Help with Secure Folder Recovery - Samsung Galaxy S10+ Questions & Answers

So I thought I had all the backups enabled for everything, including my Secure Folder.
I used smartswitch to make a backup of my phone before I reset it. It never occured to me to check my secure folder.
Apparently Smart Switch doesn't back up the secure folder, and I didn't have the backups enabled.
I reset my phone and now I'm frantic looking for a folder full of hunderes of photos from a relationship that just ended and I can't find it anywhere.
Is there ANY possible way for me to recover these photos? I'll even trip Knox and root if I have to just to recover them.

Have you tried the restore option in secure folder?

blackhawk said:
Have you tried the restore option in secure folder?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No backups found because it apparently wasn't set up.

Maybe with Samsung cloud?
You might be boned. Sorry.
The problem being the secure folder content is encrypted and that key was lost with the factory reset. Try setting up Secure folder and see if it will repopulate. Worth a try...
Never trust SmartSwitch with critical data. I always use cut/paste for that. SmartSwitch is nice to save the homepage but I don't trust it.
I use my SD card as a data drive, all critical data goes here as well as backup and installable copies of all my apps. I can do a full restore without internet connection from here. I then redundantly back up the SD card to at least 2 hdds that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC.
Only the loaded apps, the download folder and the DCIM folder (it's transferred to SD card regularly*) go on internal memory ie the OS drive. You have a dual drive PC in your hands, use it as such! Get a Sandisk. 5-1tb V30 Extreme card for it.
*never create more than one DCIM folder as it will cause issues, call the 2nd one Pic Master, etc

blackhawk said:
Maybe with Samsung cloud?
You might be boned. Sorry.
The problem being the secure folder content is encrypted and that key was lost with the factory reset. Try setting up Secure folder and see if it will repopulate. Worth a try...
Never trust SmartSwitch with critical data. I always use cut/paste for that. SmartSwitch is nice to save the homepage but I don't trust it.
I use my SD card as a data drive, all critical data goes here as well as backup and installable copies of all my apps. I can do a full restore without internet connection from here. I then redundantly back up the SD card to at least 2 hdds that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC.
Only the loaded apps, the download folder and the DCIM folder (it's transferred to SD card regularly*) go on internal memory ie the OS drive. You have a dual drive PC in your hands, use it as such! Get a Sandisk. 5-1tb V30 Extreme card for it.
*never create more than one DCIM folder as it will cause issues, call the 2nd one Pic Master, etc
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I reset up my Secure Folder, nothing was in there. I thought I had all the proper backups set, but apparently I didn't.
So I guess whatever I had in there is gone forever, and there's nothing I can do, even if I root?

You could try a factory reset, set up Secure Folder then use the SmartSwitch copy.
I don't think it will work but it's a thought.
The root problem is the encryption key, without it there's no hope.
The Samsung members site may have some better ideas as you're not the first to have done this. Usually if you do a Google search like "Samsung, secure folder recovery" or such results from the Samsung members site will show.
Speaking as someone who has lost a database, sometimes all you can do is to learn from the mistake and not repeat it.
Store backup hdds in more than one location. A safety deposit box is earth grounded (shielded from near lightning strikes) as well as being physically secure.
Keep all magnets away from hdds.

blackhawk said:
You could try a factory reset, set up Secure Folder then use the SmartSwitch copy.
I don't think it will work but it's a thought.
The root problem is the encryption key, without it there's no hope.
The Samsung members site may have some better ideas as you're not the first to have done this. Usually if you do a Google search like "Samsung, secure folder recovery" or such results from the Samsung members site will show.
Speaking as someone who has lost a database, sometimes all you can do is to learn from the mistake and not repeat it.
Store backup hdds in more than one location. A safety deposit box is earth grounded (shielded from near lightning strikes) as well as being physically secure.
Keep all magnets away from hdds.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've searched the net. All I can find is bogus 'guides' with spyware/malware to download. From everything I can see Knox is just too strong of security. Also learned it's certified by the US DOD and NSA, so that really tells me the photos are gone to the digital graveyard never to return again.
I guess it's a sign. It was only photos from 10+ years of a relationship with a soon to be ex-wife. Sign to let go and move on I guess.
And a tough lesson in data management.

