Photos disappearing from Gallery on Samsung S7

[Android Central Question]

I take approx. 8 photos a day on a daily hike to keep track of my time on the hike. Recently, I've noticed some photos are not there in the gallery when I go to look at them. I thought at first I may be just forgetting to take them, or not pressing the shutter button properly, but yesterday I made a point of looking at the small 'preview' icon that shows on the camera right after a picture is taken and the image was there for all 8 shots. But The next day I looked and only 4 shots were there; some were just randomly missing. Some days all 8 shots are present. I don't move any shots to any sub-folders - I just leave everything in the original (DCIM) location.

I have chosen to store files on internal SD card. Could it be the SD card is failing? Anything to test for ? The SD card is a 64 Gig card, and is about 60% full.

 

[SpookDroid]

Yup. Never store camera pictures in SD card. Not sure why but Samsung phones seem to fry cards way more often than any other phone, and SD cards are unreliable anyway.

 

[Rukbat]

Wait - an SD card that you set up as adoptable/internal? Or the folder on the phone named sdcard? That one isn't an SD card, it's part of eMMC storage inside the phone. If it's an external SD crd installed as internal, that's probably why. Samsung doesn't allow that, and the tricks used to get around that usually fail.

 

[Steerpike58]

Wait - an SD card that you set up as adoptable/internal? Or the folder on the phone named sdcard? That one isn't an SD card, it's part of eMMC storage inside the phone. If it's an external SD crd installed as internal, that's probably why. Samsung doesn't allow that, and the tricks used to get around that usually fail.

The Samsung S7 has an SD card slot, and I installed an SD card. So it's a real physical SD card. After installing the card, in the stock camera app, there is an option to store pictures on 'SD Card'. No 'tricks'.

 

[methodman89]

1st and easiest thing to do is change the SD card and ensure that it's above the minimum speeds required.

 

[Steerpike58]

OK - I switched storage locations from SD card to 'phone'; now my photos are definitely getting stored in the phone storage, not the SD Card. But photos are still randomly disappearing. I took a bunch on a hike yesterday, the first one was retained, the second and third were not. Fourth - I immediately opened the gallery and it was there, and was retained. Then two more were not saved. Then another was saved.

This seems somewhat random, but - IF I immediately open the gallery by clicking on the small preview window in the camera app itself, I always seem to retain the image. It's as if the act of opening it through the preview forces it to be saved, otherwise, it may or may not be saved. To confirm - I always see a confirmation image in the preview window after taking - so the photo is being taken.

The camera storage is nowhere near full - I just plugged in the phone and see 13 GB free of 22.8 GB - about half full.

 

[Archaedis]

Yes! I have this exact same issue!! It happened before I got an sd card. Very frustrating. I hope they fix the bug!

 

[Rukbat]

Take a look at Google Photos. Are thy there? If not, they're getting deleted somehow. If they are, they're just getting deleted from the phone. But it would definitely appear to be an S7 problem.

@Steerpike58, the 'trick' I was talking about is formatting the card to be used as adoptable storage. Samsung phones only allow portable storage - what we had before adoptable storage was invented. (But some people have somehow [I didn't read the details, because the posts were about losing things on the card] managed to make a Samsung phone accept a card as adoptable storage of some sort - and fail to work properly.)