DCIM "pictures" disappeared?

badmoon8081 · #1 (**permalink**) 01-23-2011, 08:59 PM

Ok, so today I go into my gallery to show someone a photo I took and to my surprise, all my photos were gone!!! I mean, they weren't anywhere else on the card cause i also noticed I now had about 4gb of free space that I didn't have before. Nothing else, I mean "NOTHING" else is missing. The rest of my SD card including videos/music remains intact. Only the photos in my DCIM folder just disapeared. I can't even think of anything odd I did with my phone to cause this issue. Why would only a certain part of my SD card get deleted? I've lost all the photos I placed on my phone as well as all the photos I took with the camera. No, I don't have a backup. Can they be recovered some how?

**shane6374** · #2 (**permalink**) 01-23-2011, 09:51 PM

Angry girlfriend?

**skeegcpp** · #3 (**permalink**) 01-23-2011, 10:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shane6374

Angry girlfriend?

Appreciate the laff...haha, u never know right?

badmoon8081 · #4 (**permalink**) 01-23-2011, 10:26 PM

ok, ok. I just noticed a file called "lost.dir" on my sd card that had a ton of unreadable files. I took my sd card out of my phone and placed it in my pc. The photos are still misssing in the DCIM folder when I look using my PC. However, I can open the lost.dir files using "windows photo gallery" and "boo yea" they are my photos! So I copied the entire lost.dir folder to my PC for now. However, the files can't just be open normally on my pc. I have to select which program I want to use every time I click on a file cause it doesnt recognize it. Once I choose the photo gallery program the photos pop up like nothing ever happened to them. Do I now need to convert them all somehow to a photo format and then place them back on my SD card?

I also did some research and found that the lost.dir folder on your sd card is some type of temporary recycle bin mostly used with macs. This would make sense as to why the files are still on my phone but I can't access them on my phone and now have a tone of free space on my SD card.

**gTen** · #5 (**permalink**) 01-23-2011, 10:36 PM

This is what I use to recover if flash memory data is lost like pictures:

PC Inspector SMART RECOVERY

**flyers2114** · #6 (**permalink**) 01-23-2011, 10:40 PM

Recuva also works well....

badmoon8081 · #7 (**permalink**) 01-23-2011, 10:52 PM

Will those programs recover from the sd card alone or will they look on my pc? cause its not like my phone was connected to my pc when the files got deleted.

badmoon8081 · #8 (**permalink**) 01-23-2011, 11:16 PM

trying recuva right now. Also, I used an online image converter to try and convert some of the lost.dir files back into a readable image format. It worked just fine however there are a lot of photos and it would take forever to convert each single one. I know of programs that will do this process in bulk however they usually are payed programs.

**Johnny.Bravo** · #9 (**permalink**) 01-23-2011, 11:33 PM

If you have to tell it what program to use every time that means you don't have a program installed that recognizes whatever file type its is saved as. Try and change the extension on one of the pics to .jpg and see if your PC will recognize it.

badmoon8081 · #10 (**permalink**) 01-23-2011, 11:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny.Bravo

If you have to tell it what program to use every time that means you don't have a program installed that recognizes whatever file type its is saved as. Try and change the extension on one of the pics to .jpg and see if your PC will recognize it.

Great idea. However, how is that done on windows 7? I remember old window xp, ect. on my old pc's where it was as easy as right clicking and renaming. On Vista or 7 when you right click/rename it lets you rename the file but not change the extension. I've always been anoyed by that but never enough to actually try and find out how to do it.