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Ok so I have an SGS for over a year now, with an external sd of 16GB and cyanogenmod 10 installed (this one). It's fantastic. But, recently I started having some storage problems. I couldn't update anything or download any new app or even take a picture. This seemed odd as I don't have that many applications installed and I keep all my big files on the external sd. So I started clearing caches and moving applications to the sd. Those solutions didn't last long.
Worse, ther weird part was yet to come. When I checked my settings >> storage, I found that there should be more than a 1.5GB of free space. But, If I checked my settings >> Apps >> On SD Card, I could see that there was only around 5MB of space left. Still, I found some old backup that I didn't need anymore, so I deleted that. hooray, there were now 500MB free to use. That is, until the next day when again, there was zero space to be used. I was shocked because during that time I didn't install anything new, I only took a small video of less than a minute, which by itself didn't weight more than 60MB of space.
Something was definetly up. Using File Manager I tried checking where all the data is, and I found that, to my amazement, in the DCIM folder, there was a folder named ".thumbnails" which took up 2GB of space. That is a lot. seaching around the Forums here, it seems I'm not the first one to notice this problem.
And the solution always seems to be "just delete the thumbnails". To me that seems a bit crass and not really a solution. I'm not tech enough to know what are the implications of simply deleting those files, and I'm not sure how long it's going to last anyway, before I need to do it again. So I'd like to know if there's some kind of fix I can install or some configuration I can change that would make sure it doesn't happen again. Or, if anything, some explanation in layman's terms why it's okay to simply delete those files. I'd like to mention that my phone is rooted, and I have CWM, Rom Manager and Terminal Emulator so I can use those if necessary.
AW: [Q] DCIM thumbnails taking over storage - need a fix!
That really is weird. Did you try to fix permissions in cwm recovery? I'm not sure it would even check that directory but it surely doesn't hurt.
Even if it works it will not cure your immediate problem. You will need to delete the thumbnail folder or the files in it. And here is why you don't have to worry.
Thumbnails are small files that store a preview of your images. They get created by your image viewer and are updated whenever it detects a change in the image file. When your viewer doesn't find a thumbnail it needs to read the whole image file, create a preview and show this. The created preview is then saved as thumbnail so it can be loaded next time the program needs to show the image.
In short: if you delete the thumbnails then they will be recreated next time your image viewer shows the images. So there is nothing to lose. You can safely delete the thumbnails.
JUST BE SURE THEY REALLY ARE THUMBNAILS AND NOT THE IMAGES THEMSELVES!
Somehow I messed up setting up my wife's new Moto X. In the past I had some tasker tasks to transfer all the photos off our phones and onto our NAS every night. In setting up the task on her new phone I deleted a slew of pictures. I know the original photos are gone and I'll face the music on that one. However, if I go to camera and swipe to the left I can scroll through all the photos. I can't email or share any because the file is gone, but if I can see the photos there must be a low res image someplace on the phone still. Anyone know how to access these and possibly get me out of the doghouse? They're not in the DCIM folder at all. I poked around in the Android/Data folder a bit, but did not find them.
On the same note, is there a way to clean these out over time? Seems to me if I have a thumbnail of every photo ever taken it would eventually fill up the storage.
Thanks
Get an app like astro file manager, or root Explorer and go to storage then DCIM and your thumbnail pics should be there.
Sent from my XT1097 using XDA Free mobile app
clskier said:
Somehow I messed up setting up my wife's new Moto X. In the past I had some tasker tasks to transfer all the photos off our phones and onto our NAS every night. In setting up the task on her new phone I deleted a slew of pictures. I know the original photos are gone and I'll face the music on that one. However, if I go to camera and swipe to the left I can scroll through all the photos. I can't email or share any because the file is gone, but if I can see the photos there must be a low res image someplace on the phone still. Anyone know how to access these and possibly get me out of the doghouse? They're not in the DCIM folder at all. I poked around in the Android/Data folder a bit, but did not find them.
