P30 pro - software upgrade empty DCIM folder

[Tonyojess]

Dears,

I have had my p30 pro since September 2019, I am very happy about the phone until recently.
On the day of the upgrade to emui 11, I believe my DCIM folder has been emptied during the process.
At first, I thought it was me who made some stupid series of commands which deleted the folder.
Upset as you can think, I could not recovered my pictures.
Now I take pictures again, and dcim folder is full, I still have plenty of space in the phone (see attached - of course, all pictures are deleted)
But during the previous upgrade, my dcim folder is emptied again. (I have a backup of the pictures now)

Is it a common issue at Huawei? I tried to find information about it but only found sponsored ads to recover my pictures...
Anyone out there with similar problems?
Cheers,

Tonyo

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Do you happen to have an SD card inserted, and if so, is the Camera app saving photos to the card by default?

 

[Tonyojess]

Thank you for your welcome.
No I don't have a SD card, I opt for the 2nd Sim card.

 

[B. Diddy]

Are you automatically backing up photos to a cloud service like Google Photos?

 

[Tonyojess]

Yes, but this is not my preferred option.

It's only the content of dcim folder which is emptied, I still have pictures from WhatsApp, screenshots, or other applications using pictures and saved in a different folder.

 

[B. Diddy]

The reason I ask if you're automatically backing up photos is that you might have inadvertently (or possibly purposely) tapped the Free Up Space option in Google Photos, which will delete any of the locally saved photo files that Google Photos has already backed up to the cloud. This could also explain why it's only the /DCIM folder that gets cleared out, since images from folders that you chose not to backup would not be automatically deleted during the Free Up Space process.

 

[Tonyojess]

That would make sense indeed!!!
I did choose free up space, coincidence which happened same time as the upgrade.
Thank you for your answer!
I will be more careful about this.