Why did my photos disappear but storage stay full?

Hey everyone,
Something really weird happened to my Samsung Galaxy S22 this week.
The phone installed a software update overnight. The next day I opened Gallery and noticed almost all my photos were gone. I’d estimate 90% of them disappeared.
The strange part is that my storage is still showing around 85GB used, which is pretty much what it was before. That’s why I’m confused. If the photos were deleted, shouldn’t the storage usage drop?
Things I’ve already checked:
• Gallery Trash is empty
• Google Photos only has older backups
• Samsung Cloud doesn’t have recent backups
• Restarted phone several times
• Cleared Gallery cache and data
Most of the missing photos are family photos from the last year, so I’m getting pretty nervous.
Has anyone seen this happen after an update?

Android recovery

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Viewing 5 replies - 16 through 20 (of 20 total)

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Silas Vane

Participant

June 4, 2026 at 9:00 am

That’s encouraging.
Usually if image files still exist, the problem is software-related. Could be a media database issue after the update.

Kevin

Participant

June 4, 2026 at 8:58 am

Just tried that.
It actually found a lot more image files than Gallery is showing. Some are inside folders with weird names I’ve never seen before.

Nina Calder

Participant

June 4, 2026 at 8:57 am

Try a different file manager and search the entire storage for JPG files.
Samsung’s file manager doesn’t always make it easy to spot everything

Kevin

Participant

June 4, 2026 at 8:56 am

Yeah, I checked.
The DCIM folder is there, but the Camera folder only contains a handful of recent photos. Definitely not thousands of pictures.

Jace Elric

Participant

June 4, 2026 at 8:54 am

If storage usage hasn’t changed, I’d avoid assuming the photos are gone. It sounds more like the phone isn’t indexing them correctly.
Have you checked the DCIM folder with a file manager?

Viewing 5 replies - 16 through 20 (of 20 total)

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