There are no other backups or copies? 10 years?
Google backup maybe? It retains data sometimes even after being turned off.
Yeah, Knox is all that. I never encrypt devices or data as you are the most likely to lose access to it rather than a stranger. No password on my 10+, double tap on/off... protected by blackhawk.

Related

Permanent storage

Bought a 2nd hand Compact and was trying to back up my contacts to permanent storage in case I'm away and the battery dies. Checked all the boxes and all that happened is a load of contacts (hundreds) from obviously the previos owners backup spewed out and it took me like an hour to remove them all. This guy had contacts in every country in the damn world !
Is it possible to erase his contacts he has stored, obviously if I want to restore in the future I don't want his.
How can I make it save mine instead of restoring his ?
monkeyphonix said:
Bought a 2nd hand Compact and was trying to back up my contacts to permanent storage in case I'm away and the battery dies. Checked all the boxes and all that happened is a load of contacts (hundreds) from obviously the previos owners backup spewed out and it took me like an hour to remove them all. This guy had contacts in every country in the damn world !
Is it possible to erase his contacts he has stored, obviously if I want to restore in the future I don't want his.
How can I make it save mine instead of restoring his ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think that when you turn permanent storage off and then back on, it overwrites the permanant storage contents with the current RAM contents.
If it works the same as on Himalaya you have to do more than just tigling the check-boxes:
Uncheck all boxes
Move the '#flashman.lnk' files (the # stands for A, C, N, T) from \windows\startup . Note that the name varies between devices/Windows versions, but should refer to 'flash' or 'permanent'. (need RESCO Explorer for this)
Soft reset
Delete the PerSaveBackup folder from 'Storage'
Move the '#flashman.lnk' files back to \windows\startup
Soft reset
Check all appropiate boxes
Youre done
Thanks for the help guys.
what did the trick?
Dunno, have no idea how to do either of these things.
I'd say get Sprite Backup. It's easy to use & backups\restores only your pim dara (& more).
I had a rom-upgrade & before it I used perm.save, tried it again after reading your post & can't find any old data. An upgrade probably wipes the data, take a good look at the rom-layout in the wiki, maybe it explains whether my theory is correct.
perm.save claimed that all data was removed after unchecking the boxes, difficult to find out without hard-reset, which I'm unwilling to do at the moment.
Regards, M
Permanent save works very good, and youll never miss a contact/apointment or whatever. It is a good addition to backups.
It is a pain in the ass when the storage gets corrupted (which happened to several people.

