Photos disappearing? - Galaxy Note 3 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

My friend's Note 3 (N9005) photos disappeared suddenly from "/DCIM/Camera" directory entirely. I tried data recovery referencing from http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-nexus/general/guide-internal-memory-data-recovery-yes-t1994705 using Recuva, TestDisk and PhotoRec but did not recover any of the original photos, all are thumbnails.
From the TestDisk search option, under "/DCIM/Camera" directory, there are no sign of deleted files (Note: Deleted files will be displayed in red text)!!!. OMG!
No success from web search. There are many others whom faced similar problem, read https://www.google.com.sg/search?q=note+3+photo+disappear.
Note: I am no beginner and have some knowledge on data recovery.
Please advise!
Thank you.

Is the DCIM folder on the internal memory or external SD card?
I have had files and photos mysteriously disappearing on my 64 GB SanDisk card..turned out to be a re-labeled 4GB fake card that was causing all the problems.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using xda app-developers app

Reefee said:
Is the DCIM folder on the internal memory or external SD card?
I have had files and photos mysteriously disappearing on my 64 GB SanDisk card..turned out to be a re-labeled 4GB fake card that was causing all the problems.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi @Reefee, thanks for the reply.
All photos will be stored in internal storage as there is no sdcard inserted. I've checked the camera settings, resolution is set at high quality, I can first filter out based on resolution size which I have yet to do so, so far just a brief run through at the images which all turns out to be thumbnail size.
Will keep my progress updated.

Sorry for the late follow up, I have yet to find a solution and the cause of this. I couldn't help much and have already returned the phone to my friend then.
Thanks for reading.

Related

SD card not working with iCS rom

I have this problem were the sd card will not take anything on it. If I place a new folder and a picture on it, it erases itself on its own. Or I'll put a album on there and maybe 5-8 songs might appear. I am running passion ics with a 32gb sd card. Just want to know if there is a zip that needs to be flashed or if this is a problem. Thanks for reading!
Sent from my SGH-T959 using xda premium
thepa said:
I have this problem were the sd card will not take anything on it. If I place a new folder and a picture on it, it erases itself on its own. Or I'll put a album on there and maybe 5-8 songs might appear. I am running passion ics with a 32gb sd card. Just want to know if there is a zip that needs to be flashed or if this is a problem. Thanks for reading!
Sent from my SGH-T959 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i had a lot of issues with a sd card that i used with my computer or camera before using it on the phone. search for a program called SDFormatter and format your card. you should be ok after that
mikka06 said:
i had a lot of issues with a sd card that i used with my computer or camera before using it on the phone. search for a program called SDFormatter and format your card. you should be ok after that
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
At first I was a little worried about using this program, but I ran it and it worked for about 2 hours. Out of no where the music that I was moving over kept disappearing and stopped allowing me to copy files from the pc to the sd. I tried formatting the card after that and I was allowed to put the files that were on there before formatting but nothing after that. Is there any other solution to this fiasco that I am faced with!
I have a similar issue. I haven't tried writing anything to my SD card, but it looks like its empty in MIUI and ES file explorers. I can boot into recovery and see that the files are there. Any suggestions?
Sent from another Galaxy

[Q] device memory/miscellaneous files

ok so my device storage I have like 1.14gigs available and I don't know how it got so full I have 7.47gig of apps 571 mb pictures/videos 23mb downloads 6.82gigs of miscellaneous files and i have a 16gigsd card which has 8.01 available space on it I have my picture/videos are supposed be saved to sd card, and when i go to files im finding all my pictures/vids on sd card and what are misc. files how do i sort through and reduce those
Would like to know that too.
I completely wiped my phone the other day just see if it comes back and tata its back
Sent from my SGH-I337M using xda app-developers app
Random thing: check your clockworkmod folder. See if there is a blobs folder. If there is, check the folder size. I don't remember if it does it with the s4, but I remember it happening a lot with my s2 when I had it.
Sent from my TARDIS

Gallery photos broken, apps not found - SD failing?

