photos delete themselves - Samsung Galaxy S9+ Questions & Answers

occasionally (not every day, not every photo, sometimes not even the same photo) on day reset (internal clock 00:00) photos delete themselves from my gallery app. conditions to keep in mind:
-google drive back up disabled, google drive uninstalled
-google photos back up disabled, google photos app uninstalled
-samsung+ not connected, samsung cloud backup disabled
-generic cloud back up disabled
-its not my norton junk cleaner clearing out photos
-its not the Settings>device maintenance cache clear/free up space or optimization tools
(have considerations and settings set so none of these deletes or has access to photos)
and as per norton scan i have no viruses, malware or ransomware.
photos could be recovered by rooting data recovery process but thats not the issue.
the issue is why are photos being deleted( directory file state set to free space) on day change?
the only two things ive been able to determine are that its a problem with either android OS or the stock gallery app itself. how do i debug and fix this?

SDcard?

no on sim card internal memory
Shipoftheline said:
SDcard?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nope just on normal sim card internal memory. havent added the SD card yet.

I'd reset the phone and if it continues I'd put it down to faulty internal memory then

Shipoftheline said:
I'd reset the phone and if it continues I'd put it down to faulty internal memory then
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it started day 1 on factory out of the box settings

Pictures/Photos disappearing and/or half greyed out
darth_brando said:
occasionally (not every day, not every photo, sometimes not even the same photo) on day reset (internal clock 00:00) photos delete themselves from my gallery app. conditions to keep in mind:
-google drive back up disabled, google drive uninstalled
-google photos back up disabled, google photos app uninstalled
-samsung+ not connected, samsung cloud backup disabled
-generic cloud back up disabled
-its not my norton junk cleaner clearing out photos
-its not the Settings>device maintenance cache clear/free up space or optimization tools
(have considerations and settings set so none of these deletes or has access to photos)
and as per norton scan i have no viruses, malware or ransomware.
photos could be recovered by rooting data recovery process but thats not the issue.
the issue is why are photos being deleted( directory file state set to free space) on day change?
the only two things ive been able to determine are that its a problem with either android OS or the stock gallery app itself. how do i debug and fix this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I started noticing pictures/photos disappearing and SOME pictures half-greyed out about a month ago. The problem first appeared close to the time I received a system update. I had 334 pictures stored on my PC and copied onto my SD Card. I now have 84 of those original pictures still on the SD Card, but I can't see some pictures and others are half-greyed out. What is going on is beyond me, but a Google search found the issue reported on several sites, but the problem is not only with the S9 series, but also the S8. So far the best recommendation is to uninstall updates to the Gallery. I'm testing it now. However, I can't copy pictures from my PC onto the SD card for some reason. So, more research is needed.

Related

Gallery Question

Coming from the original Incredible, both when resetting the phone or mounting it as a disk drive on your computer would automatically make the gallery and music apps recheck and delete old files/folders and display the new ones, rather than displaying the triangle with a question mark in it that you would come across when deleting a file via Root Explorer or through other methods. However, this doesn't work on the Inc 4G. Resetting the phone deletes nothing, clearing data and cache for the App does nothing, and mounting and dismounting it via USB only removes links to pictures/videos on the internal SD card (which shouldn't be the only place available for saving everything in the majority of apps, nor should it be called 'sdcard' and the real SD card called 'sdcard2', but we'll address that later.)
Barring going through all folders and picking and choosing which triangle-question mark links to delete in the app itself, is there a way to prevent or rectify this annoyance?
IceDragon59 said:
Coming from the original Incredible, both when resetting the phone or mounting it as a disk drive on your computer would automatically make the gallery and music apps recheck and delete old files/folders and display the new ones, rather than displaying the triangle with a question mark in it that you would come across when deleting a file via Root Explorer or through other methods. However, this doesn't work on the Inc 4G. Resetting the phone deletes nothing, clearing data and cache for the App does nothing, and mounting and dismounting it via USB only removes links to pictures/videos on the internal SD card (which shouldn't be the only place available for saving everything in the majority of apps, nor should it be called 'sdcard' and the real SD card called 'sdcard2', but we'll address that later.)
Barring going through all folders and picking and choosing which triangle-question mark links to delete in the app itself, is there a way to prevent or rectify this annoyance?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ive come across this.
open the gallery app, then i are able to delete those from within the gallery app, just delete all the ! ones.
worked for me.
andybones said:
ive come across this.
open the gallery app, then i are able to delete those from within the gallery app, just delete all the ! ones.
worked for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I appreciate the thought. Yeah, I know that works, I was wondering if there was any way besides doing it manually.
IceDragon59 said:
Barring going through all folders and picking and choosing which triangle-question mark links to delete in the app itself, is there a way to prevent or rectify this annoyance?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
-- sorry bro totally skipped over this part.