storage card nuked wihtout warning

i just got my storage card nuked and i think it was by "save attachments on storage card" .. its cleanswept except for some attachment dir and a WMDRM dir.. anyone experienced this before?
Im curious if there is a way to save my storage card like file recovery for windows!?!? I've had smartphone for 2 years and never experienced such (nor used the mail portion) .. its really a drag if this is normal wm5 behavior.
anyways two questions:
- is a way to generally clone a qtek9100 with all regs and storage
- is there a way to recover lost files if nothing else is written to car? (so called quick formats)
sardaukar said:
- is a way to generally clone a qtek9100 with all regs and storage
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Backup apps:
SPB Backup - www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/backup/?en
Sunnysoft Backup Manager - www.sunnysoft.cz/en_clanek.php?clanekid=51
Sprite Backup - www.spritesoftware.com/pocketpc.php
Or, otherwise, copy all files over, and export the registry using Tascal Registry Editor or so. Restoring would likely be iffy, though.. e.g. overwriting the Pocket Outlook database and such - if it can be done.
sardaukar said:
- is there a way to recover lost files if nothing else is written to card? (so called quick formats)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes - there's dedicated software for this. I got one from Sandisk that came with their 1GB Ultra III compactflash card that I've got in my camera next to a 2GB memorystick.
http://www.lc-tech.com/software/rprowindetail.html
as for the nuking, I assume now it was something todo with windows mediea player and device syncronization which hadnt fully initiated ..
anyways, when you tlak of recovery what do you mean, as the link you post leads to pc software.
u put sd card in camera and mount as usb and run pc software to recover?
sprite backup seems to be very nice and feature rich.
I just had the exact same thing happen to me...was just left with the attachments directory.
The good news is that the SD card shows that there is 250MB used so i know the files are there...i just cant see them. I'm trying that SD program referenced in the last post to see if i can at least see the files.
Unfortunately, all my backups are on the SD card itself. I hadnt copied them to my HD.
wow, this is nuts - there's some serious bug lurking around!
Update on this.
I was able to recover the files with some data recovery tools. The one in this thread is useless - its meant for media files only.
I still wonder why this happened. Either way, I'm switching back Outlook attachments to main memory for a bit and see what happens.
d'oh
Well, let us know which data recovery tool you used - might come in handy for others
yup same thing happened to me... and same way, attachments on storage card
space was still missing but the files were too
didnt bother recovering though as i had backups luckily
The same happened to me twice! The first time I thought it was due to FAT FS, so i reformated it with FAT32, but it happened again.
I do have my attachements at SD, as well as I save pictures from camera to it.
BTW, the same thing happened once with my wife's iPaq 2490 (attachement at SD).
As for fixing: just use standard MS Windows checkdsk (or use Check now from drive options) if you have a card reader. It saves all files to FOUND directory (but, unfortunately, it renames it to strange names, so you'll have to find out what is what)
If this happens to you, FinalData Enterprise and EasyRecovery Pro are known to recover files very well. They will find all files and filenames. They wont restore the top level folder names but if you dont have many, you can change them yourself. More important to me were the lower level filenames and the integrity of those files.
Most of the other trial recovery programs i used couldnt do what these two products could. They typically just showed a bunch of .chk files or else tried to recover media files only.
I still want to know how this happened and if there's a way to replicate the problem. There's some nasty Outlook bug lurking around that needs to be fixed!
same thing happened to me. just realised that i have 300 meg os missing disk space that i thought had gone for ever.
can anyone recommend a freeware tool ?
Wait, my new 2gb card died 2 days ago! The Wizard won't even find it, and my PC finds it, but all the stuff on it is missing except for a couple of directories and it won't let me format it. It has to go back to China now. I'm so pissed off.
Anyone know a card recovery app?
I know the ones i mentioned earlier should work.
Someone said chkdsk may work...try that although i worry that if it recovers cross linked files (most of them are), it'll dump a bunch of useless chk files on the card.
i tried checkdisk and it didn't seem to retrieve any files. grrrrrrrrr.
Well maybe it s a bug which occurs on march 14.... because that same thing occured to my sd yesterday while I was using tt5 on the road... ;(
sardaukar said:
as for the nuking,.....bla bla.....
sprite backup seems to be very nice and feature rich.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd choose SPB Backup. According to my knowledge the WM5 compatible version of Sprite Backup does not have the self extracting functionallity yet. (weird because that among other features made Sprite Backup stand tall above all other backup/clone solutions).
Hope they will include this self extracting feature soon.
2 GIG Mini SD Speed
Just got mine from Singapore yesterday. I did not format it as it came already formatted. I have noticed that playing video divx / mpg1's are very slow versus internal memory. I did the reg edits for cache size but found no real changes to media playback. Anyone out there playing with media playback on a Cingular 8125?
mike freegan said:
Wait, my new 2gb card died 2 days ago! The Wizard won't even find it, and my PC finds it, but all the stuff on it is missing except for a couple of directories and it won't let me format it. It has to go back to China now. I'm so pissed off.
Anyone know a card recovery app?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From experiance with this same issue on a 1gb, the card eventually starts having block failures. Fortunatly the place I bought it replaced it with another. Whatever nukes it, perminatly damaged mine. Hope in your case it didn't damage it.
I'm wondering if this is related to the reboot issue some of us are experiancing... and if it has something to do with pocket outlook or pocket windows media player 10.
Grey
Block failures are a hardware fault.
The only way you could induce one with software would be to rewrite the same location more than ~1m times, which would cause it to fail - flash has a limited lifetime, although the limit is very high.
So let me get this straight:
REGARDLESS of the BRAND of the miniSD card, the Wizard HAVE an ISSUE whereby, if MEssaging Attachement is saved to the card, the device CAN RANDOMLY nuke the card?
I haave the same issue with my ATP miniSD card (and they're considered one of the most reliable one), but instead of nuking it, it just doesn't show the file OR...worst... rename the card to "Storage CArd 2".
Depends on what people are running into.
If you're getting a corrupted card BUT you can reformat it, then it may be something with the storage card attachment thing. (I personally run with this turned on and have NOT had it happen)
If, however, the card CANNOT be reformatted - that is, its TOAST - then its NOT a software problem. The card has physically failed. Since the 2GB cards are quite new, this is entirely possible.
One other possibility - if you have a card that won't reformat first try writing a few kilobytes of zeros to it using psdwrite. If you can THEN reformat it, then the card was scrambled - it did not die.
Using "r2sd" to dump ROM images to the card has been known to interfere with reformatting to full capacity due to the internal data patterns that show up in certain places with certain ROMs. Writing a block of zeros to the front of the card will fix this, as it will wipe the data that is being misinterpreted.

