Original Poster

Apr 24, 2018

Photos disappeared after moving to another device folder

So, i've been on holiday and organizing my photos in two different device folders, (i'm using a pixel 2) which were also set to sync&backup. However i noticed over 200 pictures are missing for no reason. They're not in trash, i can't see them using the web browser, or a file manager. I'm not using a 3rd party app so it's not an answer either.

I managed to find 20-30 of them from get.google.com/archive because they were synced before i left my hotel and lose wifi, but the rest were taken when i had no internet and disappered before i was online again. Things get stranger because 1 of 5 photos i took within a few seconds is visible but the others (and 90% of them) are gone. It's also strange that some of the photos appeared as they were taken on April 21 or 22 even though I took them today (23) (this was fixed after a few minutes by itself).

It's very frustrating to lose almost all the photos you took after walking more than 7 hours, especially when your reason to buy a Pixel 2 is not carrying a dslr camera all the time.

I've seen similar posts from 2017 and quite a lot from last week, hope this will be fixed in a way that i can get my photos back.

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Last edited Jan 20, 2019

All Replies (57)

Amanda - Community Specialist

Apr 24, 2018

Hello Gokhun,

Thanks for posting in the Google Photos Help Forum.

I understand how important the photos are for you and I'll try my best to help. It can be possible that the photos weren't uploaded successfully to Google Photos (cloud) and also make sure you're logged in to Google Photos with the same Google Account that you used during the backup. Photos/videos that are not synced or backed up, will still appear in Google Photos and will have this icon

(which means not synced/backed up) or some photos/videos will also show up with the two arrows in a circle mean backup is in progress.

Once the upload is complete there will be no icon on any photos/videos. Often, many of us misinterpret that they are all backed up because the photos/videos show up in Google Photos and we over see the icons on each photo/video. If the photos/videos weren't backed up they cannot be deleted from the Google Photos library nor Trash.

In case, you are uploading a large amount of data (photos/videos), please know that it might take 24-48 hours for the photos and videos to sync across all devices. Please ensure to have 'Backup & sync' enabled on the Google Photos settings while you're backing up your photos and videos. To check is the content is backed up, login in to photos.google.com to checked for your backed up photos and videos.

However, if you're sure they were backed up, I recommend you looking for your video here:

If a photo/s is deleted from Google Photos, it would go to Trash/Bin for the next 60 days (after deletion). Unfortunately, if the photos aren't found in Trash or deleted from Trash, I'm afraid, you might not find them else where to recover them because Trash is the last resort to retrieve your lost/deleted photos.

Meanwhile, also try giving the below steps a try once again in a sequence to help resolve the issue:

Close the Google Photos app and re-launch it.
Sign out and sign back in to Google Photos with the same Google Account.
Clear App data:

Open your device's Settings app (not the Google Settings app).
Touch Apps.
Select Google Photos in the list.
Touch Clear data.

Update the Google Photos app on your Android phone:

Visit the Google Play Store.
Open Google Photos.
Touch on Update.

Let me know how it goes.

Best,

Amanda

Last edited Sep 7, 2018

Girl Wondering

Aug 26, 2019

Has google even responded to this?? I have pixel 3 that is about 4 month old. Amd this has jist happened to me. I moved photos from folder a to folder b, it moved because i can seen the photos in folder b. Then a few mins later the photos are no longer in folder b! Has anybody recovered their photos??

Joel Wong

Sep 2, 2019

same here,I'm using a xiaomi mi a1 and everytime I move some pictures into another folder,it all just goes missing after a while and I can't find it anywhere possible

SabrinaQ

Sep 11, 2019

I have a Pixel 3. I do not Back up and Sync my photos. I do like to organize photos into device folders. Today I was doing research gathering reference photos from the internet. I made various device folders to Move the downloaded photos into.

Now, 6 hours later, the folders are gone. The photos are gone. I can't believe 3 hours of work is just gone. In a file manager, I can see the device folders, but they're all empty.