♚ Media storage issue ♚

I'm running AOKP JB Build 5, and Dagr8's Kernel.
The rom is awesome, but something is wrong with my Media Storage, ever since I ran this rom.
I am suddenly experiencing duplicates of music files, and pictures, all stored on my SD card.
I clear data on Media Storage and reboot. I then have to wait an extremely long time before my SD card finally reads, then back to normal...
But then this re-occurs!
I can't figure out why or how to permanently fix it..
Help?
Sent from my Fish Tank ₪
I have seen users with this issue, when I had double [or ghost/double files] for my pic's [no music I use pandy] it was from restore quickpic from tibu, so I just reinstalled from the Market fresh quickpic app, it fixed that, but I have to from time to time backup my storage and just do a complete format, then put my files back on, I did upgrade to a better quality ext SD and did a fresh format of that and copied my files back on, no issues since then...
A side note, I had these issues going from ICS to Jbean, but since I did the above no issues on this, just my experience.
While I can't confirm this, I do suspect that the issue is caused by duplicate media storage events occurring within the rom.
This can be accomplished a number of ways, but I also suspect that it's an APK compatibility issue.
And depending on the roms used, will manifest itself when more than 1 app stores data, while the second APK will duplicate the data save function.
Check the rom carefully for more than 1 app performing the same function, such as a camera app or music app.
These APK's often have an auto save/restore feature, but save the files under a different file name and basically duplicate the save in 2 places.
Also, apps that auto backup will often save duplicate copies in different locations, by mistake, as they are not always compatible with every build.
Again, it's really a trial and error situation, as so many variables exist, and many apps share duplicated function without registration of a force close event.
I hope in some small way this may help you find the rogue apps.....g

[Q] [Solved] Weird problems with files on external sd

I am new to Samsung, coming from HTC Desire. And got into bizarre already )
A couple of days ago noticed a strange problem with photos in galery unreadable, appearing to be corrupt (all of them on external sd, internal sd photos are displayed properly). Then today happened that Music app couldn't play music files on external SD.
Read countless of similar issues on the internet, with lots of people blaming on the sd card. However, I found that it is not the case.
Put into a SD card reader and plug into PC, the files on SD card are all ok.
Put back card into phone and investigated further. First I thought maybe it's a problem with SD card reader in the phone. BUT! Noticed files are perfectly visible in ES File Explorer, and even display correctly when using Gallery App to open them from ES file explorer. But if Gallery is opened first, it cannot display files.
I'm sure somebody else happened the same, since the internet is full with such reports regarding Galaxy devices (even S1 and Note alike), but anyone identified the sorce of the problem and eventually solved it? I would be very much interested.
crisagatie said:
I am new to Samsung, coming from HTC Desire. And got into bizarre already )
A couple of days ago noticed a strange problem with photos in galery unreadable, appearing to be corrupt (all of them on external sd, internal sd photos are displayed properly). Then today happened that Music app couldn't play music files on external SD.
Read countless of similar issues on the internet, with lots of people blaming on the sd card. However, I found that it is not the case.
Put into a SD card reader and plug into PC, the files on SD card are all ok.
Put back card into phone and investigated further. First I thought maybe it's a problem with SD card reader in the phone. BUT! Noticed files are perfectly visible in ES File Explorer, and even display correctly when using Gallery App to open them from ES file explorer. But if Gallery is opened first, it cannot display files.
I'm sure somebody else happened the same, since the internet is full with such reports regarding Galaxy devices (even S1 and Note alike), but anyone identified the sorce of the problem and eventually solved it? I would be very much interested.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try to run Rescan Media app from Play store.
Maybe your media scanner service does not work properly and needs to refresh the list of media files on your sd card.
Good luck !
rescan is done automatically every reboot. doesn't help. thanx anyway.
investigated further and found out that the files are not corrupt, but the libraries of Music app and Gallery app created duplicated empty files (in fact 2 fake entries in library for every valid file on the card). Duplicate files don't exist physically on SD card, only in libraries of the two applications.
Already tried formatting cache and dalvik cache, but to no avail...
ICS 4.0.4 Orange Romania (BVLPH) stock ROM.
Later EDIT: This was an easy one. Unmounted SD Card and open Gallery app and Music app. Then re-mount SD Card, both apps will refresh libraries, wait a while for media scan in the background and voila: duplicate files disappear, everything is in god order.
I had a similar problem where both gallery and music files were duplicated, but the duplicates were unreadable.
My solution was Settings -> Applications -> All -> Media Storage -> Clear Data.
This forced a refresh and everything turned normal again.
Slightly annoying that the media scan data is stored under a separate application and not within the data of the gallery or music player applications, but once I discovered this it was an easy fix.