[Q] Encrypt data on device

The description on the Motorola site for the data encryption states:
"You can encrypt your accounts, settings, downloaded applications and their data, media, and other files. Once you encrypt your tablet, you can't unencrypt it except by performing a factory data reset, erasing all the data on your tablet."
Does that mean that any media files (movies and music) you put on the device are encrypted? How about documents, pdfs, etc. I certainly would not want any of those files to be encrypted.
Has anyone encrypted their Xoom? If so, what gets encrypted and what doesn't?
Encryption encrypts the Xoom's entire contents.
You can get back in by entering the PIN or password you chose when encrypting.
Encryption is meant to keep thieves from accessing your data, even if they've stolen your Xoom. You can always get back into your *own* encrypted Xoom, simply by entering your password.
I'm not sure, but I do know that even after encrypting that you can access everything on the xoom through USB still. Kinda makes encrypting useless.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA Premium App
Sirchuk said:
I'm not sure, but I do know that even after encrypting that you can access everything on the xoom through USB still. Kinda makes encrypting useless.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you? Or do you have to PIN unlock it to get the USB to work? That'd be a big oversight if that were the case...
Elysian893 said:
Can you? Or do you have to PIN unlock it to get the USB to work? That'd be a big oversight if that were the case...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't tested it with mine, but someone else wrote a post here about it. He said he just plugged it in and had access to everything, completely bypassing the encryption.
Elysian893 said:
Can you? Or do you have to PIN unlock it to get the USB to work? That'd be a big oversight if that were the case...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are right it is a big oversight, I have been complaining about it for a while. I posted it to Google forums and all they said was basically thank you for your input, they didn't say it was out and out bug they were working on.
Not ALL data is accessable via USB but any data thats under the /sdcard area which is all your media files and some apps put data files there.
despich said:
You are right it is a big oversight, I have been complaining about it for a while. I posted it to Google forums and all they said was basically thank you for your input, they didn't say it was out and out bug they were working on.
Not ALL data is accessable via USB but any data thats under the /sdcard area which is all your media files and some apps put data files there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So this is probably for exchange and gmail data. It's a big requirement for a lot of companies to have the email data encrypted, along with contact lists. I don't believe any of this information is stored on the /sdcard section. So if it is indeed encrypting this data, then it's just a matter of clearly stating what is and is not encrypted.
I really don't think it has to do with encrypting anything in /sdcard. A good way to check would be to try to pull files out of any of the other partitions with adb. Has anyone tried this?
So the encryption on the Xoom is what is known as Full Disk Encryption. The entire contents of the internal storage are encrypted while at rest. The purpose of this encryption is to protect your data in the event your Xoom was stolen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware-based_Full_Disk_Encryption
My original point was that it would not be reasonable to encrypt much of the sdcard contents. I wouldn't want to encrypt music, movies or any of my documents (word docs, excel spreadsheets, pdf, etc). Files like that need to be available to remove from the device, email, etc.
Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk
Sirchuk said:
I haven't tested it with mine, but someone else wrote a post here about it. He said he just plugged it in and had access to everything, completely bypassing the encryption.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, just tested it. This is not true. I just did a full disk encryption and plugged it into my Windows 7 computer. The XOOM appears in My Computers, but no content shows up until you've entered your PIN or password you used to encrypt your device. At which point, ONLY the /sdcard partition is available - which is what normally becomes available for MTP transfer. As far as I know, the /sdcard is currently an internal partition, yet to see what happens/how they implement the external SDCard and if that gets encrypted.
rlrbjr said:
My original point was that it would not be reasonable to encrypt much of the sdcard contents. I wouldn't want to encrypt music, movies or any of my documents (word docs, excel spreadsheets, pdf, etc). Files like that need to be available to remove from the device, email, etc.
Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry I don't follow. Even if the Xoom is encrypted you can still copy the files off over USB if you input your password. Encryption is just to stop an unauthorised person being able to access the data in the event they get hold of your Xoom. There's no downside other than if you forget your PIN/Password.
I don't remember unlocking my device. However i just tried it now, and it will not show me anything until I enter my pin.
So maybe the update fixed it? I'm not sure, but if you do encrypt your device nothing is accessible via the usb until you unlock your device.
True...although, I have to say, there are pros/cons to having the sdcard encrypted. I have a BB too, and have the media card encrypt everything. Great for security, often annoying when I need to transfer files off. But, that being said, it only encrypts data that it generates or downloads through its applications (ie: music, pics, vid, docs). If you copy a file to it, it won't be encrypted.

