[Q] Location of camera thumbnails - X 2014 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

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.

Related

Deleted pics remain cache!

Woops! I thought I had deleted some incriminating pictures from the gallery and with astro file manager BUT while looking through the SD card , I found old deleted pics!
How can I really delete pictures without them showing up in some cache directory?
I heard that in-order to do so you needed to email them to someone totally random. I can give you a totally random email address for this purpose if you like ;-)
I think there are Cache clearing apps on the market, last i remember anyways.
LOL...
Thats no good. It should delete without any apps...damn.
all it does is super compress them so they can be overwritten...
As you'll no doubt aware, most disks/SSDs, memory sticks, microSDs still contain most old "deleted" files, even if they aren't obvious, until where the data was has been overwritten by something else..
Couple of useful bits of code, TestDisk & PhotoRec can help recover lost stuff (or stuff someone thought they'd deleted (!!!!) )..
get them here..
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
NB Both these bits of software can completely screw machines/PCs/Laptops. whatever so BE CAREFULL!!!!!
I'm just about to try PhotoRec on the N1 and see what she finds... & will report...
My mate dodgy Rob found fascinating deleted SMS messages on his wife's (non-Android) 'phone.... the story of what he did about it is even funnier...
Cheers!
Lodger
Yup, Photorec can recover deleted stuff - .jpegs, .mov, .mpegs.. at least it did from my N1... - you have been warned ...
Running Ubuntu (Linux) & looking at the microSD card it reports 907 items on the microSD
Photorec recovered 3,724 items (!).. on the microSD and kindly copied them all to my Laptop..
If you really really need to feel confident something has gone then (I'm not an expert mind...) i understand you need to either..
a) (quick 'n dirty method ..) Fill up the apparently " empty" bit of the SD with garbage - eg some other .jpegs... or
b) To be really certain, re-format her: Several times... probably with several different file systems (FAT32, NTFS, EXT3...) , and don't chose the "quick" options...
Cheers!
Lodger
mine disappear after a soft reset
Damn.....not good. How am I suppose to receive rated r pics from girls and not have my gf find out!
iag48 said:
Damn.....not good. How am I suppose to receive rated r pics from girls and not have my gf find out!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
youre a horrible man
cymru said:
I heard that in-order to do so you needed to email them to someone totally random. I can give you a totally random email address for this purpose if you like ;-)
I think there are Cache clearing apps on the market, last i remember anyways.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I developed CacheMate for clearing cache. It would not work for this purpose. There are a few places where the images would be stored. When in the DCIM directory in /sdcard using Astro, make sure you are viewing hidden file and directories. You can do this by check the "Show Hidden Files" checkbox in Menu > Preferences > Look and Feel. You need to delete the pics from the .thumbnails directory too. If you really want, you can always cue them up in the gallery and delete them that way (long pressing on the pictures brings up the multiple select checkbox). Hope this helps a little.
Thanks for the help.
Re: get pics back from sd card
Actually, the easy way to recover deleted photos from sd card or hard disk is to use a photo software. You can google it and you will get many photo recovery softwares. But they are mostly not free. I have come across the same thing like you. Finally, I get my pics back with Yesterdata.
Kind Tips:
Don't save the recovered data on your memory card again. Find another place for it like on your computer or other external disk, for safety's sake.
iag48 said:
Woops! I thought I had deleted some incriminating pictures from the gallery and with astro file manager BUT while looking through the SD card , I found old deleted pics!
How can I really delete pictures without them showing up in some cache directory?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This should not happen as deleted pictures remains on the phone. But there are nexus photo recovery tool that helps to undelete photos on nexus phones. See this article: recover deleted photos on nexus phone
hope this helps.

[Q] DCIM thumbnails taking over storage - need a fix!

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!

firmware update made photos disappear from Album app

Updated my firmware today and just noticed that the Album app no longer shows the camera photos I took before the update. Or, to be more precise, it shows all those photos in the mashup of all images from all apps on the main Album screen (which I've always found insanely annoying), but when I select the "Camera" folder from the menu, the "Photos" subfolder shows only the couple of pics I took since the firmware update but none of the dozens I took before the update.
Anyone else have this problem?
The camera has to reset the storage folder setting from internal to SD. (at least it had to be done with me)
Yes, I managed to fix it in the end by deleting data from the Media Storage process/app then refreshing the search index in File Commander. Everything is back to normal now (but thanks Sony for the SNAFU)

Missing "Others" album in gallery.

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

Change the screenshots folder because google photos

Hey all.
Does anybody knows how to change the Screenshots folder to InternalStorage/pictures/screenshots (like all the other android devices) instead of InternalStorage/DCIM/Screenshots?
In the galaxy s10 it saves automatically in the DCIM folders and Google Photos detects it like has been taken with the Camera so it automatically backups all the screenshots like normal photos. This is very frustrating.
Does anybody knows a solution for this?
I am currently using an app named "PinSync" that automatically moves the screenshots for the storage i want but it has a Cons which is that it invalid the Smart screenshot menu, it doesn allow me to edit or share directly. It's only a mending when i want a true solution.
Thanks
Try putting a .nomedia file in the folder. Only drawback is that your gallery won't show them either.
I hate this. I used Pinsync and it was cool but I need Smart Scroll too much
so I just routinely purge Google Photos backup
sigh
I may try the .nomedia file for now since I usually just share screenshots immediately and purge later
vonDubenshire said:
I hate this. I used Pinsync and it was cool but I need Smart Scroll too much
so I just routinely purge Google Photos backup
sigh
I may try the .nomedia file for now since I usually just share screenshots immediately and purge later
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was using PinSync also, but now I dont even take screenshots anymore. I use the Smart Select edge panel and select whatever part of the screen to share (or the whole screen), and once I share it to an app and send it, I back out and the image is not saved.
Still, taking a screenshot and immediately pressing Share takes a lot less effort. I wish Samsung would just move their screenshots folder as it being in DCIM violates DCIM standards.
ryan770 said:
I was using PinSync also, but now I dont even take screenshots anymore. I use the Smart Select edge panel and select whatever part of the screen to share (or the whole screen), and once I share it to an app and send it, I back out and the image is not saved.
Still, taking a screenshot and immediately pressing Share takes a lot less effort. I wish Samsung would just move their screenshots folder as it being in DCMI violated DCMI standards.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You gave me an idea.
Can I use BXactions or something to trigger smart select? Then I don't need a screen shot. Might negate the time factor and eliminates the Google photos back up issue.
I literally just searched this forum to find out if there was an acceptable solution for this, but I realize that there is not. I will have to do some deep research on how to change the path where the screenshots are saved directly in the system.
It's stunning how a company like Samsung can manage the complexity of producing an amazing smartphone but yet is not competent enough properly configure a storage path for screen shots.

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