On the same note, is there a way to clean these out over time? Seems to me if I have a thumbnail of every photo ever taken it would eventually fill up the storage.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Those are probably all cached. As for recovering them, I'm sure you can find them in the cache -- I don't know where they'd be saved (I believe there is a /cache partition but then there's also the possibility that the gallery caches those previews somewhere in /data/). It may be easier to to screen shot the ones you want.
EDIT: see above post - that's probably what you want
As for the cache growing, I'd imaging that the gallery app has some sort of maintenance. But there is always the option of using apps (I have SD Maid, personally) and/or periodically clearing the cache partition via a custom recovery
Thanks all. This was good info also. I ended up finding the files on my NAS which leads me to a whole other question which I will post seperately from this as it only related by symptoms.
Yes, I know how to use google, yes, I tried many things now and I don't know where else to look for help so I'm asking here, a place with many smart heads full of ideas.
I was doing pretty normal thing on my phone this morning, just trying to copy all the files from internal memory onto the PC. Of course I couldn't do that thanks to "Unspecified error" during copying some of the folders, including Downloads and DCIM. I managed to copy only some of the files from internal storage. I thought a reboot might help. And so the nightmare began. All the other files I wanted to copy disappeared from gallery and Total Commander. They must be on the phone though, as there is something on the phone that uses 2gb of memory. I did not delete them, the system just fails to see them. I already tried deleting all the ".nomedia" files, clearing cache and data from Media Storage app, disabling it, rebooting and enabling again but it was of no use. I'm helpless and I don't know what to do, why did android even do this? I lost a lot of photos and images and I'm really upset about that. Any ideas what to do? The phone is not rooted, never played with software in it, it's updated to 5.1
Download any File Manager from Play Store, check if the files are on the phone memory. If not, well, they are somehow lost. Maybe you cut-paste them onto your PC, and the files were deleted, but you got an 'unspecified error' on moving.
Thanks a lot for a response. I use Total Commander on every android phone I had, I can see that my files look like they disappeared completely, android just generated empty generic folders ("Pictures etc) after I cut off the previous folders along with their content so I saved a little bit that I could. On the other hand something is occupying 2gb of data but the phone refuses to show what, so there is a chance my files are there. After copying the whole content of the phone to the folder on desktop it just shows it weight few hundreds KB. I'll be trying to use some recovery software for android. The question is how did this happen at all? It had no right to happen, what if this happened to someone who has completely no idea about that stuff? Who's to blame and who's responsible for helping such a person? Motorola? Google? Anyway, this is the last phone with no micro-sd card slot I used. A memory card is the best backup
You COULD recover your files even if they were deleted if Android still had a mass storage mode. I don't think any of the data recovery softwares play nice with the MTP transfer that android offers. Of course, the SD card is infinitely better, but a rarity these days. I am sorry for your lost data. You seem like you did everything within your reach to get it back.
EDIT: Just to be sure, did you cut-paste the folders on your PC from phone, or just copy-paste. It might be possible for files to be deleted in cut-paste, if some error occurs in copy.
Thanks for contributing. It seems Google knows better then any of us what we need and there's no more Mass Storage option which gives free access to memory. Unfortunately I don't have that option. First I ensured which files are not affected by error by trying to copy them folder after folder. Then there were left files I couldn't copy, it was DCIM with most recent photos (unfortunately) and download where I kept lots of images with cool infographics found on the internet. I thought a reboot would help to get access to them and you know the rest. Files were there no longer. I'm seriously considering switching to Windows Phone, it seem it's too much to ask for a phone that just "werks" nowadays...I have a painful lesson to use memory card as well as cloud synchronizing but didn't give up yet, still trying anything I can I also wrote to Motorola with help request but I don't think they'll help me any better than people here, although it's more their responsibility to fix that stuff, the phone is barely 6 months old.
So this issue has persisted for a few weeks now and I'm not sure how to resolve it, short of doing a full factory restore (which I consider last resort, but I'll probably do this over Xmas if I don't resolve it soon).