Dear all,
I have a N9005 (eu) with 4.4.2 stock. Never rooted.
Since a couple of weeks, I notice a strange behavior. Quite often I find broken thumbnails in the stock Gallery app, sometimes the actual photos I have take are not visible.
At the same time, it happens that I download and install an app and it won't run, giving me an error in com.appnamewhatever. After a restart, I still see the link to the app on the home, but as I click it says app not installed. After I reinstall I can often run it np.
It gives me the feeling that the internal SD Card is dying. Is that possible? Can I run some tools/fixes to prevent or check it? (with no root required)
Thanks.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using XDA Free mobile app
McBain_666 said:
Dear all,
I have a N9005 (eu) with 4.4.2 stock. Never rooted.
Since a couple of weeks, I notice a strange behavior. Quite often I find broken thumbnails in the stock Gallery app, sometimes the actual photos I have take are not visible.
At the same time, it happens that I download and install an app and it won't run, giving me an error in com.appnamewhatever. After a restart, I still see the link to the app on the home, but as I click it says app not installed. After I reinstall I can often run it np.
It gives me the feeling that the internal SD Card is dying. Is that possible? Can I run some tools/fixes to prevent or check it? (with no root required)
Thanks.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Take a look if your photos and pics are in SDCard.
2. Take a look if you have the apps installed in your SDCard too (Aplication manager -> SD Card -> App marked to move to SDCard)
3. You will have to take off the SDCard and try making photos and installing new apps (change your SDCard for other new if this go ok)
Tell me what result do you have in your tests :highfive:
Man, you are right. I had not moved any app intentionally to the external SD Card so I did not think that would be the case. But that's what happened, the failing apps were on the external SD and so are the photos. It's a SanDisk Class 10 64 Gb.
So no way out other than substituting it?
Sent from my SM-N9005 using XDA Free mobile app
McBain_666 said:
Man, you are right. I had not moved any app intentionally to the external SD Card so I did not think that would be the case. But that's what happened, the failing apps were on the external SD and so are the photos. It's a SanDisk Class 10 64 Gb.
So no way out other than substituting it?
Sent from my SM-N9005 using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Take a look for what you can recover of your SDCard and copy it to your pc.
2. Format the card in the phone for last option.
3. Try again to put photos/apps there.
4. Good luck :highfive:
The corrupted photo's on the SDcard are a problem directly related to KitKat's increased security. It affects all KitKat devices. Any photo's on the SD randomly corrupt over time. The only solution is to put them on the internal memory.
The apps are a new one though. I've had apps suddenly become semi-uninstalled because I was dumb enough to mess with the Android_secure folder, but not with the errors after install.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk 2
ShadowLea said:
The corrupted photo's on the SDcard are a problem directly related to KitKat's increased security. It affects all KitKat devices. Any photo's on the SD randomly corrupt over time. The only solution is to put them on the internal memory.
The apps are a new one though. I've had apps suddenly become semi-uninstalled because I was dumb enough to mess with the Android_secure folder, but not with the errors after install.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Jeez that's crazy. I triedo to run a chkdsk on the card from windows (in a SD reader) and it got me a gazillion errors.
So now I proceeded to salvage what I can. I will try to format it (in the phone? in windows? still not sure about it) and see what happens.
Luckily I was able to salvage 99% of the photos.
I just remembered that I did something very unortodox, more or less at the same time problems started: I removed the SD Card with the phone still on. Yes, you can barely do it without removing the battery... I though "let's see if something bad happens". Maybe it started to corrupt the FAT or similar.
Anyway, please feel fee to point me to a thread or good article on this, I find information very scattered. Is there any advantage t oformat it in FAT32, NTFS or exFAT (assuming I can even choose)?
Thanks
McBain_666 said:
I just remembered that I did something very unortodox, more or less at the same time problems started: I removed the SD Card with the phone still on. Yes, you can barely do it without removing the battery... I though "let's see if something bad happens". Maybe it started to corrupt the FAT or similar.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I find it fairly easy to do. It's also perfectly fine, as long as you unmount it first in settings.
Is there any advantage t oformat it in FAT32, NTFS or exFAT (assuming I can even choose)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Fat32 is the common format IT doesn't allow for filesizes over 3.9GB, so if you intend to use t for films, use exFAT.
NTFS can't be read without root. Don't use it.
exFAT is practically the same as FAT32, except that it allows for larger filesizes.
ShadowLea said:
I find it fairly easy to do. It's also perfectly fine, as long as you unmount it first in settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the infos. At that time I obviously did it without unmounting it first (no fun in life without some screw-ups). Regarding the formatting, I seem to be unable to do it from the phone at the moment.
It unmounts it, says checking it. But doesn't format it. Trying from windows now...
Here are some updates.
Formatting in either windows (stock function) and phone was a no-go.
However, I dowloaded and installed SD Association Formatter:
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/
and that did the trick. Now the SD Card is finally empy.
Also I strongly suggest using this tool instead of windows proprietary, because it's simply much much faster.
I will try and load it back with the stuff I had before, including pics, and see if I get the corrupted data again.
A difference is now that the chkdsk tool from windows says that no errors are found, unlike before. Let's see how it goes.
Final update to close thread:
The SD Card, a SanDisk UHS Class 10 SDXC, 64 Gb, had been declared dead.
It was possible to write data on in with seemingly no errors (from chkdsk) but all the data turned out to be simply corrupted.
Will send for replacement.
I have seen many comments on this card failing, so I would not recommend it. However, I think that this case it was not KitKat's fault.
Thanks for the inputs.
Do not blame the card yet
I am having the same issue with the same card, but it is limited to Note 3(N900).
Every now and then it becomes inaccesible, the photos appear broken, music player stops etc. It is not related to use of any particular app. When it happens, the card is still visible in Settings/Storage, just no app including mounting has access to it. What helps, is the old reboot fix
Happened on official KK, as well on LP. Device is stock unrooted N900.
The card is working without any problems in Note 1,even in Galaxy duos, and there are no issues writing/reading in windows nor linux. Something tells me that hardware is to blame.

