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Help All media files disappeared - Oneplus 5 - please help

J

jimmy ju

Newbie
Hi there.
I have a Oneplus 5 running Android 8.1.
Today I connected this to my Windows PC via usb cable to copy over my pictures. After I deleted a file which I believed to be called thumbdata. or similar from my pictures folder (on the phone in the android file structure) suddenly and instantly all kinds of media is missing of my phone.
The folder Pictures, Movies, Music, Downloads, DCIM and probably some other have completely disappeared. The folder Whatsapp is still there but all subfolders with Media, Backup, Databases are emtpy.
The phone storage basically only contains the folder android (all app including cache seem to be working, prime video downloads are still in there too)
and the folder WhatsApp with all subfolders there but empty.

Can you please help me to explain what happened there.
All input appreciated.

Kind regards
jim
 
i once again will second google photos. it automatically backs up every photo to the cloud without you think about it. it will even do it only when connected to wifi to safe your data consumption. if anything i also will do a complete copy of my sd card from time to time in case i have downloading something on my phone that i know will not get backed up automatically. once u know u have a backup then feel free to delete stuff you do not want.

and i have no idea what thumbdata is, but anything with the word data in it, sounds important.
 
Hey guys, the OP would still have a huge problem even if he did use Google Photos:

"The folder Pictures, Movies, Music, Downloads, DCIM and probably some other have completely disappeared."
 
If an essential database was deleted, could be the Oxygen OS, or some other cleaning app, had a clean up on files it thought were junk and couldn't be reconciled.

I know Oneplus's Hydrogen OS has a somewhat aggressive file cleaner provided by Qihoo 360, not sure about Oxygen OS.
 
jimmy ju said:
After I deleted a file which I believed to be called thumbdata. or similar from my pictures folder
Click to expand...
Was it .thumbdata (note the leading dot) or .thumbdataX (where X is another character(s))? I'm curious as to why you decided to delete it. :thinking:
instantly all kinds of media is missing of my phone.
Click to expand...
Have you used a file manager [on your phone] to explore your directories? Are you seeing anything you thought was missing? The file you deleted was probably an index/database containing information about your data, but I wouldn't think deleting it would cause other things, like music and videos, to be deleted, too.
 
MoodyBlues said:
Hey guys, the OP would still have a huge problem even if he did use Google Photos:

"The folder Pictures, Movies, Music, Downloads, DCIM and probably some other have completely disappeared."
Click to expand...
not really all the op would need to do is re-download everything back to the card.....or just keep the photos on the cloud. yoiu can access google photos pretty much anywhere.
 
Hi and thanks to everybody for their input.

First, it's not about Google. I know how the cloud works but there are plenty of scenarios where it is just not usable.
Second, it does not help solve the question about what went wrong here technically.

Basically the phone has been used to shoot a lot of pictures. (outside, hiking, no internet, also Oneplus 5 has no sd card)
That meant coming home. Plugging into the PC. Copying 10.000 pictures onto a drive with the windows explorer. Deleting those pictures of the phone to free up space.

And now the bad part: I believe I was in the directory Pictures in the root of the phone storage. That's where Oneplus puts for example Screenshots and other photo collections (As opposed to DCIM / Camera)
There was a file named something in the realm of .thumbdata or thumbinfo of similar and maybe 1gb in size. So I believed these are the old thumbnails for all the pictures that had been in the gallery and can now be deleted straight away.

After that everything in the root the the phone storage was gone apart from 3 folders:
android
Documents
WhatsApp

The rest is gone including the folder Pictures I've just been in.

'android' seems to be untouched as apps are still working. Also in android/data/primevideo/ there are still the downloaded movies

Documents is empty but was empty before.

DCIM completely gone including content.

Downloads gone including contents like .pdf and .docs not only .jpg
Music, Movies folders are gone but where empty anyway.

The folder WhatsApp is there but the subfolder for Databases and Backup has disappeared.
Subfolder Media is still there but inside are just more empty subfolders like
WhatsApp/Media/Whatsapp Images/Sent/.nomedia

I just can't explain what happend.
I did a reboot and checked with the app Diskusage which now only show the app data and lot of free space where Photos, Downloads and Whatsapp things should be.

