Help Download images got permenantly deleted without me doing anything, Help!

[Jondit]

I have a Huawei Mediapad tablet M5 lite 10. I left it to charge through the night (it wasn't powered off, was just closed) and the next day when I opened it and went to gallery my downloads were in the process of being deleted! They were turning into blank images and going to the recently deleted folder, and the weirdest thing was, they were also being permenantly deleted? I'm dumbstruck because they deleted ALL of my downloads (I had 834) except a few downloads left over, maybe 6 pictures. People suggested turning auto-delete and automatic storage cleaner option off, but I can't find those options anywhere on my device. I also did not clear my storage recently. I did not back up my photos anywhere. Why did this happen and how can I prevent this from happening again? Can I get back my photos? Help!


Edit: I have just realised that my downloaded documents and audios are gone too! It seems that all of the files I downloaded from the web are permenantly deleted, why did this happen???

 

[Windroid]

The real way to prevent this from happening again is to have a proper backup system. Keep backups of your files on USB disks (or whatever kind of removable disk you'd like), and on multiple cloud services. Encrypt the files before uploading to the cloud if you don't want big companies spying on you, but use multiple cloud services!

 

[ocnbrze]

have you checked google photos? those should be automatically set to backup upon wifi connection. Google Photos unless you changed the default settings.

 

[Hadron]

Is auto backup the default with Google Photos? It wasn't on my current s21 (I know because I chose not to enable it), and it would seem very dodgy to me (and possibly illegal in Europe - I don't know about the US) for them to make "we'll keep a copy of every image you take" the default, especially on a pre-loaded app.

(Also do Huawei devices even come with it pre-installed? It may not be there unless actively chosen).

Unfortunately "why did this happen?" is a very difficult question to answer. Different devices come with different software, and then people install different apps on them. I've never heard of this, but I've never owned a Huawei MediaPad so don't know what file cleaning or device management software they install, or what other apps you have installed, or how any of that is set up. Were all the lost files in one place, e.g. a "Downloads" folder? If so it just needed some utility to treat that as temporary storage and clean it up (again, I've never seen that happen, but I've always personally regarded Downloads as a temporary storage area, and anything I want to keep I will move out of there to "its proper place". But the point is that if you just left stuff there it only required something to empty that one folder to explain everything you have seen).