Updated phone last night, now about 200 photos are missing.

[mattl2]

Hi. Last night I installed the Galaxy S7 update, (did not update Android version, just a general phone update I guess) and this morning I noticed I only had 46 photos in my gallery. I used to have over 200. The photos are gone from the SD card as well, which I verified using a file browser. And even worse, the photos are missing from my Google photos backup so I can't just download them again. I did back up my photos on my laptop, but that was several months ago and even if I restore that backup I'll still be missing dozens of photos. Has anyone else had this problem, and is there any recommendations on how to get my photos back?

Also: I'm not 100% sure the two things are connected, but if they are not the timing sure would be weird.

 

[mattl2]

Update: I tried a few different lost photo recovery apps but they couldn't find the missing photos.

 

[B. Diddy]

Are you certain that photos are missing from both Internal Storage and the SD card, or were they all on the SD card? Is your Camera app set to save to the SD card by default? If they were all on the SD card, I'd suspect some kind of card corruption (which is always a risk, compared to onboard memory).

 

[mattl2]

I think the only missing photos are from my SD card, and the camera saves to SD by default. Internal photos, such as downloads and screenshots, seem to be fine.

As far the Sd card being corrupt, I have other albums on the sd card, such as collections from older phones, and they seem to be fine. Just the photos from my current camera are missing. Also new photos seem to save fine.

 

[B. Diddy]

The SD card (or certain files/folders) could still be corrupt; or the card could be defective or counterfeit. Install SD Insight to see if the card is genuine or counterfeit. Counterfeit cards are programmed to report more storage than they actually have, and if you try saving more than the card can actually hold, then files can start getting corrupt. (Be aware that SD Insight might not work on all Nougat devices.)


If it's a valid card, then go to Settings>Storage, Unmount the card, remove it, and insert it into your computer. Can the computer read these files? Backup as much as you can right now, then run chkdsk to look for bad sectors: http://forums.androidcentral.com/am...guide-using-chkdsk-fix-corrupted-sd-card.html. If it finds bad sectors, and the photos aren't crucial to save, then go ahead and allow chkdsk to try repairing those sectors. If the photos are really precious, then you'll have to try recovering them using 3rd party software: http://forums.androidcentral.com/am...os/500142-guide-recovering-deleted-files.html

 

[mattl2]

Hi. Sorry for the delay. I am unable to install the SD Insight app, I get the error "your device isn't compatible with this version." However I'm basically positive the card is real because I bought it from Amazon directly, not through a third party seller.

So I popped out the card (unmounted it first) and put it in my laptop, which could only find the same 40-something photos the phone could. Again, archived photos on the sd card (from old phones) seem to be untouched.

Honestly I think the problem is with my gallery app. Since January (immediately following a phone update) I have been unable to use the stock gallery app to delete, share, or edit any photos taken after the date of the bad update. Some others with galaxy phones have this bug too. I have to delete/share/etc using a file browser. I think the gallery app deleted roughly 200 non-sequential photos, and my Google photos synced and deleted them too before I noticed.

Another odd note is that after I restored the backup from my laptop to the sd card, only the photos pre-backup show up in my gallery. The few that didn't get deleted post-backup (which are on the card) aren't viewable in my gallery. Ugh. I think this is Verizon and/or Samsung telling me they want me to upgrade.

 

[B. Diddy]

Did you also try using chkdsk while you had the card in your computer? What you're describing could still be consistent with a corrupt or failing card.

 

[mattl2]

Thanks for sticking around. Ran chkdsk. "Windows successfully scanned the drive. No errors were found."

 

[B. Diddy]

Hmm, frustrating.:-\ I'm afraid I don't know where the problem may lie. If all of those photos had backed up to your Google Photos in the cloud, then a problem with the SD card, the gallery app, or the phone's firmware still shouldn't have caused the backed up photos in your Google Photos to disappear. On the other hand, if you were on the Google Photos website and put one of those photos in the Trash, I believe that also removes them from whichever device they were backed up from -- so one possible explanation would be that all of the missing photos somehow got put in the Trash on Google Photos.

Open your Google Photos, click the Menu button, and click on the Trash folder. Are any of the missing photos there?

 

[mattl2]

Oh my god!! All of the photos that were deleted/disappeared from my SD card and also deleted from Google Photos are in the Google Photos trash. So between my laptop backup from a few months ago, and the more recent photos in my google photos trash, I was able to recover everything. I don't know how to explain it, but thanks for your help getting them back.

I will add: After restoring all the photos to the camera folder, only 39 of them are appearing in the stock gallery app. But they are in the folder, because I see them in my file viewer. This is more evidence that leads me to believe my very buggy gallery is at fault. But who knows. I downloaded a third-party gallery app and it shows all the photos.

 

[B. Diddy]

He shoots, he scooooores!!! So glad you got your photos back.

See if this makes your stock Gallery app work again -- go to Settings>Apps, select Gallery, then Storage, then Clear Cache/Clear Data. Now open Gallery again and give it a few seconds to rebuild the database. Do the photos show up now?

 

[mattl2]

After deleting cache and data for the gallery app in the application manager, my gallery still only shows 40 photos in the primary camera folder, despite my file browser showing 248. Weird. I'm happy using a third-party Gallery app for now, I just hope a bunch of photos don't get deleted again.

 

[donfmo]

I had 200+ pics gone from my gallery and photos this morning after the Android update. When I went into storage settings it said my SD card status was "corrupted". I hooked up the phone to my pc and could not browse the folder to see any contents. So I got creative. I powered the phone down and removed the SD card, reinserted the slot and powered the phone back up. I checked the storage setup to verify that the SD card was no longer visible and it wasn't. I then powered the phone back down, popped the SD card back in, and restarted the phone. VOILA! Everything is back to normal. I'm thinking I will stick to manual updates, do a backup first, and remove the SD card before I run the update. JEEZ!!