SD Card contents deleted

I have a Google Nexus 4. Most of my files on the "SD CARD" have been deleted mysteriously. I need help trying to recovery these if possible or figuring out why it happened so I can avoid it happening again and/or remove the app responsible.
I noticed the weather channel app crash multiple times and now my SD Card is more or less empty, the odd folder has survived. But all the useful stuff is gone, most of it is recoverable. A pop up box kept appearing saying the weather channel has crashed, roughly 30-40 times. I was connected to it via my laptop while browsing the contents, I was also doing the same on the phone, using the DiskUsage application to find where my space was being used.
Any help is much appreciated. The phone isn't rooted or anything and is only about a month old.
Anything. Bump.
MarcusMaximus said:
Anything. Bump.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try the app called Diskdigger to retreive missing data from Play. Requires root.
Thank you for the suggestion but no luck.
I needed to root the phone to get it to work and I needed wipe the phone before rooting. When I eventually got around to scanning after rooting it found only the cached images of current apps. I expected as much after wiping it again. Now I've un-rooted and re-installed the stock google image. Now I have an issue with my phone not picking up time and date setting from my service provided but that's a separate issue I can deal with by manually setting the time zone. Somehow my phone thinks I'm in Ireland. I'm from there but live in Australia.
Lesson learned. Backup regularly. Thanks.
MarcusMaximus said:
Thank you for the suggestion but no luck.
I needed to root the phone to get it to work and I needed wipe the phone before rooting. When I eventually got around to scanning after rooting it found only the cached images of current apps. I expected as much after wiping it again. Now I've un-rooted and re-installed the stock google image. Now I have an issue with my phone not picking up time and date setting from my service provided but that's a separate issue I can deal with by manually setting the time zone. Somehow my phone thinks I'm in Ireland. I'm from there but live in Australia.
Lesson learned. Backup regularly. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This phone has no sdcard, all the memory is integrated into one so when you wipe data you wipe all data off the phone including personal stuff.
Yep that's why it's in quotes and Capitals, "SD CARD" . The first line anyway.
The whole phone seems to be acting up a bit now. Previously, before the "SD CARD" was wiped any pictures on the "SD CARD" would appear in the gallery unless I had used a .nomedia folder or file but now it only appears to pickup pictures in the camera folder, screenshot pictures and picasa web photos. Even thought I have several other albums in the "SD CARD"/Pictures folder where the screenshots folder is.
I have the following folders on the "SD CARD"
/Pictures/Screenshots
/Pictures/FamilyPics
/Pictures/PartyPics
/Pictures/HousePics
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
All 113 other photos are visible when browsing the contents while the phone is connected to my laptop and when using a file browser on the phone. And I can open these pics with the Gallery app through the file explorer without any issue.
None of my videos in /Video are visible either and are accessible as with the pictures I'm having issues with.
I've tried clearing the App Cache and data and rebooting the phone but getting me nowhere.

All Pictures disappeared from gallery?