Camera app not saving on SD Card anymore - Please help!! :(

Hi all,
I'm desperate. I just realised my camera app has suddenly started to act weird.
Basically it can't save images on SD CARD anymore as if the sdcard was write protected but it's not. I can copy/paste files without issues on the card. It feels like the camera app has some issue. It can save videos and pics without problems on internal memory but refuses to save on sdcard. I tried Camera-FV app and it can save on SD Card so I guess it's the actual camera app ....
I tried clearing data of the app, uninstalling the app with titanium backup and reflashing the rom on top of my current installation (without factory reset) and nothing works. I also tried formatting the SD CARD with both PC and Phone and unmounting/remounting...nothing
Another thing I noticed is that I can't copy files from pc to sdcard straight. I have to first pass them to phone internal memory and then using phone explorer app I can move from phone to SDCARD. Very weird behavior. It's like if the device is blocking write access to the card? I also tried another sdcard and same story.
Anyone has any other suggestion?
I have the same issue the camera app can not access the SD card.So was the app "my files".Most wire thing is ES explorer write SD card well as usual.
I'm pretty sure this issue is happening since I update the system(G9350ZHU2APE3).
Damn this sucks! It must be the update that broke the sdcard. I saw several others having the same problem. No confirmed fix yet? Must we factory reset?
Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
Any fix yet?
Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
Please can some guru lend some support?
Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
lowrider82 said:
Hi all,
I'm desperate. I just realised my camera app has suddenly started to act weird.
Basically it can't save images on SD CARD anymore as if the sdcard was write protected but it's not. I can copy/paste files without issues on the card. It feels like the camera app has some issue. It can save videos and pics without problems on internal memory but refuses to save on sdcard. I tried Camera-FV app and it can save on SD Card so I guess it's the actual camera app ....
I tried clearing data of the app, uninstalling the app with titanium backup and reflashing the rom on top of my current installation (without factory reset) and nothing works. I also tried formatting the SD CARD with both PC and Phone and unmounting/remounting...nothing
Another thing I noticed is that I can't copy files from pc to sdcard straight. I have to first pass them to phone internal memory and then using phone explorer app I can move from phone to SDCARD. Very weird behavior. It's like if the device is blocking write access to the card? I also tried another sdcard and same story.
Anyone has any other suggestion?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Greetings,
There is already a thread on this exact topic here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/s7-edge/help/camera-unable-to-save-file-to-sd-card-t3380327
Please search before posting to avoid creating duplicate topics.
Thread closed.

