M12 All files inaccessible/corrupted and gone

[Bloodphinix]

Hello everybody,

after a daytrip my wife was scrolling her gallery. All of the sudden she said somethings wrong and it showed "no pictures or videos". Her entire gallery was empty. Confused i hooked up the phone to my pc checking things out. It seems that literally every media folder is empty. Overall there is 28.3G free from 51,3G so clearly the space isn't just suddenly not used up anymore. I checked through some forums and tried a few methods to see or get her pictures/songs/videos back. She isn't used to creating backups so that wasn't a possibility.

I've tried:

• removing/renaming .nomedia files
• clearing data and cache of the gallery app
• hooking it up to another device and searching for the files (all relevant folders show 0kb weirdly enough) (hidden folders have been checked. Nothing.)
• using some recovery apps to try to get the things back

all to no avail. I'm trying to calm her down because just the photos of today were very valuable in our ldr to keep. Sadly I don't see a way for me to fix it. The files clearly are still there tho because while "Images/Videos/etc." is all 0b in my Files others analysed with 23gb full.(not the usual)

Any idea or help what i could do to restore my wifes images?
Very thankful for any suggestion!

[Bloodphinix]

Small addition: apps, notes aswell as contacts are all fine. Messages haven't been touched either. It's just all the media(from jpgs to mp4s to m4as to pdfs everything) that basically is gone.

[nowdeleted]

Was you phone connected to a Google account. As your pictures could be backed up, but you will need a pc or laptop to view them.

[Bloodphinix]

Yes, it's entirely empty. No recent pictures that had been put into it are even there. 

[Bloodphinix]

While it was linked to a google account no google photos app was installed so there hasn't been any backup made for the pictures there.

[Bloodphinix]

 we've tested a few things:

• We were able to still take pictures and use them normally in the gallery(that's also why theres something in the recycling bin now. There wasnt anything previously) These came from when she used samsung switch from her very old phone.
• We were able to recover some very old audios and documents. Sadly it's not even a fraction of what she used to have.
• We also still were able to create and delete folders in my files so no access was lost there it seems.