Any further input appreciated.
jim
 
Does your Oneplus have any sort of file cleaning in it?

Things like Powered by 360, or Powered by Cheetah Mobile. These can be rather aggressive at deleting things, even if it's stuff you want to keep. Quite a few Chinese phones have them preinstalled as part of their OS, baked in.
Screenshot_20190709_182223.jpg


These didn't come from Google of course, and so aren't usually a part of Android.
 
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Transferring any type of file from a mobile device to a computer is always hit or miss.
I never, ever delete anything in my internal storage without first making sure the files have COPIED over safely.
Once copied, then I delete.
As far as the thumbdata file being deleted, which in turn deleted everything else, is unknown to me.
1 wrong move can cause such a problem. I suggested Google photos since at least you'd be able to get your photos and videos back.
 
How exactly did you delete these files? If you'd used the command line I'd wonder whether you were actually higher up the directory tree than you thought (i.e. deleted everything apart from a couple of folders that were either protected or which the app responsible recreated), but it would be hard to do that by accident using a file browser.

I've been trying to look at the contents of the .thumbdata files on my phone to see whether there's anything in but nothing is playing ball: none of the text editors wants to open something that size, and attempting to list them to a terminal screen (using "cat" or "more") displays nothing. But from everything I know and have managed to find removing the .thumbdata files should not have caused any problems in itself.
 
@Dannydet
Thanks again for mentioning Google Photos. Real Android Expert advice!

And as I have written above I did exactly that. Copy my photos on a disk and then delete on the phone.

But I am looking for the dick pic I've been sent on the way home.
Unfortunately my WhatsApp media and databases are missing too. And Google backup was still waiting for WiFi to do it's daily 2am upload.
And I know Danny I could just move to city and get an unlimited data contract. And in the meanwhile do twice daily backups with an adapter onto USB sticks.

Still sometime you just need to figure out what went wrong in the first place.
 
@Hadron
Thank you for your help.
Did indeed just use the file explorer on Windows. So even if I wanted to, I would not know how to delete all those files in one strike. Looking at the folder details they seem older so I don't think they have been recreated by the app immediately.
And as I said I can not name exactly what the file was called. Still thank you for looking into it.

But following your thought. If the win explorer tried to delete everything but failed only on the 'android' folder. The actual data shouldn't be destroyed? Anything I can try now? Phone is not rooted...
 
UPDATE:
The phone still doesn't show any media apart from a recent screenshot.

But in the folder DCIM (newly created by the gallery or cam app I guess) there is now a 1.7gb sized file
.thumbdata4-- 4374444.

Can anyone make sense out of this or give hope that all files are still somewhere?
Cheers
 
This is just supposition but your Android device's internal storage media is using the ext4 file system, an issue being the Windows OS doesn't support non-native file systems very well so every interaction between your OnePlus and your Win PC will involve some kind of kluge -- things like file/folder permissions and file metadata between the two different operating systems are in kind handled differently. Since some of those folders you listed would not be typically deleted unless you have root access so it does sound like while you were deleting those thumbnail images that there was some kind of inadvertent glitch that resulted in either deleting those directories or corrupting the file system (which might explain why that 1.7GB thumbnail file is showing). Again, Windows Explorer is by design meant to work seamlessly with NTFS/FAT (the default file systems for Windows), not ext4 (a common file system for Unix-based OS's).

As far as your lost files/data this is more of an after-the-fact suggestion but you might be better off in the long term using the Settings >> Storage menu in your OnePlus and/or install a file manager app more to do file/folder management (direct access locally) and rely on Windows Explorer less (indirect access over USB, or WiFi). You can do a lot of rudimentary file/folder management using the Settings >> Storage menu, and for more involved tasks try installing a file manager app like 'Explorer', it has an expansive feature set and it's free with no ads:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.speedsoftware.explorer
There are numerous other file manager apps to look into that are also very good options, like X-plore, Solid, or my current favorite Ghost Commander. Peruse through the screen captures on each app's Play Store page to find what you'd be most comfortable using. They all have similar functionality with the biggest differences being their user interfaces.
 
No more ideas I take it.

