Lost 1000s of photos from gallery

[ISIS1206]

I opened my gallery to look for some pics and saw that many of my albums had only a few pics in them. Don't know if it happened after last update...
Also, cannot sync to OneDrive as it keeps saying connected to mobile hotspot while I'm home connected to my WIFI

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Which phone? Are you using Google Photos at all? Are the photos saved to Internal Storage or an SD card?

Please register on this forum, which will allow you to engage in discussion more easily, as well as post images. https://forums.androidcentral.com/ask-question/409154-join-android-central-community.html

 

[ISIS1206]

Sorry, it's a Samsung S22 Ultra and the photos were saved to internal storage. My photos are on Google photos, but I've always accessed my phone pics from Gallery

 

[B. Diddy]

I made you the owner of the original guest post to make it easier for you to find.

Are the photos in your Google Photos app or website? Go to the Google Photos app, or photos.google.com on your computer browser, and see if the photos are there. If so, then it's possible you backed them up automatically to the cloud, and then at some point selected the Free Up Space option in Google Photos, which deletes from local storage any photo that it knows you already backed up to the cloud.

 

[ISIS1206]

Thank you
Yes, I can say that all the photos are in Google which does automatically backup. And I think you are correct about freeing up space, as I recently started using AVG Cleaner. The question now is, how can I recover them? Where did AVG send them as they are not in my trash?
I have seen quite a few Photo Restore Apps and the one that I tried only duplicated what was already there, even though it said 4009 photos recovered. Do you suggest an app that would actually work?

 

[mustang7757]

Hi welcome to AC

I moved this to the s22 Forum for specific traffic

Sent from my SM-S918U1 using AC Forums mobile app

 

[mustang7757]

Is mobile hotspot off ? That seems to be a issue besides losing photos.


AVG cleaner is responsible for losing photos or was it before u installed?

Sent from my SM-S918U1 using AC Forums mobile app

 

[B. Diddy]

Thank you
Yes, I can say that all the photos are in Google which does automatically backup. And I think you are correct about freeing up space, as I recently started using AVG Cleaner. The question now is, how can I recover them? Where did AVG send them as they are not in my trash?
I have seen quite a few Photo Restore Apps and the one that I tried only duplicated what was already there, even though it said 4009 photos recovered. Do you suggest an app that would actually work?

You can always re-download photos that are in your Google Photos cloud. Open Google Photos, open a photo, tap the 3-dot menu button at the upper right, then tap Download.

But if the photos are safely saved to the cloud and can be viewed easily in the Google Photos app, why do you need them physically stored on the phone? It just takes up space. Is there an app you're using that requires locally saved photos if you want to share them?

BTW, there's really no need to use an antivirus app like AVG, if you follow basic security guidelines. These kinds of antivirus apps often bog down the phone's performance. Read these:
[GUIDE] How To Avoid Malware - Android Forums at AndroidCentral.com
“I’ve been hacked” - Android Forums at AndroidCentral.com

 

[ISIS1206]

Thanks, I guess I'll remove AVG. Yes, mobile hotspot has never been turned on. IDK if AVG is responsible, but when I started using it, thats when I noticed them missing.
The reason that I kept the photos on my phone is they had all been put into albums to make it easier to find. I had not done that with Google photos. I'm talking albums going back 20+ years that were transferred from phone to phone.
I guess I can recreate them on Google, but it's going to take a very long time.
I just hope that all those pics go back that far in Google Photos.
I was trying to find a way to restore them, whether it happened with AVG or not. Can you suggest a photo restore app that you know works?

 

[rvbfan]

I can't suggest a specific app but I'm sure they are out there.
I'm just posting this for others. Never trust a phone, computer, hard drive whatever for as long as it takes to back it up to multiple places. On site and off site. I know this doesn't help now, but it has been said many times and by many people. Backup, backup, backup!

Sent from my Pixel 6 using Tapatalk

 

[B. Diddy]

See this guide about trying to recover deleted files: [Guide] Recovering Deleted Files - Android Forums at AndroidCentral.com. Be aware, though, that it can be challenging if these were all on internal storage, since recovery programs typically require the phone to be rooted in that case.

 

[ISIS1206]

Thank you for the info...I will check it out although I will not root my phone. And I actually don't even know if they were deleted as there was nothing in my trash except what I had put in there. Plus the fact that the app I used found those 4000+ photos on my phone somewhere. Just can't figure out how to get them from the app. It only restores the photos that are still on the phone
Weird that there are still some photos in the albums I created...none of them had been emptied.

 

[ISIS1206]

I read your guide on recovering the photos, funny thats' the app that I had used where I can't recover all my photos. I just re-ran the app and my 4000+ files are now 7996 recoverable files. I'm going to see if it recovers them all or just the same ones that are already on the phone

 

[ISIS1206]

FYI those 7996 files were just the same files from last time, with some duplicated 3-4 times

 

[B. Diddy]

Have you already tried using a file manager app (like Samsung's My Files, or Files by Google) to look directly in the directories for those photos to see if the photo files are still there? I ask in case, for some odd reason, a ".nomedia" file was created in each directory with photos. .nomedia would instruct the system to ignore that directory when scanning for photos to include in the gallery database.

 

[ISIS1206]

I had read about that .nomedia file, but when I did a search, nothing came up. It's not as bad as I originally thought, this phone is only 2 yrs old. All my photos up to 2020 are on my Note 8 still.
Thank you for all your input. I appreciate it.

 

[B. Diddy]

Hard to say what happened. It may have just been some kind of glitch, either with some app (like AVG) that went hayware and deleted a bunch of files, or with the system itself.

Although I realize it may be a monumental pain to redo the photo organization in Google Photos, it still may be worthwhile, because it will make photo storage so much easier in the future. You won't have to worry about transferring photos from old phones to new phones, and there are significant advantages to how Google Photos organizes photos. I like how one photo can be in multiple albums without having to duplicate it -- if you did that on a phone's local storage, you'd have to create new copies of the photo to place them in other directories. Most importantly, the search function in Google Photos is phenomenal, and is often an easier way to locate a specific photo than trying to figure out which album it's in. You can search for specific people or pets, events, objects, holidays, locations, etc.

 

[ISIS1206]

You are absolutely right. Since I already have Google Photos on my phone, it's so unnecessary having all that storage bloating my phone's memory.
Thanks again for all your suggestions.