Help Issue not seeing images after ICS upgrade (ATT)

[jpfotoz]

Welcome. I feel badly about your situation, must be a terrible feeling.
Don't worry too much, the images are probably not gone or deleted. The pictures are probably still there

Normally I would have a few suggestions to try, however since you are dealing with extremely delicate data and I'm not physically there to help I'm not going to suggest any fixes to try for fear of overwriting the data.

Just because they are not showing in the gallery does not mean they are gone. Sometimes the Gallery application can have hidden folders or malfunction and not display things correctly. It is a side issue, your main focus should be the image files.

Quickpix could possibly be showing the files from a new file directory, or there could be thumbnail files leftover that this application is finding and displaying for you. Another side issue of sorts.

I would recommend highly not taking any more pictures. If in fact they were deleted, there is a slight chance that taking a new pictures or adding new data could overwrite the location of previous pictures which you are wanting to find and maybe recover.

The update could be a significant detail here, during an update they possibly could have been temporarily moved or cached to install the new software. Not sure where this takes place or where they would be stored (they normally get moved and put back), but just know that it is a function of some updates.

I also would not take it to Sprint. The chance of them losing your data forever is too risky in my opinion. You would be better off if you know a friend or acquaintance who knows quite a bit about phones and can investigate for you without modifying the current set up until it has been determined the pictures are found or were indeed deleted. If you find the images well then success! If you find no trace or find that they were deleted there are some recovery options out there.

For the future I recommend implementing a plan for scheduled physical back ups. And as a golden rule always always always do a back up before installing an update or modifying the phone.

Hope this all works out the easy way and you find the files.

I have a VERY similar problem - my difference is that I had ATT do an upgrade on my Galaxy SII to Ice Cream Sandwich and I now can't see any photos that were on the phone previously. (I was getting a loop in the touch wiz interface and couldn't access the phone the lame ATT tech at their service center said all he could do was do the upgrade -- I figured out later that the Keis software could have saved my photos.)

Will the same techniques work for me? I'm about to attempt to clone the phone to a hard drive as a back up and have something I can dig around in, instead of the actual phone.

I also found some Computer Forensic sofware to clone the drive.

Any further advise is greatly appreciated.

JP

 

[lunatic59]

Without knowing exactly what they did at the AT&T store, I can't say whether or not anything will work to retrieve your missing images. A factory reset or system update should not have touched your /sdcard partition. If you use a file browser like Astro or ES file explorer, can you go to /sdcard/DCIM and see if there are any images there?

If the tech formatted the sdcard storage, then I'm afraid there's not a lot that can be done.

 

[jpfotoz]

The did an install of Ice Cream Sandwich - I think it was a full install vs the update as all the forums I've read mentioned problems.

I looked with a app called Solid Explorer - and only see one photo in the DCIM folder - that I took after the install.

Does that mean they wiped my internal storage and killed all my photos?

Thank you.

 

[lunatic59]

That's not good news. Sorry.

I'm not sure what you mean by installing the full version vs. the update. There are three ways to update a phone. One is to apply updates from the carrier or manufacturer that will migrate you from a previous version to the current version while leaving your apps and settings intact.

Another is to download the most recent carrier firmware for your device from the manufacturers site and install that which is pretty much setting it back to factory settings. You can do this several ways, but the result is the same.

Finally you can root your phone and install custom firmware (aka. flashing).

None of these methods require the /sdcard partition be reformatted, although sometimes custom firmware will repartition your device which will wipe everything out.

Now, when you move from one version to a new one -- and the move from Gingerbread to ICS was a major move -- it is always recommended to clear your caches and perform a factory reset. It may be possible that from the recovery menu, the tech reformatted the /sdcard as well.

It does sound like your images are gone. It may be possible to use a utility like recuva, but I have never had much success with these types of utilities. You plug your phone into a PC and mount as storage. Then run recuva and look at the drive that represents the phone's internal storage.

 

[jpfotoz]

I tried the Recuva software and it didn't find images that I'm looking for.
I think the lame tech person did the factory install. [I think I'll write ATT a nasty gram - maybe they'll feel my pain and give me a new SIII ]

Moving forward what do you suggest I use to backup my photos, apps, contacts? What's the best method? Google? Dropbox? Can I backup everything? Which is best and can any of them be automatic?

Thanks in advance!

 

[lunatic59]

If you sync your contacts to Google, they'll always be there in the cloud. You can sync all your photos to Picassa as well and I am sure there are other services as well. You'll have to look at the data they consume, if that's an issue. For example, if you are on a limited data plan and you only want to sync at night when you are home on your personal wifi connection, then you'll have to look into an app or service that schedules the sync'ing.

You can sync apps and app data with Google, too. What will happen is that if you ever wipe your phone or register a new one to the same gmail account, the apps will automatically install and attempt to restore the last dataset for those apps. It's not 100% but it's better than doing them one at a time.

For rooted users, Titanium backup and nandroids are the common fare.

I sync my contacts and apps, but i copy photos manually, only because I don't really leave copies of photos on my phone for too long.