I'm just in disbelief. Can't really believe that these phones can possibly be plagued by so many bugs.

User 11653430949999063447

Oct 12, 2019

I'm using BlackBerry Priv.

I just came back from a europe trip in which I visited 8 countries and today I found out that I lost my pictures from the folders of Geneva and Florence. This is my last Android phone and I'm never buying another Android again. We have no idea what these software giant companies are doing with our data. They have full capability to move our data without our knowledge. I'm not gonna switch to Apple either cause I can't live my life with iPhone's complications. I got a DSLR so that's what I'm gonna use from now on and I would only use this phone for calls and messages.

My anger level is undescrible. I hate Google now

😡😡😡

Amit Kumar Gupta

Nov 2, 2019

I has more than 2000 photos from my holiday of last 10 days. I created few separate folders inside "Camera" folder itself and moved all my photos in these folders. For next two days I was able to see these photos from Gallery as well as in File Manager. But suddenly without doing anything, all photos got disappeared. What I can see now are all blank folders without any photos. I checked the Recycle Bin and those photos are not there (obviously because they were not deleted). I did not take any backup on Google otherwise why would I have written this post. I am heart broken. Pls help if any one got the solution.

Julie Fundenberger

Nov 13, 2019

HTC u11 here and it's happening to me to. It has happened several times before but I only pinpointed why today.

Anything I move out of my download folder into a folder I create disappears. It is there for a while so I think everything worked correctly. Then I come back a few hours or a day later and the files that moved from the download folder are gone.

So far, pictures i took with the camera are still in the new folders, but reading this, I'm worried they won't be next time I open things up.

I do not sync/backup at all.

Jack Woods 4282

Dec 3, 2019

Nokia 7.1 here, sorted a bunch of downloaded images by their theme and now they're all gone from my device.

And this post has been up for over an year and still no proper response from google? guess ill switch to ios or something next.

Soda Smurf

Dec 29, 2019

We could avoid issues like this if Google stopped trying to own every little part of our lives and EVERY photo file on our device saves to our device ALONE instead of going through Google.

Charles Fyler

Jan 8, 2020

I just had the same issue on a Nexus 6P. Moved over 100 files, irreplaceable photos and videos and all are gone. This is the first time Google has let me down that I'm aware of, but it's a pretty big hit.

J Jelatis

Jan 10, 2020

Same issue here, Galaxy S10; Moved photos & videos from Internal Storage to SD Card, roughly 75% of the files are now either corrupt (a small amount of them) or missing entirely (the important ones).

Austin Burk (Sudomemo)

Jan 30, 2020

I know the reason why this is happening, and I've filed a bug report here:

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/148573846

Android's DownloadManager has a function called cleanOrphans; files that have passed through the Downloads folder and then get moved to a different folder get seen as orphaned files by DownloadManager, which deletes them when the device enters a doze mode idle maintenance window.

