Help Broken S7 Edge screen - hidden folder access

[VanBCguy]

I recently had my S7 Edge phone knocked out of my hand and it broke a pixel when it hit the ground. No damage other than the screen.

I had my phone perfectly set-up (finally) and had quite a few documents and photos stored away in 2-3 hidden folders. I couldn't access the hidden folder when the screen was broken (one broken pixel made the entire screen unreadable) but I did save all the phone memory folders (and the SD card too for what it's worth) to a computer. The repair centre has wiped the phone memory, so my question is this:

If I have the phone memory on a computer, what process do I go thru to get the hidden folders back onto my phone and viewable?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Bg260]

Just put them back where you found them.

 

[VanBCguy]

What do I do with the folders thqwt will be there on the re-install? Copy my old ones over and then erase the re-installed ones?

 

[Bg260]

Part of the Android boot process, (initial ramdisk) is to scan the user storage and generate any missing directories. You can overwrite them.
I would just copy and paste over the existing. As I said if something gets inadvertently erased it will regenerate on the next boot. Android will not allow access to critical directories without root.
The user directories are mostly Media and Cache.

 

[VanBCguy]

Ok. Copy and paste. But what to do with existing folders first? Maybe you answered this already and I'm not understanding the boot process part of your answer (I'm a computer dunce).
My vision is to empty the phone memory folder and then copy my old folders over. Would this work?

Sorry for the dumb questions but as mentioned, I'm a computer dunce.

 

[Bg260]

Just copy the old over the new. Folders with like names will be overwritten. That's all you have to do. Copy and paste. Try it one at a time at first if you'd like

 

[VanBCguy]

Just copy the old over the new. Folders with like names will be overwritten. That's all you have to do. Copy and paste. Try it one at a time at first if you'd like

Excellent. Thank you for the help!

One final question: in your experience, this should make my hidden folders available again?

 

[Bg260]

Ummm, how did you hide them. Some third party file managers have that ability. Solid Explorer is one.

 

[ThePhizzle]

Show hidden files option on your Pc doesn't work to show files hidden on your phone?

 

[VanBCguy]

I used the stock Lollipop Privacy feature that hides selected folders thru the settings.

I haven't tried the PC to see if I can use "show hidden files". I very rarely use my PC and didn't think of trying.

 

[VanBCguy]

As I look at the S7 phone folders (I can't see these hidden files being on the SD card), I can see the folder names, but no contents. Does anyone know where Lollipop hides these files within the directory that I can see on my Windows PC?

 

[VanBCguy]

TTT?

 

[VanBCguy]

Well, I finally got the phone back (it's a refurb and not a repaired screen) and copied all the phone folders over and tried the Setting/Privacy feature to show the pictures. No luck. I then copied over the SD card folders since the photos were originally saved to the SD. I could see the folder names whether the Privacy feature was enabled or not, but there's no contents to the folders.

Long story short, unless someone has a more experienced idea, I'm out of luck. Reminder to self: back up all your docs and photos to a PC daily. If that screen breaks like mine did, everything stored privately isn't recoverable. Unless someone knows a better way.

 

[VanBCguy]

No-one?