Some recently taken photos/videos are only accessible by Google Photos, appear to be in its app data and not movable

Very peculiar issue occurring: there are a fair amount of photos and videos that show up under google photos under library -> photos on device -> camera with SDCard Icon.
But the location for these files is "/external/video/media" or "/external/image/media" under ""On Device (size)." The other files taken in a similar way are correctly on "/storage/9C32-13OC/DCIM/Camera"
When clicking these files, they play normally, clicking share and More or Create Link says "Error, could not download media" and using Google Photos to Move / Copy says "Trouble Moving 1 item"
When ejecting the SDCard and physically removing it while keeping Google Photos open, all the files actually on /storage/<ID> disappear, and all these weird files remain and can be played. This is how I discovered it wasn't just today's videos, which were mysteriously not being uploaded to my nextcloud. No other app can see these videos/images, including the system's gallery app, and they are not in the internal emulated "SDcard"
These are on my SO's phone and I use the exact same model phone. I did discover that I do have some files like these but hey are all older than the oldest file on my SDCard, e.g. Google Photos has somehow decided to cache them. But on my SO's phone, these files are intermingled with the ones she's actually taken
Interestingly when I switch the google photos account to another google user logged on the phone, those files disappear. I did try moving files to the locked folder but it says "Trouble moving to Locked Folder. Try again later"— I did verify I could move files actually on the SDCard there, and they are then removed from all views except Locked Folder.
In this folder, on the top right when clicking the SDCard Icon, it does show the "SD Card folder" as "file:///storage/9C32-13OC/DCIM/Camera" as expected.
I searched for the filename in a file browser as well as in adb shell (using find / -name "filename" 2> /dev/null) and nothing comes up. As there are some lengthy videos in here, I used DiskUsage to see what might be using a lot of space, and the Google Photos app is using 7.55 GB of data, so it seems like they are being stored there. And it makes sense why they can't be found, as /data/data/com.google.android.apps.photos is only accessible by that app or the system, and I'm unrooted.
My SO said she took them the same way she normally takes photos and video, and of course when I take some they show up on the actual SDCard. I suppose in theory I could use adb backup and follow instructions on how to decrypt the data files, but really what the heck is going on?
We aren't on the latest phone or even the latest Google Photos app (could be a bug with this specific version, but then again google photos isn't taking the photos/videos, the system Camera app is). I could try upgrading her google photos but I also don't want to lose these videos of our kid. It does seem like it would back them up, but we don't have enough Google Storage to back them up online (hence why we use nextcloud), and they don't even show up under different google accounts as mentioned.
Phone: LG G7
Android 10
Google Photos: 6.21.0.504361003
robobub said:
EDIT: whoops, can this be moved to https://forum.xda-developers.com/f/android-q-a-help-troubleshooting.1236/ ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Done!
Regards
Oswald Boelcke
robobub said:
I suppose in theory I could use adb backup and follow instructions on how to decrypt the data files, but really what the heck is going on?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well this didn't work, as google photos does not back up with adb, as some apps can specify this.
Some of these videos did get uploaded to google photos, but they are (now) compressed to under 1/8th their size (the original size is noted correctly in google photos), and from 4k to HD.
From what I had recalled, when they are first uploaded, they are available at their original size to be downloaded. So I tried deleting one to get it to re-upload, and now that video no longer shows up on my SDCard under "/external/video/media" so I basically lost the original HQ video of my kid, great.
Any ideas?

Transferred Photos Disappeared and Can't be Found or Recovered.

