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.
Related
Went to look at some pics off my SD card last night and realized that the phone had deleted them.
But what was weird, beside the fact that they got deleted, was that the phone didn't delete all my pictures. Out of about 200 pics, it deleted around 190 of them. Very strange.
Has this happened to anyone else??
Not I. The SD Card and the pictures contained should be virtually untouchable without direct user interaction. Did you possibly put them on the external SD? Are you trusting Gallery or did you check with a file manager as well? Lastly, have you used HTC sync or any other tool that could copy/backup these pictures(and maybe delete them after sync)
Same thing happened to me. Lost about 90% of my pics. Don't know how it happened. Was able to recover most of them using a program that is on hirem's boot cd.
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using XDA App
MrSmith317 said:
Not I. The SD Card and the pictures contained should be virtually untouchable without direct user interaction. Did you possibly put them on the external SD? Are you trusting Gallery or did you check with a file manager as well? Lastly, have you used HTC sync or any other tool that could copy/backup these pictures(and maybe delete them after sync)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I used ASTRO file manager to double check that the pictures were actually deleted.
I don't sync my phone with my computer so I don't know how the pictures would have been deleted.
Needless to say, it's very disconcerting that my SD card could be vulnerable to something like this. I can understand, somewhat, if it was the phones internal storage, but not my SD card.
Luckily I had backed up my SD card on my computer recently (copy and paste method) so I didn't lose too many pictures.
He didnt like your dirty pics
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using Tapatalk
VTENGR said:
I used ASTRO file manager to double check that the pictures were actually deleted.
I don't sync my phone with my computer so I don't know how the pictures would have been deleted.
Needless to say, it's very disconcerting that my SD card could be vulnerable to something like this. I can understand, somewhat, if it was the phones internal storage, but not my SD card.
Luckily I had backed up my SD card on my computer recently (copy and paste method) so I didn't lose too many pictures.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would say keep your SD backed up and if it happens again exchange the phone.
VTENGR said:
I used ASTRO file manager to double check that the pictures were actually deleted.
I don't sync my phone with my computer so I don't know how the pictures would have been deleted.
Needless to say, it's very disconcerting that my SD card could be vulnerable to something like this. I can understand, somewhat, if it was the phones internal storage, but not my SD card.
Luckily I had backed up my SD card on my computer recently (copy and paste method) so I didn't lose too many pictures.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
as a backup method, you could use sugarsync. They have a 5gb free account and can back up all pictures and videos automatically.
Hey everybody, let me speak to this.
More than likely your pictures are NOT deleted.
This has happened to me several times. I'd open the gallery and would not see any of my pictures, save for a few that are on the Phone Storage.
All I did was 'unmount' and 'remount' the SD card in the settings menu under 'SD & Phone Storage.
I have not been able to pinpoint the exact cause of the external SD mount getting jacked, but it might be around the USB debugging, or setting your phone to usb disk drive mode.
Anyway, a quick unmount/remount, and all my pictures were back in the gallery. I hope the same works for you, good luck!
There was also an issue where if you where flashing boot.IMG through hboot they were being ereased. Check out dsb kernel thread over at team bamf.
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using Tapatalk
fbm111 said:
There was also an issue where if you where flashing boot.IMG through hboot they were being ereased. Check out dsb kernel thread over at team bamf.
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was just reading that thread!
I think they were talking about the internal card and not the external though. Still, something to watch out for. Always good to make a back up of everything before flashing.
Ok so tonight, I decided to clean up my SD card. I had noticed that some how I had 1500 pics on my internal SD card, SO I moved them over to my external one and cleaned everything up a bit, combining all the folders. Now when I go into my phone and SD card, all the pics are TINY in size. LIke if the pic before was the size of the screen, now its 1x1 inch. I use wallpaper wizzadrii to set my wallpapers and its setting them all for TINY as well.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
you probably copied the thumbnails
I did now what?
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using Tapatalk 2
If you deleted the actual pictures and are just now stuck with the thumbnails try an app called DiskDigger. It'll find your deleted photos if it was just recently done. It won't go as far back as a PC would. But give it a shot. Oh yea, must be rooted for it I believe.
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using xda app-developers app
I wouldn't use an android app, I'd connect the phone to a PC, mount it, then use Recuva to scan it.
scy1192 said:
I wouldn't use an android app, I'd connect the phone to a PC, mount it, then use Recuva to scan it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
going to try that now.
Also, I just realized that all the pics were on my internal storage. I know I never set it up that way. I have always put them on my SD card. For future reference, how do i get everything to be automatically saved to the external SD card?
