LOST.DIR
Eejones45
Enthusiast - Level 2

I have a Samsung S20 Ultra. I got it back in Dec and because of a camera issue, that no one knows anything about, Verizon sent me a new phone and I sent back the old one. I am still having camera issues in it is driving me nuts!!!

The first issue started a few months ago, when most of my pics and videos were turning into white screens with a gray exclamation point in the center. My pics and videos are saved onto a 512GB SD card  ... I have tried smaller ones too ... all brand new, but nothing helped. I ended up sending my phone to Samsung techs to try to fix it. They had it for over 3 weeks and sent it back saying it was fixed, but of course, it wasn't. It still wasn't working right. Oh, and during those 3 months, they told me the front screen was damaged ... it was not damaged when I sent it. They tried telling me I had to pay over $300 to fix that before they could go on with the other issue. I got out of paying for that, after an argument with them. 

When I got my phone back, I went back to Verizon to see what else I could do and  the guy said since I was still on warranty, I should be able to get my phone replaced with a new one. After spending a whole day on the phone with many different people at Verizon, who didn't understand my issue, I finally got an ok about getting the new phone sent to me. The day it finally arrived,  I had an event to go to and I was excited that I would finally have a working camera on my phone to use. Most of the night it seemed to be working, then all of a sudden I was seeing the white screen and exclamation point again. I was so mad. I have been looking all over for answers, but have found nothing yet. The other night I put in another brand new SD card in it and I went to a concert last night and took lots of pictures and videos again .... and they are set to be saved to the SD card. I didn't try looking at the pictures and videos until I got home. When I went to the camera folder, nothing was there. I couldn't find them anywhere.  I googled the issue and found out about the LOST.DIR folder and found that if I change the name and file type, I would be able to recover all of them ... over 125. I tried it on 2 of them. 1 I figured was a .jpg and the other a .mp4 ... they both worked. I tried that again a few more times, but no luck. I see from all the photos and videos  on my phone, they are .jpg or .mp4. How exactly would I know what the files in the LOST.DIR are? What caused them to go] to this folder? Is there a different or better way to recover these? What causes the white screen with the gray exclamation point error messages.  How do I fix this??? Please help me, I need answers!!! I got this phone last year for the camera, but I am not happy with all this trouble I'm having. A friend suggested to use EaseUS data recovery wizard, but it hasn't found the folder I want it to recover and I even copied the folder over to my laptop. 

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Re: LOST.DIR
vzw_customer_support
Customer Service Rep

We definitely want to make sure that you are able to use your device, Eejones45. If you set the photos to be saved to your internal storage, does anything change?

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Re: LOST.DIR
Eejones45
Enthusiast - Level 2

If I save to internal storage right now, they seem to work right now. On my last phone they didn't always work. 

The other day a friend showed me how to try to recover the files in that LOST.DIR folder. She had me change their file type to jpg or mp4. I got just over half of them to work, but the rest came up as errors. I noticed in that folder, that started out with less than 150 files in there, has almost 1000 files now. I didn't take that many yet and I moved the renamed files out of there. Are the other ones getting copied and renamed? I notice when I sort them by size, there are about 2 to 4 in a row with the exact same sizes. 

Tonight I went to a small local concert outside and took pics and videos and they did get saved to the SD card ... DCIM ... Camera folder. When I went to check them out, a lot of the pics and videos showed, but again there are a lot of white screens with the gray "!" again. WHY???? What is causing this??? 

Tomorrow I will be seeing my 5 yr old nephew for the first time since 2019 and I plan to take many pics and videos.  I don't want to lose them!!! Saturday I plan to take a lot of pics and videos again and I don't want to lose them either. I will try to save tomorrow's files on the internal storage to see what happens. I swear I never had this issue with any other cell phone camera before. I need answers!!! 

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Re: LOST.DIR
Eejones45
Enthusiast - Level 2

One more question. I try signing into this from the My Verizon app. But when I do, I can not get into these community boards. It says my name or password is wrong and when I use the forgot link I get a message saying my account doesn't exist. If I use the link from the internet to get on here,  I sign on with no problem.  Why is that happening? 

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Re: LOST.DIR
Eejones45
Enthusiast - Level 2

I just tried uploading my pictures and videos onto FB  and just found my album looks like this .... 

Screenshot_20210728-235139_Facebook.jpg

 what is going on???

 

This next photo is the white screen I keep getting ...

Screenshot_20210728-220853_Gallery.jpg

 This is driving me nuts!!!!

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Re: LOST.DIR
vzw_customer_support
Customer Service Rep

To clarify, you're wondering why you can't get to the community board from the My Verizon app?

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Re: LOST.DIR
Jell_Lee
Enthusiast - Level 1

I want to suspect a read/write issue with your device, which likely would require a motherboard swap... but just to be sure I suggest submitting an error report to Samsung Members app after reproducing some of those issues that you just described along with the snapshots shared on this thread.

Don't list out multiple issues, rather keep it simple and concise to one subject... otherwise the submission gets rejected since the ticket can't be categorized.

If it's determined that you need a hardware repair/swap then you'll likely be guided to visit the UBreakIFix or send in your device. 

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Re: LOST.DIR
vzw_customer_support
Customer Service Rep

Hello. Is this a new device but same SD Card? If so, was the SD Card formatted on the previous device? Please provide more details, so we may look into this for you. TaylorH_VZW

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