01-30 04:27:37.837  1043  9368 D vold    : idle maintenance started
01-30 04:27:37.880  1043  9368 D vold    : Starting trim of /data
01-30 04:27:38.394  1043  9368 I vold    : Trimmed 0 bytes on /data in 513ms
01-30 04:27:38.394  1043  9368 D vold    : Starting trim of none
01-30 04:27:38.394  1043  9368 W vold    : Failed to open none: No such file or directory
01-30 04:27:38.394  1043  9368 D vold    : Starting trim of /persist
01-30 04:27:38.660  1043  9368 I vold    : Trimmed 19324928 bytes on /persist in 265ms
01-30 04:27:38.660  1043  9368 D vold    : Starting trim of /mnt/vendor/persist
01-30 04:27:38.660  1043  9368 W vold    : Failed to open /mnt/vendor/persist: Permission denied
01-30 04:27:38.662  1043  9368 D vold    : idle maintenance completed
01-30 04:27:38.794  2151  2182 I chatty  : uid=1000(system) Binder:2151_1 expire 12 lines
01-30 04:27:40.302  1366  1550 E storaged: getDiskStats failed with result NOT_SUPPORTED and size 0
01-30 04:27:41.095 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Removed 0 stale downloads
01-30 04:27:41.135  2151  3741 I chatty  : uid=1000(system) Binder:2151_10 expire 10 lines
01-30 04:27:41.189  2151  2505 I chatty  : uid=1000(system) NetworkWatchlis expire 2 lines
01-30 04:27:41.219  2151  2213 I chatty  : uid=1000(system) ActivityManager expire 11 lines
01-30 04:27:42.045 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Missing /storage/emulated/0/Download/animation0-4.gif, deleting 4117
01-30 04:27:42.997 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Missing /storage/emulated/0/Download/139748760132.jpg, deleting 4118
01-30 04:27:43.119 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Missing /storage/emulated/0/Download/animation0-5.gif, deleting 4119
01-30 04:27:43.345 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Missing /storage/emulated/0/Download/139105418232.jpg, deleting 4120
01-30 04:27:43.480 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Missing /storage/emulated/0/Download/136605285441.jpg, deleting 4121
01-30 04:27:43.578 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Missing /storage/emulated/0/Download/8ed6f01f-9ce7-4972-a058-c5bae4f92aed.jpg, deleting 4122
01-30 04:27:43.666 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Missing /storage/emulated/0/Download/1503164927.png, deleting 4123
01-30 04:27:43.872 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Missing /storage/emulated/0/Download/image0-23.jpg, deleting 4124
01-30 04:27:43.964 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Missing /storage/emulated/0/Download/image-1.jpg, deleting 4125
01-30 04:27:44.105 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Missing /storage/emulated/0/Download/image-2.jpg, deleting 4126
01-30 04:27:44.182 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Missing /storage/emulated/0/Download/image-1.png, deleting 4127
01-30 04:27:44.278 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Missing /storage/emulated/0/Download/image-3.jpg, deleting 4128
01-30 04:27:44.356 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Missing /storage/emulated/0/Download/image-4.jpg, deleting 4129
01-30 04:27:44.450 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Missing /storage/emulated/0/Download/image-5.jpg, deleting 4130
01-30 04:27:44.613 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Missing /storage/emulated/0/Download/8rQ9X50.jpg, deleting 4131
01-30 04:27:44.742 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Missing /storage/emulated/0/Download/ol5me5qagea99.png, deleting 4132
01-30 04:27:44.845 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Missing /storage/emulated/0/Download/1uidureiv1a87.jpg, deleting 4133
01-30 04:27:44.933 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Missing /storage/emulated/0/Download/nrqv5hE.jpg, deleting 4134
01-30 04:27:45.060 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Found 879 files in database
01-30 04:27:45.060 17722 17477 D DownloadManager: Found 5 files on disk
01-30 04:27:59.572  2151  3738 I chatty  : uid=1000(system) Binder:2151_E expire 15 lines
01-30 04:27:59.572  2151  2620 I chatty  : uid=1000(system) Binder:2151_3 expire 10 lines
01-30 04:27:59.573  2151  4367 I chatty  : uid=1000(system) Binder:2151_1B expire 6 lines
01-30 04:27:59.573  2151  3379 I chatty  : uid=1000(system) Binder:2151_A expire 10 lines
01-30 04:27:59.576  2151  4358 I chatty  : uid=1000(system) Binder:2151_13 expire 12 lines
```

Even though the files have been moved out of the folder, it's still able to find them to delete them, perhaps it's storing file inode # and looking it up by them.

In conclusion, this is a bug with DownloadManager, not with Google Photos.

Last edited Jan 30, 2020

Alex Snow

Feb 24, 2020

Two years after this post was originally made and I just had a similar problem. Spent hours trying to find a handful of pictures to draw, moved them to a different folder to organize them, and POOF. They vanished. I've been using this folder for a couple of months now and never had any issues until now. I don't understand how this fatal bug is still persisting.