The issue : Gallery app seems to have "lost" a whole load of my images.
I can see photos/videos I've taken, screenshots/recordings and my Download folder, but all "other" folders are gone.
I had this problem before and I managed to fix it by removing a .nomedia file which was in the same folder as a whole load of images that the Gallery app decided to ignore. The .nomedia file isn't there now.
If I use a file exploring app I can see all my images in various folders on my phone (images saved from reddit/VSCO/facebook etc). Other apps such as Google Photos can see all my images. If I go to share an image from the Facebook app then I can see all my images (although they are always mixed up and not sorted by date/name or anything like that. also very frustrating) so I know 100% that all my images are there, but the stock Gallery app has decided to ignore them.
It's not like the problem is confined to one folder and sub folders either as I'm missing my "reddit_sync" and "prisma" folders which are located EVA-L09\Internal storage\Pictures but the "Screenshot" folder saved in that location is accessible in the Gallery app. Same with EVA-L09\Internal storage\DCIM: \Camera\ is accessible as I can see all the photos and videos I've shot with the phone but the folders \Facebook\ and \Photoscan\ are not showing up at all in Gallery.
If I long press a folder (i.e Download) in the Gallery app from my phone and select "Add to Others" then the folder just disappears. The "Others" folder has totally gone.
Things I've tried
Settings > Apps > Gallery > Storage > Clear Data and Clear Cache : This restores any folders that I've put in "others" but "others" is still missing
Created a new folder and cut and pasted images into this folder on the phone. Reboot phone to see if Gallery now sees images. It doesn't
Moved a whole load of images off my phone as I thought maybe I had too many images stored on it or something. Made no difference.
Searched for all .nomedia files on the phone. None of which were stored in any of the effected folders.
Checked to make sure there's no folders selected in "Hide Albums" from the Gallery.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I have a feeling I may just need to clear the data/cache on some other app or something, but I don't want to start dropping mini-nukes on apps in the hope that I get a direct hit on the one thing that's causing "Others" to disappear.
Thanks in advance.
Did you try settings>apps>media storage>storage and clear data for this? I guess this will solve your issue
Edit: probably you need to either reboot afterwards or wait some minutes for the media library to be rebuilt.
FadeFx said:
Did you try settings>apps>media storage>storage and clear data for this? I guess this will solve your issue
Edit: probably you need to either reboot afterwards or wait some minutes for the media library to be rebuilt.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Haha that did it! Thanks so much, it's been driving me mad!
Just FYI I didn't have to reboot, the library started to rebuild almost instantly after opening up the Gallery app..
For anyone else who has this problem and has stumbled across this post: When in Settings > Apps make sure you select "Show System Processes" from the menu. I couldn't find Media Storage until I had done that.
Thanks again, FadeFX
Sry, forgot to mention that...
Gesendet von meinem GT-I9300 mit Tapatalk
I've been here so many times, hoping I must of done something wrong but I followed it right, I've cleared the date enough to lose count hoping that the albums that I put in "others" would show up, even restarting my phone after I've cleared it, they still don't show up at all.. and can't move them to another gallery folder on "files" due to it.
Albums don't show in photos
All albums appear correctly in albums tab, but the photos tab (where all pictures are shown) only includes camera photo and video and screenshot albums, tried the solutions above didn't work
Missing video Huawei
FadeFx said:
Did you try settings>apps>media storage>storage and clear data for this? I guess this will solve your issue
Edit: probably you need to either reboot afterwards or wait some minutes for the media library to be rebuilt.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have a Huawei Nova and 4 days after transferring videos from my PC to phone , discovered that they were ''gone''. Inspired by your suggestions , I tried: Settings, then Apps, then Gallery, then Storage, then clean data ....rebooted and videos ......are back.