Like the title says, my wife is pretty upset. I got us both new unlocked s8+'s from best buy just prior to our cross country trip with our kids.
No SD card installed.
She took 200+ pictures and today they are gone. Only videos remain in the gallery, in my files, or even using a file explorer.
I called Samsung, waste of my time.
Google drive is the only cloud app being used (for documents), pics aren't there.
Any advice or thoughts? I've seen older posts on forums of this happening on android phones and not of the fixes have worked. (Clear cache, search for and remove .nomedia files)
Thanks,
Dave
Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk
Samsung has a junk file cleaner so you can get rid of unnecessary files. Your wife might have accidentally included her photos while getting rid of unnecessary files. You can ask her about this but besides that I don't know why the photos are lost (probably due to hardware error).
Kirbocolypse said:
Samsung has a junk file cleaner so you can get rid of unnecessary files. Your wife might have accidentally included her photos while getting rid of unnecessary files. You can ask her about this but besides that I don't know why the photos are lost (probably due to hardware error).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll ask her but I don't think k she did, it still says it can recover 1.5+gigs of space.
I used one of them file digger apps, I was able to retrieve all the smaller 200kb cached pictures from thumbnails and what not, but from what I've read you need root to recover the full size images...
There are a lot of stories of this happening to people when I search it and all different devices. So I hope it's not hardware. SD card going in and Google photo backup being turned on, just like the data thieves wanted us to do in the first place.....
Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk
If internal then she must have done something, if pics dissapear from sdcard its most like corrupt, best is to have that when u take pics it automatically syncs to a cloud service for backup.
Arcolog2 said:
I'll ask her but I don't think k she did, it still says it can recover 1.5+gigs of space.
I used one of them file digger apps, I was able to retrieve all the smaller 200kb cached pictures from thumbnails and what not, but from what I've read you need root to recover the full size images...
There are a lot of stories of this happening to people when I search it and all different devices. So I hope it's not hardware. SD card going in and Google photo backup being turned on, just like the data thieves wanted us to do in the first place.....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you going to root? Afaik you can only do that on the exynos version (not usa)
Correct. No root available yet/ever, was just saying root seems like the only way people are getting back full res lost photos.
Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk
3 Questions
What gallery app are you using? Did she hide or exclude any folders by accident?
Thirdly, try running a recovery programme. You can get for free on the net. So long as she has taken no further photos or put anything else on hard drive should be able to recover.
Finally check all folders on phone and also check camera app settings to ensure the folder they are saving too is correct.
This issue is not exclusive to the S8 and looking around the internet this is an existing yet unsolved issue on certain Samsung devices. I'll post here to add a bit of extra information.
My mom's Note 4 also had the same exact issue where the pictures just flat out disappeared. (Pictures, videos, screenshots). No traces of it in any folders even with a different file browser. Issue happens again and again with no pattern or known cause. I told her to buy an SD card for it this time so if it did happen again, I have full access to the storage medium. I then set the camera to save to the SD card and let her use it as usual. Guess what, the problem happened again today.
This time I took the SD card, popped it into my PC and ran Recuva recovery. I was able to recover a few intact pictures and videos from it.
Note 4 SM-N910C (Exynos 5 Octa)
Android 6.0.1, Unrooted
No root available for S8 yet so none of the recovery tools work, your photos are really gone, that's so sad.
Suggest keep your Google photos sync on and regular backup of your entire phone with Samsung Smart Switch PC version.
See if this help to recover photos from Samsung Galaxy S8+.
Why do you need root to access recovery programme?
MixEcoSystem said:
This issue is not exclusive to the S8 and looking around the internet this is an existing yet unsolved issue on certain Samsung devices. I'll post here to add a bit of extra information.
My mom's Note 4 also had the same exact issue where the pictures just flat out disappeared. (Pictures, videos, screenshots). No traces of it in any folders even with a different file browser. Issue happens again and again with no pattern or known cause. I told her to buy an SD card for it this time so if it did happen again, I have full access to the storage medium. I then set the camera to save to the SD card and let her use it as usual. Guess what, the problem happened again today.
This time I took the SD card, popped it into my PC and ran Recuva recovery. I was able to recover a few intact pictures and videos from it.
Note 4 SM-N910C (Exynos 5 Octa)
Android 6.0.1, Unrooted
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly. I've tried multiple gallery apps, file explorers and android file recovery programs (which all end up requiring root).
I don't know why root is required to access the non-root folders for a deep scan, but they do.
I was hoping there was a way with ADB that I could make a copy on the computer to then scan, but I think it's probably a waste of time now.