Suddenly Lost Ability to Write to SD Card

I have a very strange thing that has just started occurred with my wife's Note 4. It appears that all apps have lost write-access to the SD card.
I first noticed the problem with the camera app. The camera app was configured to write to external storage but when a picture is taken, it says "Unable to save file to SD card. Default storage has been changed to device memory."
The Gallery app is also not able to write to the SD card (cannot create a new album) or move files to an existing album on the card.
Solid Explorer cannot create a new folder on the card.
I've tried to clear app settings for the camera and Solid Explorer. But even after setting everything back up, I still get the same results.
I'm running stock v6.0.1 (EPJ2) rooted. Also, my (seemingly identical) Note 4 does not display any of this behavior. No changes other than normal application updates.
Any ideas what might be going on?
I've had this happen when an SD Card gets corrupted - you can still view and access the files that are already on the card, but you can no longer write to it.
Try the card in a PC and see if that can write to it - if not then your card is likely permanently damaged. I had 3 Sandisk 64Gb cards go like this in two different devices. Tried reformatting them every which way, but nothing would make them writeable again. Have used Samsung cards ever since and never had a failure yet.
Just restart your phone
Sent from this galaxy
SJMarty said:
I have a very strange thing that has just started occurred with my wife's Note 4. It appears that all apps have lost write-access to the SD card.
I first noticed the problem with the camera app. The camera app was configured to write to external storage but when a picture is taken, it says "Unable to save file to SD card. Default storage has been changed to device memory."
The Gallery app is also not able to write to the SD card (cannot create a new album) or move files to an existing album on the card.
Solid Explorer cannot create a new folder on the card.
I've tried to clear app settings for the camera and Solid Explorer. But even after setting everything back up, I still get the same results.
I'm running stock v6.0.1 (EPJ2) rooted. Also, my (seemingly identical) Note 4 does not display any of this behavior. No changes other than normal application updates.
Any ideas what might be going on?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are 3 possible solutions:
Using MS Windows PC
Using Linux PC
Using TWRP Recovery with a proper BusyBox
Let me know which one do you choose & I will explain how.
Kinsman-UK said:
I've had this happen when an SD Card gets corrupted - you can still view and access the files that are already on the card, but you can no longer write to it.
Try the card in a PC and see if that can write to it - if not then your card is likely permanently damaged. I had 3 Sandisk 64Gb cards go like this in two different devices. Tried reformatting them every which way, but nothing would make them writeable again. Have used Samsung cards ever since and never had a failure yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You nailed it. My card was a 128 GB SanDisk Ultra. Pulled it from the phone and my laptop couldn't write to it either. Copied everything off and copied it back to a new card and there you go.
Grrrr...$^%**# SanDisk.
Out of curiosity, what Samsung line did you end up choosing? I think the EVO+ will be sufficient for me but wondering what you ended up using.
SJMarty said:
Out of curiosity, what Samsung line did you end up choosing? I think the EVO+ will be sufficient for me but wondering what you ended up using.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad you got it sorted! I've been using a Samsung PRO 64Gb - this is the 128Gb version on Amazon UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01CRZCLAM
I think the newer version of it is this one:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B019QO1Q4O
But you're right - the EVO+ is probably sufficient. It wasn't available when I was purchasing:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00WR0HIR4

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