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Only some photos lost from gallery

P

Piper11

Newbie
Hello - noticed today that a pile of photos are missing from my gallery - samsung s8. I haven't gone thru the hundreds yet but at first look everything from around October thru the beginning of this week is gone. I took a pic yesterday and it's there. The whole group missing IS on my onedrive and google photos thankfully. I can't be sure but there is probably a coincidence going on here - on Sunday I got an email from amazon offering a gift card to download amazon photos and upload at least one pic...ok, great idea as I had been wanting to use my fire tablet to take pictures of recipes I want to save and keep them separate from all my other photos. Planned on keeping them in amazon photos and not syncing any of my other stuff so I didn't use up much space in amazon. Downloaded to my tablet but kept saying it couldn't register (I read today that it's not compatible with fire tablets, talk about dumb) so I downloaded it to my phone. I took a picture and uploaded it so that I can get the gift card. I did not turn on auto sync, etc. because I wanted it to be separate. All seemed fine but I did notice some random photos from my phone showed up in the amazon photo app, really old ones. Was weird but not big deal. Then it was just today as I was looking for something in my gallery that I was like whoa, where are all my recent pics? Did the amazon app do something? Not sure. But they are gone. AND I also noticed in the gallery app that I now have two albums named camera, one has 100 pics in it and the other has close to 500. As far as I recall, they were all in one camera album beforehand. When I connect my phone to my pc I can't even find the larger camera album which scares me.
Not sure what to do and don't want to do anything without advice from someone with a brain. I had hoped possibly uninstalling the amazon photos app from my phone would help, but it did not. Should I delete everything from the gallery app and copy over the photos from google photos? And if so, how exactly do I do that?
Any help would be appreciated, it's driving me nuts, have spent hours googling trying to figure out what to do. Thanks in advance....
 
i only use google photos....never saw the need for any other app similar. it is super easy and never have to worry about my photos. they will always be there whether on my phone or computer. do you use it on your phone? if so the photos should all be there.
 
ocnbrze said:
i only use google photos....never saw the need for any other app similar. it is super easy and never have to worry about my photos. they will always be there whether on my phone or computer. do you use it on your phone? if so the photos should all be there.
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Yes, thanks, you'll see in my original post I did say they are on onedrive and google photos. I like using both for different reasons, was hoping someone might know why they disappeared and or how to copy only some photos from google photos to samsung gallery. I googled and info is older, said to click on photo and it says move to device...I don't see that option.
 
The stock Gallery app is just a photo viewer, nothing more.
You need to be using your file explorer app, and check exactly which folders contain your photos.
You can move or copy, delete photos using the file explorer.
Google photos app store your photos to the cloud
 
Your S8 includes a basic file manager app, called My Files. Use that to check where all your photos are and the status of your entire photo library. A file manager is by design meant to manage files and folders. Apps like Gallery or Google Photos, are photo managing apps, and they're intended to be just for media display with a some but minimal file management. At one time there was a designated folder for all photos, but that became a non-issue because a lot of photos would end up in other directories -- i.e. the Downloads folder is the default for web browser apps and a lot of text messaging apps; and a lot of apps opted to use their own folders to retain more proprietary control. So now all of our photo libraries will be scattered throughout different folders, and different apps will only detect and index some of them. Some photo manager apps are more flexible and allow the user to manually add folders so the apps will auto-detect newly added photos, so check that (typically in the app's Settings menu)l. Or use a file manager app to at least confirm your photos exist (and if want, copy or move your photos to a central location so you know just where they are.).
 