Very much wonder if this issue wil come back in the future or is this a permanent ''cure''.:fingers-crossed:
Thanks a million for your suggestions
Hi, yesterday while looking at my gallery I noticed that a lot of photos are missing, for example, my Italy trip photos and videos are gone, not all of them though, there are some left, but videos are all gone. I didn't delete or move them, didn't touch them at all, it just disappeared. I've tried looking at my Onedrive, Google drive backups, but they are all showing current photos, that I can already see. I've also tried cleaning gallery and media storage data in settings or deleting .nomedia files (which cant be actually deleted), but no results. Booting on safe mode, using different recovery software also shows same photos that I already see on my phone. Tried to get help from Samsung Support, sadly they are as competent as I am, all the suggestions were already known. They did suggest to factory reset my phone while backuping everything using smart switch since there might be some malfunction and doing so all the supposedly hidden photos gonna be released. Not really trusting it though, because in backup I can clearly see that the photos that are being backed up are the photos I can already see, and no hidden files are being backed up. I've also restarted my phone like 6-7 times in different circumstances and noticed that everytime my phone boots it loads up 196 pictures in my camera roll, and then after some time the other part of it gets load up. So my question here today is: Is there anything I haven't tried and is it possible to recover the hidden/disappeared photos?
P.s. the photos that I'm concerned about is in my internal storage not in SD card.
After you lose data it's many times to late to do anything. Why aren't you using the SD card as a data drive to at least backup your critical data?
That in turn should be backed up redundantly to at least 2 hdds that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC. Consider this a wake up call...
This isn't looking good. Backed up what's left, now. Try in safe mode.
It may be malware, in any case it sounds like it's factory reset time if you can't ID the root cause.
If you added any downloaded images* to the folders losing data it may be a malware jpeg, if so this jpeg must be deleted or it will continue to destroy and mutilated files in the folder it occupies. I've seen ones that do this in Android. Think. What was done, installed or downloaded?
*All downloaded jpegs should be kept in the download folder until vetted. This will help limit the damage hopefully to just the loose files in there. At least open the jpeg there and look for abnormal behaviors in that folder because you add that jpeg to your database! Antivirus may not detect these little buggers... WYSIWYG
blackhawk said:
After you lose data it's many times to late to do anything. Why aren't you using the SD card as a data drive to at least backup your critical data?
That in turn should be backed up redundantly to at least 2 hdds that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC. Consider this a wake up call...
This isn't looking good. Backed up what's left, now. Try in safe mode.
It may be malware, in any case it sounds like it's factory reset time if you can't ID the root cause.
If you added any downloaded images* to the folders losing data it may be a malware jpeg, if so this jpeg must be deleted or it will continue to destroy and mutilated files in the folder it occupies. I've seen ones that do this in Android. Think. What was done, installed or downloaded?
*All downloaded jpegs should be kept in the download folder until vetted. This will help limit the damage hopefully to just the loose files in there. At least open the jpeg there and look for abnormal behaviors in that folder because you add that jpeg to your database! Antivirus may not detect these little buggers... WYSIWYG
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay first of all, One drive should be responsible for backing up my data, thats why its there, no? I do understand that data back up need to be taken more responsibly, but again why would I keep everything backed up from my phone since everything in there is just basic daily use things, nothing that much of importance, except of course memory photos in my camera roll (which again SHOULD be backed up in my one drive). Second, if I were that careless as an IT student to download malware into my device, why would I move it to my camera roll folder ? (thats the only folder that has photos and videos missing). Third, I did factory reset my phone with a back up from Smart Switch as suggested from so called Technical Support specialist from Samsung, sadly the results are same (All photos I had before factory reset are there, no actual recovery has been made).
Sorry if I might sound rude, but I'm really frustrated. Samsung really let me down big time for the first time in 12 years of using their products.
I feel your pain as I lost an irreplaceable database myself at one point that was 30 years old. It sucks.
The only backup I trust and use is copy/paste/verify for size and if readable.
SmartSwitch can fail you miserably, never use it for critical data... same with Google junk.
In unencrpted hdds I trust.
