Help All my files suddenly deleted

[Jaiwoolf]

Hello, does anyone have experience with nearly all your files being suddenly deleted? I woke up and went about my day, to check my phone and find my over 1000+ files in my download folder have all my deleted/is missing, barring about 11 files I've downloaded since the 11th of Jul. Naturally I'd like them back but I'm not sure where to even start. I haven't installed or downloaded anything since yesterday, and as far as backups go I only have one from yesterday morning which apparently doesn't help. Any help on where to start would be much appreciated.

 

[jhtalisman]

To start with, is this internal storage or micro sd card?

 

[Jaiwoolf]

To start with, is this internal storage or micro sd card?

Internal Storage

 

[jhtalisman]

Have you checked the trash which is where files initially go when deleted? Tried rebooting the device? Has the available storage increased as a result?

You should also be able to analyze the storage to see if they are still there or not by way of folder allocation.

 

[Jaiwoolf]

Have you checked the trash which is where files initially go when deleted? Tried rebooting the device? Has the available storage increased as a result?

You should also be able to analyze the storage to see if they are still there or not by way of folder allocation.

Nothing in the trash, rebooting did nothing, I believe the storage has increased though I can't say I remember the exact number prior. Analyzing the storage showed a considerably lower number than should be in downloads.

 

[Hadron]

So it's only files in Downloads that have gone? If so that's an app has done it, not a hardware fault, because files in a folder are not actually stored in the same block of storage in the device.

The culprit could be a device care/storage cleaning app, either one you installed or one Samsung included (they no longer seem to include the CM-derived junk they added a few years ago, but since my s21's settings list apps I've used recently or even fairly frequently in their list of "unused apps" I don't have great faith in Samsung in this respect). Anything that might be used to free up storage. Conceivably even an accident with a file explorer could do this, though you'd need to accidentally select everything in the folder and then hit delete, which makes it less likely. Not knowing what apps you have installed or what system features this model has I can't really guess the culprit.

As for getting them back though, probably not going to happen I'm afraid. I don't know of any reliable file recovery for Android (there are apps that claim to do it, but finding reports of success that are independent of the software vendor is suspiciously difficult). And you can forget any solution that requires root, since even if you can root your phone (US model Samsungs usually can't be rooted, others usually can) the process will probably involve a factory reset, and a reset will destroy the encryption key and guarantee that the files cannot be recovered.

 

[Jaiwoolf]

So it's only files in Downloads that have gone? If so that's an app has done it, not a hardware fault, because files in a folder are not actually stored in the same block of storage in the device.

The culprit could be a device care/storage cleaning app, either one you installed or one Samsung included (they no longer seem to include the CM-derived junk they added a few years ago, but since my s21's settings list apps I've used recently or even fairly frequently in their list of "unused apps" I don't have great faith in Samsung in this respect). Anything that might be used to free up storage. Conceivably even an accident with a file explorer could do this, though you'd need to accidentally select everything in the folder and then hit delete, which makes it less likely. Not knowing what apps you have installed or what system features this model has I can't really guess the culprit.

As for getting them back though, probably not going to happen I'm afraid. I don't know of any reliable file recovery for Android (there are apps that claim to do it, but finding reports of success that are independent of the software vendor is suspiciously difficult). And you can forget any solution that requires root, since even if you can root your phone (US model Samsungs usually can't be rooted, others usually can) the process will probably involve a factory reset, and a reset will destroy the encryption key and guarantee that the files cannot be recovered.

Now that you mention it, I did run CCleaner for the first time in a long time last week, though I don't think i selected anything to do with my downloads. Maybe it accidentally cleaned the folder.

 

[jhtalisman]

Now that you mention it, I did run CCleaner for the first time in a long time last week, though I don't think i selected anything to do with my downloads. Maybe it accidentally cleaned the folder.

It "may" be possible to retrieve them granted the space they occupied hasn't been overwritten already but the expense would probably outweigh the need unless they were of extreme importance.

I personally wouldn't recommend any app that may or may not decide upon itself what needs to be done. Though it's a tedious process I manually delete any outdated files.

 

[Jaiwoolf]

Appreciate everyone's help, unfortunate that I probably can't recover any of my pictures or files.

 

[ocnbrze]

Appreciate everyone's help, unfortunate that I probably can't recover any of my pictures or files.

I would recommend going forward that you use google photo's. it backs everything to the cloud and i never have to worry about my photos or videos. i can even buy a new phone and all i have to do is sign in and i have my photos back again.....granted if i want them physically i would have to download them one by one. but i have a goood data plan with decent coverage so my phone always have been able to connect to the cloud to view the photos.