Ok so went into Samsung, My Files, Images and the photos are missing from there as well...BUT still showing up if I look in Google Photos or One Drive on my DESKTOP, not on the phone...on the phone apps the photos are missing. When in My Files I also looked in Internal Storage and there is stuff in there that I have no idea how/why it was filed in such strange places (too many to list) and stuff I had deleted literally years ago. Then I also realized I'm missing albums. What the heck caused this to happen? I'm panicking because the albums missing from gallery are also missing from google photos and one drive...no way to get them back I assume (nothing in trash either). I'm actually more than panicked, I'm sick, the ONLY changes have been downloading amazon photos - could that have screwed everything up? I learned years ago to have a back up and another back up - hence google and one drive but I just assumed they were backing everything up, didn't check often (my bad) so now here I am.
SHOULD I delete samsung gallery and reinstall it and copy pictures over from google photos on my desktop? Is there any way to recover these missing photos? I just don't understand how all of a sudden they are gone? I'm not the most technically swift so literally begging for help here.
 
From your description it sounds like you have your photo library spread out so it's not in all stored within a central location but spread out in different places -- your phone, and online storage services, Google Photos and MS OneDrive.

This is going to be a daunting project involving a lot of time and effort on your part but you need to take control away from those online services and get a handle on your photo library so a) everything is stored in a central location and b) you actually know where all your photo files are located. This won't be a simple task and will involve sorting through a lot of duplicates. Be sure to disable the automated backup/syncing in the Google Photos and the MS OneDrive apps while you're doing this. And again, don't ignore searching for photos stored in different locations on your phone. Get things all sorted out and determine just where all your photos are, then delete all the old photos in those online storage services, pick one, and then enable backup/syncing again so your chosen service will upload your 'clean' photo library in its entirety. Once that's all done, you should have your entire photo library on your phone, and a duplicate residing in the online server of whichever storage service. Be sure to go into the settings of that app and configure it accordingly -- i.e. the Google Photos app has a 'Free up space' option that will free up storage space on your phone by removing older photos (so they only exist in online storage, which might be part of your original problem).
 
SVIM, yes, I suspect you are correct and I dread it but I want to get it correct. I mistakenly thought all three (samsung, google photos, one drive) were working together but that doesn't seem to be the case. Just a few months back when I was looking at photos in all three places everything seemed to be consistent. I honestly don't know what happened. I'm REALLY afraid of deleting duplicates, I did that once before years ago and deleted the wrong ones (the original with actual date taken) and now don't know when I took most of the photos that are more than around 5 years old...SOME still have original dates but not all.
I was just on my way back to this post when I saw your comment....I looked at my google photos app and one drive app on my phone and now all the recent pics ARE there (missing albums are not)....they were not last night and earlier this morning when I posted. I'm so beyond confused. So only place they are missing right now is on samsung gallery. There's no way I can find time to go thru My Files on the phone to find every place where a photo is maybe I can do a little now and then. But, my MAIN problem to get solved is trying to get photos all synced - do you think if I uninstall samsung gallery and reinstall it fresh I could then copy photos over from google photos? I know it's really not needed but I like gallery and I of course want to keep google photos because of the backup/cloud capabilities. Is this something I could do from desktop (windows 10)? Easier to see. Or would gallery automatically search for the google photos if I installed fresh? I know it's just a viewer so I tend to think that's what it would do but not sure.
So turn off syncing for both google and one drive then uninstall gallery app and reinstall to be safe right? This is only because I don't want to try to delete duplicates right now in fear of deleting wrong copy. If this all seems like way too much, I am willing to drop the gallery app and just use google but would prefer all three work together as they always have.
Thanks....I really appreciate you taking the time to help. I HOPE I'm not making you roll your eyes, I just want to get this right.
 
And, there are two camera albums which I have read means that for some reason I have two different DCIM folders - don't want that, can I just copy over all the photos from one to the other and then delete one of them? I assume I keep the DCIM that is associated with internal storage. No idea why there are now two, wasn't that was a week ago. I don't have an sd card.
 