@svim
Thanks for your insight. Will seek Windows strictly for copying from now on. (Is this also the windows is sometime very slow with big folders on the phone...)
As for the files. What you call glitch did render them lost forever, right? Or does it indicate there in hidden stuff as the gallery created a fairly large .thumbdata4 file..
 
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jimmy ju said:
What you call glitch did render them lost forever, right?
Click to expand...
Hey there, @jimmy ju. I've continued pondering your situation because it's just kind of nagging at me.

As any regular here can tell you, I despise window$ and consider it a POS. Its ability to screw things up is apparently boundless.

I am NOT convinced that your files are actually gone, but I have little to back that up other than the fact that Android--being a Linux--just doesn't allow willy-nilly, non-root user deletion of entire system directories/subdirectories.

If I had your phone in my hot little hands, I'd start out by thoroughly exploring its files/directories, to the extent possible on a non-rooted device. I'd make sure that the file manager I used had its settings to show hidden files.

After that, assuming I hadn't found the 'missing' files, I'd hook it up to one of my computers--my Linux-only computers--with the hope that two Linux systems talking to each other might disclose something not found so far.

I've had this nagging feeling that somehow, some way, window$ moved an entire chunk of the directory structure into a hidden file. I know that sounds farfetched, but when it comes to bizarre things window$ can do... ??
 
Oh I hope this doesn't give you sleepless nights, haha.
Well good to hear your input. Because bizarre is exactly what I felt when this happened. (Although you don't refer to the windows part as bizarre :-))

I googled file recovery and I think its drfone they claim the software can root your to find stuff and then unroot again in the process. Is this a thing?

And about the Gallery app. As the folder android was seemingly not affected, would the gallery app store enough data in there to recreate its old huge .thumbdata4--xxxx ? Or does this indicated there is hidden data?
 
One more thing about the gallery, not sure if I mentioned at some point.
In the gallery under deleted files it is still showing tiles with now 14 days until delete, but tiles are grey - no thumbnail picture there. And if I go to android/data/gallery/files/recyclebin that is all empty.
 
Given that online backup solutions aren't a viable option for you, as you've discovered relying on your mobile device to be your sole source for storing your data isn't a very safe thing to do. At this point so your future endeavors aren't dependent on just local storage of your phone, give some serious thought into implementing some kind of backup solution other than manually copying files back and forth (with the added issues that are inherent to interactions between different operating systems/file systems).
Just a suggestion but Syncthing is a service that you can set up to sync your files only within your own home LAN, no proprietary or otherwise corporate curated, online storage involved. Note this isn't a simple, push-a-button and everything is set up for you kind of solution so it does require one to put in some effort to initially configure things to work, and the app will tax your phone's system resources when you allow it to run in the background.
https://syncthing.net/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nutomic.syncthingandroid&hl=en_US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncthing

As for something like Dr. Fone, be sure your files are safely backed up and readily restorable (emphasize 'safely') before using it. Back in the days of KitKat and earlier when the majority of our phones didn't have encrypted internal storage, using a reputable file recovery utility would often be a workable solution. But with today's phones, the internal storage is encrypted by default so there is that aspect, plus rooting current phones is much more involved than it used to be. So when Dr. Fone claims to be able to bypass the encryption schemes that even our friends at the NSA 'might' be able to bypass, while also being able to magically root/unroot your phone, it's up to you if you want to actually try it out. Perhaps the developers at Wondershare do actually have more insight on how Android phones function at their lowest levels than the rest of the industry. I have doubts about that but if you find Dr. Fone is able to retrieve all your deleted photos please be sure to post your success story.
 
jimmy ju said:
Oh I hope this doesn't give you sleepless nights, haha.
Well good to hear your input. Because bizarre is exactly what I felt when this happened. (Although you don't refer to the windows part as bizarre :))

I googled file recovery and I think its drfone they claim the software can root your to find stuff and then unroot again in the process. Is this a thing?

And about the Gallery app. As the folder android was seemingly not affected, would the gallery app store enough data in there to recreate its old huge .thumbdata4--xxxx ? Or does this indicated there is hidden data?
Click to expand...

Dr Fone by Wondershare will NOT help you at all. It really is harmful spyware snake-oil. There's been a few reports on AF of it actually damaging and bricking devices.
 
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