Maybe your Google account was hacked... again always suspect malware, viruses, rootkits if unexplained behaviors are observed.
If you had a previous SmartSwitch backup saved that probably would have worked. At the time what the Samsung rep told you in lieu of the former was your best shot probably. The data was already lost unless its backed somewhere you overlooked or forgot.
It's also possible you could have a hardware failure in progress, keep a close eye on the device.
The reason I back up they way I do is from hard lessons learned going back to XP Pro and other OS's. Also never clone (copy/paste only) or encrypt data drives. Always use a good SD card that's V30 rated like a Sandisk Extreme. All critical data goes here, and everything you need to do a full reload including installable app copies. App that allow settings to be saved like Poweramp, contacts all go on the data drive as do vid and music libraries. ColorNote will save it's backup directly to the SD card, it's a very useful that can used for bookmarks. Don't forget all passwords as well.
Keep the DCIM and download folders on internal memory. Only these and installed apps go on internal memory. Periodically backup the DCIM files to the SD card but DO NOT use the phrase dcim in the backup copy folder name... and then redundantly back up the SD card periodically. Best to time stagger these backup between 2 or more hdds. Develop a plan, put some thought into it. You have all the hardware you need for a robust dual drive device if you use it!
I have 2 N10+'s and this is how I run them. Zero issues.
@blackhawk. Agree... Never trust Google Photos. Somehow I also lost a lot of my photos. Mostly the ones that I shared (as file). Was that because I deleted them directly using Root Explorer? No. Because I downloaded them to Restored folder and deleted through Explorer? No. Because I deleted them from Sent folder of WhatsApp? No... I tried each one of these and couldn't consistently delete the items from Google photos... But how? Why? Just don't trust the application.
nugroho2 said:
@blackhawk. Agree... Never trust Google Photos. Somehow I also lost a lot of my photos. Mostly the ones that I shared (as file). Was that because I deleted them directly using Root Explorer? No. Because I downloaded them to Restored folder and deleted through Explorer? No. Because I deleted them from Sent folder of WhatsApp? No... I tried each one of these and couldn't consistently delete the items from Google photos... But how? Why? Just don't trust the application.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Always redundantly backup critical data and verify it's size is correct, it's readable and complete. Copy/paste only, never clone media files ie music.
A drop, malware, hardware failure, a near lightning strike, a boot loop, a user mistake etc can destroy data instantly. Expect it will happen because eventually it probably will. No such thing as overkill with data backup. Multiple copies in different locations that are time staggered and not connected to a PC preferably on hdd. An earth grounded safe or metal box is ideal to store them in at 50-70F.
Great advice! I see these posts about lost data, and people don't realize, you have to backup this data somewhere. The FIRST step is something like Google Photos or Amazon even. But these are not enough (it's a start, at least).
General recommendation is a 3-2-1 backup, as detailed here: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/
Bottom line, if it's something you don't want to lose, then have a REAL backup beyond just GPhotos or similar.
Especially in today's world of cellphones and flash-drives. Both are easily lost or damaged. At least in the old days you can sometimes recover data from spinny drives (I did a LOT of this work for people, using specialized software)... but flash drives don't work the same, and they likely fail to read completely, leaving ALL the data gone in a flash (pun intended).
Backup, BACKUP, BACKUP!!!
EDIT: Also note, if you use something like Gphotos, you can very-easily download ALL the photos from there. This makes it rather easy to backup those files by simply copying that ZIPped file as necessary. You'll have to do this manually every so often, but it's quite easy to do.
This same thing just happened to me. All of my folders including my camera pics were deleted, except my downloaded folders. All the photos are missing from my backups, all trash bins are empty, and Samsung Customer Service suggested that I do everything I had already done. I thought I'd be fancy and get the ZFold 4, which doesn't have an option to use an SD Card. I even downloaded a recovery program to my laptop and it couldn't find any photos. I'm currently waiting on an adaptor, so I can download photos from my last SD card in my previous phone. I've never been more angrier with a phone than I am right now.