Just my opinion but you should pick one online storage service as your primary backup and sync service. With three services running concurrently, they are most definitely working with each other. They're highly competitive corporations behind all three services you're using, and while all three also might use collaboration as a marketing banner, have business models that are actually designed to NOT coordinate with competing services. Take a look at which of the three best suit your needs and have the best track record as a reliable backup solution.
If you have access to computer with a large monitor, or even a laptop as it will have a larger screen than your phone, you might find that easier to do the whole sorting and weeding out process. Yes, it's a messy, time consuming project so approach it groups and just attack each one at a time. Since it sounds like things are quite fractured, the longer you put this off the harder it will be to fix it.

Keep in mind that as you collect and place all your photo files into a central location, it's one thing to actually have all those photo files in one folder, and another thing when you're using something like the Gallery app to view them. If you've set up different albums, those 'albums' are just how the photos in each album is shown to you. That album may be sorted in a particular way but the photo files themselves are still residing in that central location you've set up. An album is just how they're displayed, not how they're actually organized -- just hypothetically, if you have 100 photos in your photo library and they're all in the one DCIM folder you've chosen to be your central storage, that's where they will reside. If you use Google Photos to make up 10 albums, when you use the Google Photos app you may only see 10 photos in each album but they're all 100 photo files are still in that DCIM folder as is. Creating an album doesn't create a folder and move photos into it, the album is simply a way of showing you selected photos. That's why its important to distinguish a photo manager app from a file manager app. The former is a display tool, the latter is a file/folder tool.
 
svim said:
Just my opinion but you should pick one online storage service as your primary backup and sync service. With three services running concurrently, they are most definitely working with each other. They're highly competitive corporations behind all three services you're using, and while all three also might use collaboration as a marketing banner, have business models that are actually designed to NOT coordinate with competing services. Take a look at which of the three best suit your needs and have the best track record as a reliable backup solution.
If you have access to computer with a large monitor, or even a laptop as it will have a larger screen than your phone, you might find that easier to do the whole sorting and weeding out process. Yes, it's a messy, time consuming project so approach it groups and just attack each one at a time. Since it sounds like things are quite fractured, the longer you put this off the harder it will be to fix it.

Keep in mind that as you collect and place all your photo files into a central location, it's one thing to actually have all those photo files in one folder, and another thing when you're using something like the Gallery app to view them. If you've set up different albums, those 'albums' are just how the photos in each album is shown to you. That album may be sorted in a particular way but the photo files themselves are still residing in that central location you've set up. An album is just how they're displayed, not how they're actually organized -- just hypothetically, if you have 100 photos in your photo library and they're all in the one DCIM folder you've chosen to be your central storage, that's where they will reside. If you use Google Photos to make up 10 albums, when you use the Google Photos app you may only see 10 photos in each album but they're all 100 photo files are still in that DCIM folder as is. Creating an album doesn't create a folder and move photos into it, the album is simply a way of showing you selected photos. That's why its important to distinguish a photo manager app from a file manager app. The former is a display tool, the latter is a file/folder tool.
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Thank you, that explains a lot. I think I may have been overreacting earlier out of panic. One drive and google photos look to be exactly the same at this point, it's just samsung gallery that isn't correct. So, if that's just a photo manager, hypothetically, can't I just uninstall it and work from the two that I want to keep - and yes, eventually I will narrow it down to one but can't right now. I don't see anything duplicated which may be a good thing? I was thinking of using an app/program that would show me the dupes? Again my biggest fear with that is deleting the original, something I truly don't want to do. And, can you help with the two dcim folders? Is it possible to copy over the photos from the older dcim (it was never there before but it looks like it's the dcim from 2017 which is when I got the s8 and transferred everything over) and then delete it? I just want one dcim/camera folder. Hope I'm not asking too much, just want to snap my fingers and go back a couple days when it was all working correctly.
 
A photo manager, like the Galley app, is just an app to view your photos. It's functionality to actually manage and maintain your entire photo library is limited -- It may or may not even detect all the photos stored in your phone's internal storage given how they might be spread out and stored in different folders, and it will have restricted access from being able to fully access what photos are stored solely in one of your online storage services. But it's often a pre-installed system app so uninstalling it generally isn't an option. You'll probably be able to at least disable it though. Of course, if you prefer its user interface than just keep using it.