You mentioned that you cleaned up the images by copying them from your internal SD to your external one - if what you're trying doesn't work, do you remember which folder the files came from? You can just move them back but I have a sinking feeling that you're going to go to your Gallery and when you review your images, you'll see a bunch of white boxes with and 'x' inside which indicates that you're missing the image that was where it was supposed to be when the Gallery accessed your photos. I did something similar a while ago, trying to consolidate photos into a folder on my SD and when I moved the files, I had the white boxes I mentioned. The fastest way to fix the issue is to move ALL images off your SD, go to Gallery, erase ALL, then mount the SD card onto the PC and move images back onto the SD, go to Gallery, and let the thumbnails regenerate.
It's a pain but if you do this once, you'll not do it by accident again. Android does something similar to Apple's iTunes. You can have files in several folders and the program will 'find them' for you but if you move them, you can cause yourself quite a headache.
Good luck!
putney1477 said:
going to try that now.
Also, I just realized that all the pics were on my internal storage. I know I never set it up that way. I have always put them on my SD card. For future reference, how do i get everything to be automatically saved to the external SD card?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The app I posted works fine, I've used it before. It looks for only photos whole recuva will find any file ever...
For setting it to external SD that's an option in the camera
Another program you can try is testdisk. It's free and it has recovered everything I've ever needed and then some. I've accessed files on a drive that both windows and OS X told me was not formatted. Got all 450gb off of it and could also retrieve tons of deleted files. It's a computer app, not a phone app.
Today I got my new GS4, and was going to make sure all my stuff was backed up from my GS2 before I turned on my new phone. I went into "accounts" from contacts and checked the box for "auto-sync app data" (this is the only thing I did, period, since I was viewing my photos only about an hour earlier) and then connected my phone to the PC so I could back up all my photos. When I did, all the photos "loaded" but I could not actually view them, merely their file name. So I unmounted from the PC and went into gallery on my phone, only to find every single photo, both internal and on sd was replaced with a grey box and I cant view them. I have since reconnected to my PC, and now all those folders are completely empty. If I go into gallery on my phone, it still shows my folder names with all these grey photos, but when I use a file explorer to try and view them, nothing, 0 files just like on the PC. I have NO IDEA how this could have happen, and the only link I have to something going wrong was the auto-sync box I checked. I had about 6 months of photos I didn't back up, and some VERY important and irreplaceable pics I can't get back. I was hoping someone my have an idea as to what happen/how to recover my pics. I have gone through multiple folders, and literally every single .jpg file is gone! This includes all pics taken using the camera, any screenshots I had, all photos saved from texts and websites! EVERYTHING!!!! PLEASE HELP ME GET MY MEMORIES BACK!!!!!
skeet34 said:
Today I got my new GS4, and was going to make sure all my stuff was backed up from my GS2 before I turned on my new phone. I went into "accounts" from contacts and checked the box for "auto-sync app data" (this is the only thing I did, period, since I was viewing my photos only about an hour earlier) and then connected my phone to the PC so I could back up all my photos. When I did, all the photos "loaded" but I could not actually view them, merely their file name. So I unmounted from the PC and went into gallery on my phone, only to find every single photo, both internal and on sd was replaced with a grey box and I cant view them. I have since reconnected to my PC, and now all those folders are completely empty. If I go into gallery on my phone, it still shows my folder names with all these grey photos, but when I use a file explorer to try and view them, nothing, 0 files just like on the PC. I have NO IDEA how this could have happen, and the only link I have to something going wrong was the auto-sync box I checked. I had about 6 months of photos I didn't back up, and some VERY important and irreplaceable pics I can't get back. I was hoping someone my have an idea as to what happen/how to recover my pics. I have gone through multiple folders, and literally every single .jpg file is gone! This includes all pics taken using the camera, any screenshots I had, all photos saved from texts and websites! EVERYTHING!!!! PLEASE HELP ME GET MY MEMORIES BACK!!!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Define "loaded". The sdcard mounts like a hard drive, then you copy them off. Not sure how you screw that up.
Sent from my SGH-I777 using xda app-developers app
ferrocene said:
Define "loaded". The sdcard mounts like a hard drive, then you copy them off. Not sure how you screw that up.
