Top 10 Solutions to Photos on SD Card Gone – Ultimate Guide [MiniTool Tips]

My Photos on SD Card Gone

Are pictures missing from your Android smartphone and you can’t figure out why? Are pictures deleting themselves from SD card? Have photos gone from your Android phone for no reason?

Photos on SD card gone seldom happens but can occur on any type of Android phone. This issue is extremely annoying, especially if you’re losing significant photos. A user on Androidcentral expressed his dismay by saying these:

"Something weird just happened. When waking my phone up I went into the stock camera app and noticed that after taking one picture earlier, ALL OTHER PICTURES PREVIOUSLY TAKEN and stored on the SD CARD are not there! Please tell me someone here has some idea on what happened and how I can get the pictures back. Other items on the SD CARD are still there."

After reading the message above, we know he is unable to view the previously taken photos. In fact, the issue "photos disappeared from SD card" can be classified into two cases. If you are careful enough, you may have noticed this. The first one is that you are unable to view the photos from Gallery App, thinking all photos on SD card are gone. But if you have a File Explorer on the Android phone, by opening it you will find all photos are there. The second case is that you are unable to see photos on SD card neither from Gallery App nor from File Explorer. By connecting the SD card to computer, you know these photos are still there according to its properties but you cannot access the SD card.

In this post, we will discuss the possible reasons as well as corresponding solutions to photos on SD card gone to help users get out of this trouble.

10 Solutions to Photos Disappeared from SD Card

Here are some things you can do to stop your pictures and media from disappearing from micro SD card.

Case 1: If photos on SD card are showing in root dictionary but won't display by Gallery App, try solution 1-6:

Solution 1: Reboot

Reboot your device anyway, for this should be the first consideration no matter what issue the SD card encounters. Then check your pictures after restarting your phone and see if they come out by themselves. Sometimes the simplest step can help solve an issue.

Solution 2: Re-insert SD Card

Unmount the SD card and then take it out of the phone, after a while, re-insert the memory card, remount the storage card on your phone and check your photos to see if they read correctly now.

You can read more about how to mount an SD card .

If these suggestions so far have not brought your pictures back from the abyss then please keep reading.

Solution3: Delete the Nomedia File

Nomedia (.nomedia) file tells Android to hide media files such as Images, Videos, Audios from being listed in all kinds of Gallery Apps. It is a hidden file and is invisible to most build-in File Explorers. However, some third-party explorers can manage it. Besides, by checking "Show hidden files, folders and drives" in Windows Folder Options, you can check whether there is such a file leading to all photos in SD card gone. You must delete the nomedia file to make the photos possible to view by Gallery Apps on Android smartphones.

Solution 4: Replace the Default Gallery App

In rear cases, due to software bugs, the Gallery application can have a problem displaying all the pictures stored in internal storage and memory card of Android phone. To exclude this reason, you can try downloading another Gallery App to have a check. If this is the case, you may use the new App instead.

Solution 5: Uninstall Applications that May Lead to This Issue

This issue is caused by software conflict. Please think back carefully, did you install a new application on your phone recently and then photos on SD card gone? If YES, try removing that application to see if media go back, because that application may have conflict with the Gallery App. Please make sure you have uninstalled the application thoroughly.

Solution 6: Restore Factory Settings

If your Android smartphone keeps responding data loss on SD card, then what you can do is to restore your Android phone to factory settings. As we have said in the beginning that this issue can be very frustrating and rather tough to solve, you will have to do the resetting if none of these suggestions is useful. This sounds dangerous, for all data stored on the internal storage after you got the phone will be erased. Please make a backup of your Contacts, SMS and other important information before you carry out this operation.

This post tells you how to reset to factory settings .

"Sometimes photos in Android keep deleting themselves and are unable to view in photo viewer. These solutions may help to get across this issue." Click to Tweet

Case 2: If photos on SD card neither show in root dictionary nor display themselvesby Gallery App, try solution 7-10:

Solution 7: Reboot

Please repeat Solution 1 mentioned in the former part.

Solution 8: Re-insert SD Card

Please repeat Solution 2 mentioned in the above content.

Solution 9: Do SD Card Recovery

If WAY 1 & WAY 2 are proved to be useless, you will need to recover data on the SD card, because it is likely that the SD card is damaged or corrupted. Reformatting the SD card should be a solution but getting pictures back is more important.