As for those duplicate DCIM folders, merge their contents into a single location. You'll encounter a message to either delete the files with duplicate names, and you'll have to go through each to determine which to keep and which to delete. Go through them in batches of say 20 or so at a time. Or more, or less, whatever you feel comfortable looking through.
And don't forget to disable backup and syncing with your online storage services, you want to weed out your duplicates and get a clean, sorted photo library, not make the convoluted mix even bigger. And just as important when you do finish up, don't forget to pick one, clear it, and allow your sorted photos to get backed up into it. You do not want to have all your photos only exist in one location, backups are important.
 
svim said:
A photo manager, like the Galley app, is just an app to view your photos. It's functionality to actually manage and maintain your entire photo library is limited -- It may or may not even detect all the photos stored in your phone's internal storage given how they might be spread out and stored in different folders, and it will have restricted access from being able to fully access what photos are stored solely in one of your online storage services. But it's often a pre-installed system app so uninstalling it generally isn't an option. You'll probably be able to at least disable it though. Of course, if you prefer its user interface than just keep using it.

As for those duplicate DCIM folders, merge their contents into a single location. You'll encounter a message to either delete the files with duplicate names, and you'll have to go through each to determine which to keep and which to delete. Go through them in batches of say 20 or so at a time. Or more, or less, whatever you feel comfortable looking through.
And don't forget to disable backup and syncing with your online storage services, you want to weed out your duplicates and get a clean, sorted photo library, not make the convoluted mix even bigger. And just as important when you do finish up, don't forget to pick one, clear it, and allow your sorted photos to get backed up into it. You do not want to have all your photos only exist in one location, backups are important.
Click to expand...

And thanks again...yeah, just stupidly tried to uninstall gallery, not happening. I disabled it but still shows the photos, etc. I'll get it off my screen so I don't automatically try to go into it and eventually it will be forgotten. So if I start moving photos from the older "camera folder" to the newer one and there ISN'T any duplicates, will it do it without asking any questions? I suppose I'll just test it with one or two and see what happens, AFTER I turn off backup and sync for the time being. I probably won't be brave enough to clear one out and allow it to back up the photos from the other into it. Currently I use one drive for all photos (scanned all old photos from actual albums, etc.) and google photos more for the phone. Why? Free storage, if I put them all on one I'll be paying a hefty storage fee and trying to avoid it. If I can get hide the gallery, start using google photos as my phone go to app/storage AND combine the two camera folders safely into one I'll be happy for now. Am I cheap? Yeah, definitely. ;)
 
Sigh, I think I'm going to give up and whatever is lost, is lost and have two camera folders. I just went into "my computer" on my desktop to pull up google photos so I can look into the two camera folders and try to combine. Nope, neither one of them, when looking at google photos, has anything more recent than 2019. I'm so far beyond confused I really don't know what to do besides leave it alone. When I look at "camera roll" on one drive in "my computer" the recent pics are there. When I look at google photos online the recents are there, I just don't know....what is wrong with google now? Probably some simple thing that I'm overlooking but back to panic mode for me.
 
Dannydet said:
Google did state that they are suspending photo uploads because of the Pandemic. That effects all of us using Google photos.....
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Think that might be the issue going on with me? Wondering if I should just not touch anything for now and wait? But, doesn't explain why some just disappeared. Sorry to keep bugging you guys....I don't think I'm going to be able to combine the two camera folders either. When I moved one picture from the old camera folder into the more recent one it moved with no problem but then when I looked in google photos it was duplicated - and google photos does not have it saved as a dcim. I believe I'm confusing myself to the max.
 