Sent from my SGH-I777 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I say loaded, I mean all the file names showed up in the folder, but I could not open the picture to view it. So it looked like they were there, but the file extension didn't show as .jpg and when trying to view them it said something about how microsoft viewer was unable to display image. I never actually attempted to do the copy from phone to pc, so there was not an issue with a transfer, but something that happen prior to even connecting to the pc as far as I can tell. After disconnecting and reconnecting, however, the files don't even show as there, just says 0 files in folder when I open it. Also, its not just sd card, but literally every single file that had a .jpg extension is completely gone....this includes internal and sd, and everything from wallpapers, camera shots, pics from texts and web, everything!
You could try Disk Digger to recover the photos.
Thx for the disk digger recommendation! It was super tedious going thru over 9,000 pics of thumbnails n all kinds of bs, but I was able to get back most of my pics from the internal memory! Now just need to do it with the sd card.
Sent from my SCH-I545 using xda app-developers app
Remove your external SD card and try to access the images through a card reader. Some Sammy devices have had issues playing nice with SD cards, and the resulting behavior can be similar to what you have experienced. Technical details can be found around d the web.
First let me preface my inquiry with a few statements.
Renaming pics was previously an inconvenience but now I make my living with these photos so this has become an absolute nightmare.
I am absolutely so frustrated with what I can only describe as Google's stupidity. For being some of the smartest people in the world they do some things that a three year old would know better.
Also I have tried to do research on this before posting a new thread here, but all I find is outdated piecemeal information .
So please don't judge me. I've tried my best to figure this out without creating a new and/or redundant thread but I need someone who actually knows what is going on and who can explain to me what I can and can't do and how to fix what I've already done and how to set up my process in the future so as to complete my task as efficiently as possible. I mean really, isn't that what the goal of all this digital interaction is supposed to be about?
Now that I got that off my chest, here's my situation:
I work in what I call a "fun" business. I take pics and videos of guests on my phone (Android 4.4.4).
Not being able to rename the pics on the SD card from a garble of random letters and numbers to something identifiable is so STUPID it's incomprehensible. The devices are designed to take thousands of pics and we're told to store the pics on the SD card to save storage space on our devices, but we then can't rename them to something we can identify? Whether this was an accidental oversight or on purpose, my three year old niece would know better than that.
That being said, I do understand that the limitations of 4.4 don't allow third party apps to make certain changes to files on the external storage (SD) card.
So here's my delimma: I moved my pics to the SD card before I realized this limitation. So now I have hundreds of pics I need to post to Facebook, etc., but I need to rename them so I can identify them before I start posting.
Also I'm ASSUMING that I CAN rename a pic that is stored on my device's internal storage. If I am incorrect about that please correct me on that issue before moving forward with a solution.
If that assumption is correct I then am assuming that the easiest fix would be to transfer the pics back to the native internal storage and rename them there.
But again 4.4.4 seems to also limit my ability to move/transfer/copy/paste the pics from the SD card back onto the phone's internal storage.
I have thought about transferring the pics to cloud storage where I can rename them, but then I have two copies of the same pics but with different names, which is another nightmare scenario. (In the end I would like to have a renamed (identifiable) copy of the pics on my phone (SD card preferably, but if not practical, then on my phone's internal storage) and one on the cloud. (Any suggestions on the best cloud storage for pics and videos?)
Then I could (can I?) transfer the renamed pics back to my SD card so I have offline access to the pics. But this seems highly inefficient and time consuming. And then if I did this process then I would need to then continually delete the unrenamed pics because of storage issues on the phone, again inefficient.
And using a desktop is not practical as I'm working remotely and I really need to rename immediately as the pics start piling up quickly.
So my first step is going to be to change the default storage location of the pics to the internal storage of the device so I can test whether or not I can rename the pics immediately.
Whether or not this adjustment works for my future pics, I still have the issue of renaming the pics I have already moved to my SD card.
So........
1. Is there a workaround for renaming the pics on the SD card?
2. If not, is there a workaround for moving the pics back to internal storage? In this case I could use a Windows desktop to facilitate this operation as it should be a one-time operation, assuming I can immediately rename my future pics that I'm now going to store by default on the device's internal storage.
I would greatly appreciate any complete and consider suggestions on how to best address my problems. Thanking you in advance.
Vincent
You are correct that Google revoked the permission for third party apps to write to external storage. The only permanent fix seems to be patching your platform.xml to include media_rw group. Do you have root? If so install sdfix: kitkat writable microsd from the play store, follow the prompts and reboot. As always backup first just in case something goes wrong in the process. And you don't need to keep the app. Worked for me on both 4.4.2 and 5.1.1. Hopefully this helps.
You are also correct that you can copy or move the pictures to internal memory and rename them from there, but you should also be able to use your phone's built-in file manager to rename them on the SD card.