So I sent my current phone (Redmi Note 9S) and my old phone (Huawei P20 Lite) to be repaired by replacing the battery and replacing the cracked screen respectively. I always wanted to transfer all my photos and videos from my old Huawei to my Redmi, I never got the time because I had to repair the completely totaled screen. When I finally did so, I immediately transferred the photos from my Huawei to my Redmi then when I verified that all the data I wanted were transferred, I factory reset my Huawei to sell it for cheap to reimburse the cost of repairing the screen. I then also formatted my SD card in my Redmi so I could fit in my Spotify music instead of being in the internal memory so my new folders of old pics and videos could have space within the phone.
Everything was still fine. I then went to bed. When I woke up, I checked my photos in my Redmi once again and saw that all the photos and videos I transferred to my Redmi were gone. Not a trace. I panicked and searched for ways I could recover them. I downloaded multiple apps to see lost files. I could recover every deleted photo I took on my Redmi except NONE of the photos I transferred from my Huawei were recoverable or even seen. It's as if they never existed at all. Two years' worth of photos from all over the world gone without a trace. I spent over 12 hours trying to find different ways such as rooting my old Huawei or recovering the files in the formatted SD card to no avail. I am wondering what I did wrong or what happened between the time frames of me going to bed to waking up that prompted the photos and videos to erase from existence. All of my photos and videos taken on my Redmi which I did not manually delete are still there. There's not a single trace of them anywhere now.
Another thing to add was that I thought that I deleted them on my SD card but when I checked my settings on my Redmi, it was set that all Gallery media such as photos and videos are automatically sent to the internal memory instead of the external memory. To me, that checked out the possibility of me deleting the photos and videos.
I hope some of you could help me out because those photos and videos hold a lot of sentimental value to me, and I spent the money repairing the Huawei with the sole purpose of recovering those photos. I would hate to give up when there might be a possibility of a chance of getting them back.
You transferred the images to the internal memory of the new phone? How?
Old phone>copy/paste>PC/hdds or OTG flashsticks*>copy/paste to new phone.
Never cut/paste
If using a SD card backup data redundantly>format on new phone>load data.
On the SD card** no folder can be named "dcim" or have that in their folder name as it will caused anomalies if there's already a DCIM folder on internal memory. There can only be one DCIM folder on the phone. For duplicate DCIM folders the secondary one should be named something like "cam photos" etc.
*always backup data redundantly on at least 2 hdds preferably that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC.
**if the camera is set to store images directly to the SD card then the DCIM folder goes on only the SD card, I believe. I never set a dual drive phone up like that; I use the SD card to backup the internal memory stored cam files.
blackhawk said:
You transferred the images to the internal memory of the new phone? How?
Old phone>copy/paste>PC/hdds or OTG flashsticks*>copy/paste to new phone.
Never cut/paste
If using a SD card backup data redundantly>format on new phone>load data.
On the SD card** no folder can be named "dcim" or have that in their folder name as it will caused anomalies if there's already a DCIM folder on internal memory. There can only be one DCIM folder on the phone. For duplicate DCIM folders the secondary one should be named something like "cam photos" etc.
*always backup data redundantly on at least 2 hdds preferably that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC.
**if the camera is set to store images directly to the SD card then the DCIM folder goes on only the SD card, I believe. I never set a dual drive phone up like that; I use the SD card to backup the internal memory stored cam files.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I used the MobileTrans app to transfer the files, and I set the Redmi to always put photos on the internal memory, not the SD drive. That's why I am confused to why they would disappear overnight, especially when I could go through them on my Redmi flawlessly before I went to bed.
Inquisitoria said:
I used the MobileTrans app to transfer the files, and I set the Redmi to always put photos on the internal memory, not the SD drive. That's why I am confused to why they would disappear overnight, especially when I could go through them on my Redmi flawlessly before I went to bed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not familiar with that app. I have zero confidence in those types of apps though. I always do direct folder/file transfers.
It's imperative to keep multiple back up copies or eventually this is what will happen. At the very least you should have backed up the photos on the SD card.
This isn't sounding good... maybe there's something you overlooked and the files are there.
After losing a database that was 30 yo and not replaceable I'm a lot more careful now
blackhawk said:
Not familiar with that app. I have zero confidence in those types of apps though. I always do direct folder/file transfers.
It's imperative to keep multiple back up copies or eventually this is what will happen. At the very least you should have backed up the photos on the SD card.
This isn't sounding good... maybe there's something you overlooked and the files are there.
After losing a database that was 30 yo and not replaceable I'm a lot more careful now
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I suppose my first mistake was trusting an unknown app. Despite it doing the job it was intended I guess it didn't mean it would have the photos last. I was planning on backing up all the transferred photos to google photos the morning after I woke up from my sleep. Maybe I should have done it immediately, but it's too late now. Regarding the fact that I might have overlooked something and they may still be there, here's to hoping, but I am prepared to be disappointed.
Are you 100 percent sure they transferred that night?
Arealhooman said:
Are you 100 percent sure they transferred that night?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I went through every photo and video (yes all 4000 photos and 500 videos) on my redmi just to make sure they all transferred properly. I even sent some to my friends on messenger for throwback's sake.
Inquisitoria said:
I went through every photo and video (yes all 4000 photos and 500 videos) on my redmi just to make sure they all transferred properly. I even sent some to my friends on messenger for throwback's sake.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What's the internal memory size look like now?
Search the folders especially if the internal memory size indicates the files are there. Maybe in a common media folder?
Do some Google searches for that brand phone and that app. See what others have experienced and if they found solutions. I've never heard of anything like that but odd glitches can happen with Androids.

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