Photos disappeared during folder name change, any options to recover?

[user125333534]

Running a Samsung Galaxy S8, unrooted, running Android 8.0

I was coming back from a vacation yesterday and was organizing photos on my phone using A+ Gallery. I moved the photos into their own album/folder (on internal storage, not SD), then tried to rename the folder. The app hung while renaming so i closed it but when I reopened it I saw the folder still there (with the original name) but all the photos were gone.

Of course I'm now very upset at having lost all my vacation photos and am trying whatever I can to retrieve them.

What I've tried so far:
-Those were the only copy of the photos I had, I didnt have a chance to back them up (as I hadnt even arrived home yet) and I dont have any cloud/online backup (though yes I will learn from this)
-Cleared cache of the Samsung gallery and A+ gallery, and restarting
-Gone into the file structure with Linux and Windows and I can see the folder is empty
-Tried Recuva and PhotoRec but they dont work with MTP devices and I cannot switch to mass storage mode on my version of android
-Tried DiskDigger (unrooted) but it didnt find the photos
-I haven't had any other issues with the phone so I don't think its a hardware/storage media failure

At this point im basically out of ideas / at the end of my expertise. There's programs like Dr Fone but they look sketchy. Would trying DiskDigger rooted help me? I looked at making an image of the phone, mounting, and using Recuva but it seems like it wont work.

Thanks for any advice or ideas

 

[Mr Bojangles1]

Have you tried renaming the folder back to the original name? Also try going to settings in whatever file explorer app you are using and look for a setting to show hidden files. Then look in folders that begin with a "." If there are any.

 

[mustang7757]

Out of all threads made here at Android Central about recovering data ,photos without back ups I haven't seen one come back successful and I've been here a while lol

Like you mentioned cloud services and back up important Data in multiple places , you do this with a lease , car title and should be done with your phone as it holds valuable information.

I'll leave a Link to register so you can communicate here as a guest account you can only post questions but can't reply

https://forums.androidcentral.com/ask-question/409154-join-android-central-community.html

 

[user125333534]

Thanks for your reply; the name change to the folder didnt 'stick' but I did try creating a new folder with the name I had tried changing the folder to. The original folder folder, which was now empty, is now totally gone off the phone after a restart which is really odd as well. And yes I tried looking with hidden files shown in both Linux and the File manager, no hidden files and no .nomedia files are present anywhere they shouldnt be

 

[user125333534]

Yes I'm an ardent 3-2-1 backer-upper typically but i figured it was very unlikely something would go wrong in the small window between taking the photos and arriving home to back them up. I'm just shocked i could have lost these photos over something as routine as a folder rename - i've never heard of anything like this before. It's frustrating too as I doubt they were deleted, so the 1's and 0's are still there somewhere...

I've had close calls on other media devices before and have always been able to find a solution to recovery my data but i guess i now know that with Android there really is no remedy - without a backup it's all dangling from a single thread.

Nevertheless thanks for any help or ideas that might spring to mind

 

[B. Diddy]

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