Option A: Use MiniTool Power Data Recovery for SD Recovery

Most Android smartphone users choose to save their photos and movies taken by the phone camera on a micro SD card instead of the internal storage to keep their phones running smoothly. Thus, if photos in the phone were lost due to memory card corruption or other unknown reasons, you still have big chance to recover the lost photos by using professional data recovery program.

There are a number of data recovery software options available, aiming to do the same thing. Some are free, some are quite expensive; some work on certain situations, some can deal with all aspects; some are limited to certain file formats, while some cover the entirety. Generally speaking, the reputable ones should be more reliable and won't do any further damage to the data on your micro SD card. MiniTool Power Data Recovery is the leading SD card recovery software to recover photos and other media files from mobile phone micro SD card, including micro SD, micro SDHC, and micro SDXC.

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Step 1 - Take the SD card out of the phone

First, unmount and eject the micro SD card from the phone. Please turn off the phone to prevent possible data loss when you take out the micro SD card.

Step 2 - Connect the SD card to your computer

For camera SD card (full SD), you can directly insert it to your computer via the build-in card reader on computer. But for phone SD card (micro SD), it is better you have a SD card reader or micro SD card adapter. Insert the micro SD card to your SD card reader and connect the card reader to your computer via USB port. After you connect SD card to your computer, a new drive letter should appear under "My Computer" in Windows.

Step 3 - Run MiniTool Power Data Recovery to perform SD recovery

a) Install MiniTool Power Data Recovery (here take the Win version for example) to your computer by following the installation guide, and then launch this program. On the main interface of MiniTool Power Data Recovery, you may choose " Removable Disk Drive " module to take your chance as it can recover pictures from SD card . Here select the SD card partition and click “ Scan ”.

2) The scanning time is closely related to the amount of data in SD card. Also, if the SD card is damaged, the scanning time will be longer. Just wait patiently.

3) When the scan completes, MiniTool Power Data Recovery will list all the recoverable files for your preview. You may then select the pictures you need and click " Save " to store all photos you to a safe location. The selected location is expected to be another safe location instead of the SD card itself to avoid data overwriting .

Please Note that the Trial Edition does not support the recovery process. You need to get a license to continue.

4) Finally, Check the recovered files to see whether they are in sound condition. If YES, then you may format this SD card and transfer the recovered photos to it before putting it back to your Android phone.

Option B: Perform SD Recovery by Cloud Backup

Today almost all brands of mobile phones offer this feature to backup smartphones with one account, such as Google Sync, Microsoft Onedrive, Samsung Cloud, etc…If you had enabled photo backup before photos on SD card got lost, you can try restoring the backup photos and the others to this SD card after SD formatting.

Solution 10: Replace Micro SD Card

Needless to say, the last solution is to replace the SD card if it has been physically damaged. Insert the new card to your phone and mount it. Start storing pictures with the new Micro SD card and take good care of it.

"Photos disappeared from SD card in Android can be caused by SD card corruption or SD card damage. In these cases, recovering SD card should be the first consideration." Click to Tweet

Tips for Keeping SD Cards Healthy

SD cards are not easily to get damaged. In theory, each SD card can be rewritten for about one hundred thousand times. But once an SD card gets damaged without symptoms, data loss can be heart-wrenching. There are some precautions you can take to avoid a lot of headaches.

• Never remove the card while data is being transferred in PC.
• Safely eject the SD card from PC when each operation is finished.
• Unmount SD card and then turn off the smartphone before removing the storage card.
• Perform regular backup. This can help restore data once photos on SD card are gone. Besides, regular backup plays an important role in dealing with phone malfunctions, phone lost, phone stolen, or phone damage. That way you won’t lose all of your important media unexpectedly.
• Use Power Data Recovery to deal with SD card data loss issues, such as recover deleted files from SD card and recover formatted SD card .

Final Words

Now we have covered through missing pictures from SD card in two aspects, with some suggestions to fix this issue. In the daily use of micro SD card in Android phone, we should pay more attention to keep it in sound condition. After all, no one wants to get interrupted by pictures deleting themselves from SD card while enjoying playing with mobile phones.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to leave us a comment below. For any questions towards MiniTool software, send an email to [email protected] .