How would I change the name of the older camera folder and move it so that it resides in the same area as the newer camera folder? Right now the older one is residing in a folder called sdcardbackup (because the photos were previously on an sd card, not used any longer) - I would like to have that whole folder at least move to where the current camera folder resides so it's easier to find, which is the Phone>DCIM>Camera....can I just rename it "older pics" then use something like Astro File Manager to move it? And my bad, swore I shut off syncing, but it was not, that's why I got a duplicate of the one that I tried moving.
 
Check the default save location used by your Camera app, and use that to determine which folder to use as your primary photos storage folder. Start up the Camera app and look in its settings menu, it will probably have options to select the internal storage media or microSD card as the default, possibly also allowing you to select a specific folder.
 
svim said:
Check the default save location used by your Camera app, and use that to determine which folder to use as your primary photos storage folder. Start up the Camera app and look in its settings menu, it will probably have options to select the internal storage media or microSD card as the default, possibly also allowing you to select a specific folder.
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Thanks, it's currently set up to use the "newer" folder which is what I want. But, I'd really like to rename and move that whole other folder that is filed under sdcardbackup (even though I don't have a card in the phone) into the current DCIM area - can I do that without it changing the dates on the photos? I suppose this is another learning experience for me and I should just try making a new folder in the DCIM and moving one pic to see what happens?
 
File dates are actually a common issue a lot of people encounter. You've probably heard the term 'metadata' come up over the years. It's a hidden aspect to every file, something that we don't actually see when we're viewing something like a photographic file. Part of a file's metadata will be date attributes -- i.e. creation date, modified date, etc. -- and depending on which app you're using it may or may not rely upon on all or just some of those dates. When using a photo manager app it will often have a sort and display option you set to your preference, so you can have the display show the oldest photos at the top or the newest photos at the top. The app is just using the date attributes to do the sorting, the issue being which date is the app using (creation date? last modified data?).

Anyway, use the My Files app to do your file and folder management. That's what it's intended to do. (it might also help if you go into the My Files app settings menu and tweak any option that you might useful). A photo manager app is primarily for viewing tasks, any file management functionality is incidental. Once you do get your collection of photos all organized, you won't need to go through the hassle of maintaining it so much.
 
As usual, thanks. I was just going to move it using my desktop by dragging it into the current DCIM file. But, instead I will give it a whirl with the My Files app instead. I may try making a folder and move just one pic in to see what happens. A friend told me that if I move the whole folder it will take on a new date but the pics inside the folder will not as they have actual date taken embedded in them (I assume that has to do with metadata).
 
Something to keep in mind when it involves using a file manager app on your phone vs using a desktop computer to do file management is there are going to be subtle differences as far has file and folder attributes.
-- When you're using a file manager app, it's a native process. It's an Android app working within an Android operating system, on a device where the internal storage is using a file system that's intended to be run on an Android device.
-- When you're using a desktop computer, presumably Windows or maybe a Mac (the assumption being you're also using a computer that over 90% of the population use), than it's a matter where you're using a different operating system, by a corporation with a proprietary business model by intention, to interact with your Android device.
-- With the former, you're working all within a common platform. With the latter, you have unavoidable workarounds as neither Microsoft nor Apple have opted to include unfettered support for Android's default file system, ext4, in their operating systems. (note that it's an open standard, so their choosing not to is intentional) All three (Android, Windows, MacOS) handle file and folder attributes and file metadata differently so interactions (i.e. file transfers and remote file/folder management) involve compromises and/or translations.
 
Understood (barely, ha ha). I did attempt to use the My Files but it would not let me rename the folder nor move them over to the current DCIM. I even googled it to see what I was doing wrong, couldn't figure it out and didn't want to continue to ask so many questions so I used my desktop and was able to quickly rename it and move it over into the current DCIM. I was going to go a step further and move all the pictures into the current Camera folder but tested one and even though it was from 2012 it went to the top of the list of photos, I assume because it uses the modified date. Could not find a sort feature in google photos on my phone so moved the picture back and will just keep both folder separate but in the same area. It is what it is.
 
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