And yes, it was internal storage like everyone days.
I'm hesitant to use any of the cloud backup programs because of some the vulnerabilities I don't agree with. We don't even put pictures of our kids on Facebook. Which is the most secure and least likely that I'm "agreeing to allow them to use the pictures for anything", because most programs say that in the TOS.
FOR NOW, we put an sd card in. If this seems to be a software issue, should we reset her phone or reflash the unlocked firmware with odin? I wonder if a specific app could be related to it.
I convinced her to not return the pho e, but now I'm not sure it's worth keeping if it's possible to happen again.
Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk
Arcolog2 said:
Exactly. I've tried multiple gallery apps, file explorers and android file recovery programs (which all end up requiring root).
I don't know why root is required to access the non-root folders for a deep scan, but they do.
I was hoping there was a way with ADB that I could make a copy on the computer to then scan, but I think it's probably a waste of time now.
And yes, it was internal storage like everyone days.
I'm hesitant to use any of the cloud backup programs because of some the vulnerabilities I don't agree with. We don't even put pictures of our kids on Facebook. Which is the most secure and least likely that I'm "agreeing to allow them to use the pictures for anything", because most programs say that in the TOS.
FOR NOW, we put an sd card in. If this seems to be a software issue, should we reset her phone or reflash the unlocked firmware with odin? I wonder if a specific app could be related to it.
I convinced her to not return the pho e, but now I'm not sure it's worth keeping if it's possible to happen again.
Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You guys can try a factory reset. I am actually going to observe this phenomenon happen. Also my mom doesn't like loosing her game saves. I told her to copy her pictures and videos frequently to her laptop in case it happens again (and it will happen again).
Arcolog2 said:
I'm hesitant to use any of the cloud backup programs because of some the vulnerabilities I don't agree with. We don't even put pictures of our kids on Facebook. Which is the most secure and least likely that I'm "agreeing to allow them to use the pictures for anything", because most programs say that in the TOS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try the below app from play store. This can help you setup an easy and automated backup to a local computer or a NAS.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sweesoft.sweethome
The app can be set to auto backup on connection to the home wifi or when connected to the charger and your home wifi at the same time.
mbashat said:
Try the below app from play store. This can help you setup an easy and automated backup to a local computer or a NAS.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sweesoft.sweethome
The app can be set to auto backup on connection to the home wifi or when connected to the charger and your home wifi at the same time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you, I will look it up in the morning.
Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk
Root is now out on the S8 (snapdragon) variant so you may still be able to recover them if you haven't found a fix :good:
Galaxy S8 photos vanished
Many thanks for this post. I suffered from exactly same problem yesterday. This is the first time ever I had this problem with Samsung. I have been user of Samsung S2, S5 and now S8.
I am extremely disappointed that one of the most expensive mobiles has caused this problem. I am going to contact samsung about it because many important picture files lost.
The only precipitant was that my battery completely drained out yesterday and when I turned it on there was loss of photos last from three days.
This is completely unacceptable service from such an expensive mobile. I am very upset. My camera photos gets saved in SD card and are backed up by samsung cloud as well as in google drive.
Please help me with suggestions to recover the lost data.
Samsung s8 plus issues lossing pictures
Thought samsung is the best of the best in phones software and the rest all in one phone but clearly I was wrong I lost loads of pictures on my samsung s8 I sold yesterday and my samsung s8 plus now doing the same thing to lost 100plus pics to I'm going sell this one it's my contract phone but I don't care I just carry on paying it off but I get better phone then this that I can trust....best ones are Vodafone platinum 7 and Vodafone v8 so far are the best phones money can buy reliable to and trustworthy..... samsung makers are in software they need to do better much more improvements to
Please help me.
My problem was: suddenly my pictures disappeared from the Samsung Gallery App, but they do exist on several folders for ex. DCIM/Camera. Why arent they appearing inside Samsung Gallery? I did nothing different than what I usually do... I am so mad about this! I even did factory reset and I still cant see my pictures on Samsung Gallery
Same issue here. Just moved over from iPhone.
I've noticed that so far the pics affected have been in their own albums. One was hidden and one wasn't. 1 photo remains from the one that wasn't hidden. I think it only remains because I had texted the pic to someone.
Internal storage.
Developer Mode On.
Auto Update Off.
Have connected phone to a PC via USB prior to issue.
Images don't show in the file folders when I browse them from the My Files app, either. They're gone.
The other odd thing is this may have only started after changing this device name in About Phone.
Anyone else have a changed device name?
You guys should sync with Google Photos!

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