I just can't believe it was that simple. I have several File Manager apps on my phone.
I didn't really think about an Android stock File Manager.
I didn't know which one it even was.
I should have picked up on the error message specific verbiage about "third party apps".
I ran a test on what I believe is the Android stock File Manager app and I think it worked.
I'll test it again later and post back the results.
That was the solution. Just using the stock file manager allowed me to rename pics on the SD card.
Thanx for the help. My life is so much easier now!
Sent from my Z987 using XDA-Developers mobile app
Hello all,
This is my first post here. I did some searching and didn't find a direct answer to this scenario, but my apologies if I missed something.
Recently I used my PC to move files from my phone's internal storage onto a microSD card that was mounted in the device. I used the cut & paste function in Windows explorer (didn't occur to me that I could do it on the phone itself), and did this in batches. Unfortunately since that time I've discovered some of the files are corrupted--they have the appropriate size, but can't be opened. Perhaps there is a way to analyze the file structure of the JPEG to see if a byte is missing, but aside from that, I'm interested if I can run TestDisk on the internal phone storage in some way to see if the files could possibly be recovered. I found a few tutorials (example: https://roubert.name/joakim/androidfilerecovery/), but all of them require rooting, and unfortunately my phone is not rooted.
From my review of the procedures on this forum, it seems that unlocking the bootloader and/or rooting ends up requiring that the phone be wiped. Is there any way around this? And does anyone have any other suggestions on investigating whether my photos can be recovered or not?
Thanks for any help!
Lost most likely. Copy the files to the PC. There are more tools available for Windows than Android.
From now on copy/paste, verify size and readability, then delete the source files.
Check Event Viewer during the transfer time to see if errors were reported in Windows. Maybe a bad cable, port, driver issue, etc.
In the future regularly and redundantly backup critical data on at least 2 hdds that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC. I keep all critical data, music, vids, docs, backups go on the SD card and use it as a data drive. Only apps, the DCIM (backed up to the SD card regularly) and download folder go on internal. Then I backup the SD card.
There can only be one folder on Android with the name dcim. So when you backup the images in the internal memory dcim folder to the SD card rename it something like Master Pics to avoid issues.
Think it through and develop a system; everything you need to do a full reload/restore should be on the SD card. Few people utilize the SD card as it should be... it shouldn't be just a random collection of files. It adds an extra layer of protection for your data. Always use a quality V30 rated card like the Sandisk Extreme.
Any chance the photos were backed up to some service online? Google Photos is free and generally present on most Android phones, Samsung has their cloud, and some carriers do as well...
In the future, like @blackhawk said, backups are FAR more important than recovery. ANYTHING important to you should be backed up ("3-2-1" is a good policy to practice). For photos, Google Photos is great because it's free (to a limit, of course) and very easy to use. I've been recommending that to everyone, even iPhone users, because recovery is harder than ever these days - SSDs and flash can fail catastrophically and without warning much more easily than the old spinny drives which usually give some warning.
Sorry there isn't much better news. You may be able to find some un-delete software and try it. There may be paid services as well, but for the most part, it's probably lost...
If you do find something that works, do let us know... always good to find out new options! Good luck.
schwinn8 said:
Any chance the photos were backed up to some service online? Google Photos is free and generally present on most Android phones, Samsung has their cloud, and some carriers do as well...
In the future, like @blackhawk said, backups are FAR more important than recovery. ANYTHING important to you should be backed up ("3-2-1" is a good policy to practice). For photos, Google Photos is great because it's free (to a limit, of course) and very easy to use. I've been recommending that to everyone, even iPhone users, because recovery is harder than ever these days - SSDs and flash can fail catastrophically and without warning much more easily than the old spinny drives which usually give some warning.
Sorry there isn't much better news. You may be able to find some un-delete software and try it. There may be paid services as well, but for the most part, it's probably lost...
If you do find something that works, do let us know... always good to find out new options! Good luck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sadly, no. Didn't use a backup service online. Thanks for the advice though--I used to be pretty good about backing things up routinely, but have gotten lax. Sadly this is the consequence.
DakenSG said:
Sadly, no. Didn't use a backup service online. Thanks for the advice though--I used to be pretty good about backing things up routinely, but have gotten lax. Sadly this is the consequence.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's a typically error when using MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) and you shouldn't use it for transferring files whenever it's possible. MTP was developed to offer a wide range compatibility for the most storage devices but it's very buggy and very slow.
Next time you should use the internal file explorer to copy data to your SD. This is the best practice.