even though it's nonremovable. A removable SD card might be called sdcard1 or ext-sdcard.

 

[bipx]

Is there no way I can recover my files ?

 

[B. Diddy]

It's really hard to say, because I'm not sure what may have caused this to happen. Can you recall anything odd with the phone just before this happened? Did it crash and reboot on its own at some point? Did you get a recent system update?

Try booting into Safe Mode: https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-11779

 

[bipx]

nope. but i did get this notification thing from my file manager that it wanted to clean up some unnecessary files that was taking up space. it seemed like it was only going to delete the apk of installed apps and remaining files of apps i had uninstalled so i pressed okay. i didnt even know my files were gone since all the thumbnails were there.

 

[B. Diddy]

Was this the stock file manager, or some 3rd party file manager?

Also, did you try Safe Mode?

 

[bipx]

a 3rd party file manager. i was still empty on safe mode.

 

[B. Diddy]

Which file manager was it? What was the exact cleanup function you selected?