My photos disappeared!! HELP!!

[Corinne]

Hi

I have been struggling with an issue for the past few days and I can’t find any solution anywhere so I thought I’d try my luck here.
The problem is a bit complex so I’ll try to be as detailed as I can.

I’ll start by saying that I upgraded my laptop to Windows 11 last week.
I own a Samsung S21 Ultra 5G and every few months, I back up my pictures and documents from my phone to my laptop.
Usually, my documents and pics are stored on the secured folder of my phone, and in order to transfer them to my laptop I move them out of the secured folder and into the regular gallery. Then connect my phone to my laptop with the USB cable, open my DCIM folder, select my pictures, then do ctrl+X to cut them out of the phone folder and ctrl+C to copy them into a local folder on my laptop.
So that’s what I did, moved my pics out of the secured folder into the gallery, selected them from the DCIM folder, cut and pasted into a local folder and then… nothing! all my pictures disappeared!!
They are not into the trash folder of my phone, not into the trash folder of my laptop, not in any of my local folders, not into the internal storage of my phone… Absolutely nowhere!
I have spent the past 2 days looking everywhere and no luck.

So I am hoping someone here will have a stroke of genius and help me with this.

Thanks

[veeg]

Hello

Hopefully some of our members will chime in soon.

@Bastet

[Bastet]

Do you use OneDrive to store the photos on your PC?
Try refreshing the folder, right click on a blank area & choose other options at the bottom of the list, refresh should be there. If not then please enable show all files to see if the photos are hidden.
If not then please restart the PC.
If non of these work then they may be gone for good.
For future reference I wouldn’t recommend cut & paste but copy & paste, this way you’ll not lose your photos should anything go wrong & once the transfer is complete you can delete the photos on your phone.

[Corinne]

Do you use OneDrive to store the photos on your PC?
Try refreshing the folder, right click on a blank area & choose other options at the bottom of the list, refresh should be there. If not then please enable show all files to see if the photos are hidden.
If not then please restart the PC.
If non of these work then they may be gone for good.
For future reference I wouldn’t recommend cut & paste but copy & paste, this way you’ll not lose your photos should anything go wrong & once the transfer is complete you can delete the photos on your phone.

Thanks for you reply.
I do use OneDrive however since I moved the pics from the secured folder into the gallery and then immediately cut and copied onto my laptop without backing up the folder they cannot be found on OneDrive.
I did all of the refreshing and restarting but I came up empty.
I learned my lesson I guess…
Is it possible that they just vanished into thin air like that? That they are nowhere to be found? Not even in the trash?

[Pyro]

Quickly adding to what Bastet said,

You could try looking back in File History (if you have it enabled).

Open Control Panel >System and Security > File History

If File History is off this is not a possible solution.

If it is on, check if the folder/parent folder that you moved the files from is in there.

[Corinne]

Quickly adding to what Bastet said,

You could try looking back in File History (if you have it enabled).

Open Control Panel >System and Security > File History

If File History is off this is not a possible solution.

If it is on, check if the folder/parent folder that you moved the files from is in there.

Unfortunately File History was off
The thing is, it just makes no sense to me whatsoever. It’s not on any folder on my laptop, not on any folder on my phone, not in internal storage, not on the cloud, not in the recycle bin of my phone or of my computer or of OneDrive, not on Google photos… They just vanished!

[Rustys]

Is this your primary (C) drive and or a secondary attached drive?

To add to the advice already given

Have had good results recovering data using this program.

https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva

Be advised the more you access that drive the harder it will be to recover the data.

Plus this and android phone correct which would mean that you have a google account. Why not transfer them to the Google Drive then you can access them on the PC and transfer them that way? Also since you probably use Google Photos to view pictures correct why not back them up through there the access form a PC?

If you are concerned about data limits then use WiFi.

Would also suggest that you use Copy and Paste to relocate the picture. then you can compare the pictures that are on the system and phone and delete the duplicates

[Corinne]

Is this your primary (C) drive and or a secondary attached drive?

To add to the advice already given

Have had good results recovering data using this program.

https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva

Be advised the more you access that drive the harder it will be to recover the data.

Plus this and android phone correct which would mean that you have a google account. Why not transfer them to the Google Drive then you can access them on the PC and transfer them that way? Also since you probably use Google Photos to view pictures correct why not back them up through there the access form a PC?

If you are concerned about data limits then use WiFi.

Would also suggest that you use Copy and Paste to relocate the picture. then you can compare the pictures that are on the system and phone and delete the duplicates

It is my primary drive.
I will try the software and hopefully will get somewhere with that.
As I said, I have learned my lesson about transferring documents from my phone, I just thought it would be easier to just cut and paste from one folder to another…
Thanks for the advise

[Pyro]

When you copy something, it goes to your ‘clipboard.’

The clipboard is a tray for all intensive purposes, it has the capability of holding one set of data and one set only.

