Disappearing Gallery

[Guy Fawkes]

Has anyone else experienced a total loss of your Gallery on the S23U? I was recently on holiday taking loads of pictures and two days before my return flight, my entire Gallery disappeared. Prior to the trip, my Internal Storage was approx 240GB. Now I'm at 278GB (with all the pictures and videos I've been taking) and everything is now filed under System instead of Images/Videos. I feel like the files are still hidden in the phone. I checked the Recycle Bin, I tried the Clear Cache/Data. Unfortunately I did not have a chance to back up the newest photos, can anyone please advise? I called Samsung tech support and they didn't seem to have clue, as a matter of fact the "tech" told me the 260GB of used Internal Storage (at the time of the call) came from the pre-loaded default apps.... seriously. 

How can I access the System? See picture below.

If anyone can better explain what might have happened or better yet, a possible fix, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I'm open to trying proven Data Recovery software.

Thanks In Advance...

[Blessed4life]

Hi, tap on the first icon with the (I) in the circle beside the apps & that should ask you to give permission to your (my files) app, hopefully you should find them after that.

[BandOfBrothers]

That's certainly a conundrum @Guy Fawkes 

Maybe try Samsung Smartswitch if you haven't already to see if that helps.

If nkt a Samsung Service Centre maybe able to help with having hands on.

I wish you all the best.

[mcdelijani]

This exact thing just happened to my s23 ultra.

I'm so furious. I don't have good internet connnection so I could never use cloud backup.

95% of all my gallery is gone. Wth?!!

[Guy Fawkes]

This really sucks!!! Have you had any success in retrieving the data? My next attempt is to uninstall the Gallery update. 

[SCB23]

Me too using s23 🤬

[SPace124]

This is f'in horrible. Happened twice to me and I kept thinking somebody has hacked my phone.

FIX IT ASAP SAMSUNG

[katie1974]

Has anybody had any success with this ? Its just happened to me also. Just bought the phone , s23 couple of days ago and now I've lost so many photos.

[SINIUS]

Its happening to my S23 Ultra aswell 😞

[bernib00]

ok, i bought the phone in June, took pics & videos for a while. i had about 60-70 pics go away. basically the first pics up to a certain date. early august i think. i wrote it off as an anomaly. used the phone since then, took a lot of pics & videos. yesterday about 2000 pics & videos went away. from the last episode to the 14th, all went away. yes, they are on a drive and it's not the end of the world. but, i love the phone and it needs to work. i was on (2) chat sessions with Samsung support. they accessed my phone went all through. my system files are 56g & apps a little over 19g. like i said, around 2000 pics at 7.5g. could they have moved some where in my system folder, probably. but, the Samsung techs had not heard anything about this problem, or so they have been instructed to say. I'm PO'd. My 2 hours was wasted and i'm typing this. they know they have a problem and are not sharing. to apple like for me. they asked about upgrades and the software has updated twice, 9/4 & 9/7. neither date really coincides with the issue. If the pics are in the system files, the techs would have surely found, right? as a matter of fact, outside the system files there is barely a gig stored on the phone. it's less than (4) months and like I said, I love the phone but how do i trust it now. i have a regular S23 which is my primary phone and I bought this phone for the camera of course. takes great pics and it's awesome. but, something is wrong with the OS and I want it fixed. I'll stop but that's my 2 cents.