Help Camera Folder Suddenly Empty

[eighteesix]

Ive been using my s3 for weeks with no problems. Then suddenly today, I restarted my phone and all 1800 photos from the camera folder on the external SD card are ALL gone except for one video in the folder. I then restarted again and the default keyboard app reverted to the default. Strange things. Any ideas why the photos disappeared? I used a file managing application to look for them and they are nowhere to be found. Ridiculous.

 

[john_g]

Firstly, there's a bug where the default keyboard setting gets reset on start-up, so that is not something peculiar to your phone - there are several threads here about it and most can be found by searching for "SwiftKey".

So you really only have one issue... the lost photos. There is some hope, because you had them stored on the external micro SD card. To stand any chance of recovery, you need a card reader and computer, and it's important you don't do anything to the card which might modify its contents. I posted the following the other day when someone asked the same question:

Do NOTHING else until you have exhausted every opportunity to recover the lost files. I have used Recuva successfully - it's a free Windows program, so you plug the card and card reader into a PC and then run it. There are, however, loads of other free programs which do more or less the same thing so, if Recuva fails, it's worth having a look around to try some of the alternatives. Here's a link:

Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download

I hope it works for you. Having said that, there are too many threads here relating to lost files, so my advice for the future is twofold:

Firstly, try to keep all precious stuff on your micro SD card. Yes, they do sometimes fail, but at least you stand a chance of recovery with the technique described above whereas, if you store your photos etc. on the internal memory, recovery programs will never be able to access the memory space.

Secondly... and MOST importantly... everyone nowadays can get a chunk of free cloud storage, so it's not difficult to back up your precious content wherever you are. There are loads of Android programs to help with this, and some apps can be configured to do the backup automatically. Then, just for peace of mind, I'd suggest you also always back up all the important stuff from your phone to your computer when you get the chance.

 

[WAWood8]

I've had two different SG3 phones fry two different SD cards -- so I am familiar with what happened to you.

This is VERY disappointing because, prior to this phone, I had a practice of doing regular backups to the SD card.

But when the card craps out, and takes not only all your music, photos, and videos with it -- but also, all the backups -- it's time for a new approach.

So now, I back copy everything I can't afford to lose to my PC -- and have gone back to using my camera for pics and videos -- it has never trashed an SD card!

Good Luck on recovering the photos -- you'll need it.

On one card, I was able to recover some photos and videos; on the other card, I was able to recover NOTHING. And, I used several of the well-known data recovery apps.

 

[gtgirl88]

that happend to me yesterday. I finally found an app that could read it. Wifi file transfer. I was able to recover the apps and music and backed them up on the computer. I then did a restore and put what I wanted back on the phone. It will read both internal and SD Card.