Say you cut your photos, they are on the clipboard, if you copied something else or restarted the computer, the information previously saved is deleted. (Think of it as putting old papers into the shredder to make way for new ones)

As the others have advised, this is what makes cut and paste so dangerous, if anything were to happen, the clipboard would not save your data and leaves you vulnerable to situations such as this.

[Corinne]

Is this your primary (C) drive and or a secondary attached drive?

To add to the advice already given

Have had good results recovering data using this program.

https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva

Be advised the more you access that drive the harder it will be to recover the data.

Plus this and android phone correct which would mean that you have a google account. Why not transfer them to the Google Drive then you can access them on the PC and transfer them that way? Also since you probably use Google Photos to view pictures correct why not back them up through there the access form a PC?

If you are concerned about data limits then use WiFi.

Would also suggest that you use Copy and Paste to relocate the picture. then you can compare the pictures that are on the system and phone and delete the duplicates

I downloaded the software and ran it.
It found thousands of files (I scanned everything since I had pictures, videos and documents) and now I have another issue…
I selected all the files from 2 days ago since that’s when it happened and hit the restore button and restored everything onto a disk on key (it said that restoring to the same drive it was deleted from affects the quality so disk on key is the only outside drive I could think of)
I have now over 700 files on my disk on key but they got restored without an extension, so I don’t know what file is what!
I tried changing the extension on one of the files that got restores with a .PNG0 extension (changed to PNG) but it doesn’t open with picture viewer software or even paint.
Do you know how to proceed from here?

[Corinne]

When you copy something, it goes to your ‘clipboard.’

The clipboard is a tray for all intensive purposes, it has the capability of holding one set of data and one set only.

Say you cut your photos, they are on the clipboard, if you copied something else or restarted the computer, the information previously saved is deleted. (Think of it as putting old papers into the shredder to make way for new ones)

As the others have advised, this is what makes cut and paste so dangerous, if anything were to happen, the clipboard would not save your data and leaves you vulnerable to situations such as this.

One of my mistakes is that I didn’t check the clipboard immediately and my computer restarted since then so even if it was there, it’s lost and it’s not backed up.

[Pyro]

I’m not familiar with the Recuva software, but try looking at this to find more information.

Right click on the file (that ends in .png)

Select properties

Under general there is a section that says “Opens with:” please ensure that Photos is selected, if it is not then select “Change” and select the Photos app.
One of my mistakes is that I didn’t check the clipboard immediately and my computer restarted since then so even if it was there, it’s lost and it’s not backed up.

It’s one of those mistakes that is best to learn with things that aren’t mission critical, better photos than important bank statements or account information.

[Rustys]

What color was the dot (orange or green) next to the file name?
The color of the dot next to the file name indicates your chances for a successful recovery (green for excellent, orange for acceptable, and red for unlikely):

https://support.piriform.com/hc/en-us/articles/360048864871-Understanding-the-basic-Results-window-in-Recuva#h_01EGRNH7EWSERR17BP0MMNBKKK

there is also a how to use Recuva section that may assist.

https://support.piriform.com/hc/en-us/sections/360010251491-How-to-use-Recuva

Did all have the PNG0 or just a select few?

While in File Manger
Click on File
Select Change folders and search options

select the View tab

scroll down till you see and take the mark out.
Hide extensions of known file types

This should show the extensions for the files that are missing them.

Were the pictures on a removable memory card or on the phone?
If you have a card reader may be the files could be recovered to that.

They may have more ideas for you.

[Corinne]

What color was the dot (orange or green) next to the file name?

https://support.piriform.com/hc/en-us/articles/360048864871-Understanding-the-basic-Results-window-in-Recuva#h_01EGRNH7EWSERR17BP0MMNBKKK

there is also a how to use Recuva section that may assist.

https://support.piriform.com/hc/en-us/sections/360010251491-How-to-use-Recuva

Did all have the PNG0 or just a select few?

While in File Manger
Click on File
Select Change folders and search options

select the View tab

scroll down till you see and take the mark out.
Hide extensions of known file types

This should show the extensions for the files that are missing them.

Were the pictures on a removable memory card or on the phone?
If you have a card reader may be the files could be recovered to that.

They may have more ideas for you.

I read the Recuva website, I am also in contact with their support.
Out of the thousands of recovered files, only 7 of them had this .png0 extension, about 700 of them are just listed as “files” and have no extension. I don’t even know if those are actually pictures. I can’t remember the color of the dot.
I am attaching a screen shot of what I see when I click the property menu on one of those files, and also when I choose the “open with” option.
The pictures where on my phone, not on a SD card, and I search my phone as well and came up with nothing.

I tried everything, I think I am just going to give up
Thank you so much for taking the time and helping!

[Bastet]

Samsung should have an online backup feature, ensure you’ve check there If you haven’t already.