Music and Pictures are there but Play Music and Pictures can't find them. - Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I have a stock Nexus 5 running OS 6.0.1. Yesterday I decided to use DS Cloud to backup my documents to my Synology Disk Station (NAS). For simplicity I just told it to sync the entire internal storage folder. This appears to have been a BAD mistake.
Everything looked like it was going well I saw the files from my phone appearing in the backup folder on my NAS. IT was almost done when suddenly my Blue tooth music stopped streaming. I looked and Google Play Music says there are no files on my device. Browsing from a USB connection all of the files are in my Music folder, the app just can't seem to find them.
I uninstalled DS Cloud, rebooted the phone, etc. but it's still broke. Basically all of the files appear to be intact but Google Play Music, and Photos can not find anything. I used VLC to browse and play the files so they really are there and undamaged.
I suspect that some "virtual" folders or symbolic links may have been corrupted. The reason I think this is because when I open VLC it shows 4 paths "Internal Memory", "Emulated", "Emulated", "Emulated". I seem to recall that since the N5 does not actually have a SD card slot, it had a fake SD Card folder, and I do seem to remember vaguely there were some emulated or legacy folders, I assume for backwards compatibility with older apps.
In any event I don't remember exactly what those "special" folders were or how to recreate them.
I suspect that if I can recreate them then Music and Picture will start working again.
If I do a factory reset on the phone will that recreate the proper folders and links?
Any ideas?

More research/info.
OK doing more research, now I am fairly certain that the issue is the missing folders. Apparently there's a symbolic link to /data/user/0/com.google.android.music/files/music that is needed for Play Music. Using adb shell I can see that there is a sdcard folder and it is linked to /storage/self/primary.
I think I am on the right track but can anyone tell me what links/folders I need to create? Can I even create them without root? Is there a utility that will fix it? Will a factory reset/wipe fix it?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Don't know how to recreate the missing folders, but I'm fairly sure a complete factory reset will fix this. Unfortunately, you will lose your data if you go this route.

RESOLVED - The Hard Way
Last night I tried Settings > Backup & Restore > Factory Reset. It said it was doing it for several minutes. I read that it could take a long time, so I left it in the office and watched a TV show. Came back an ouur later and it was rebooted but 100% intact??? Even though it said "Erasing..." for at least 30 minutes, nothing was gone.
I used the phone all day and except for the original problem it worked fine.
Tonight I tried again. Same process. This time after the wipe it came up like a new phone. Strange.
Anyhow it looks like everything is working. Copied a few songs and pictures and they worked.
I am in the process of restoring everything else which is probably going to take some time...

Related

[Q] Internal storage issue

So in preparation for backing up my internal storage for 4.2.1 in case it messes up or I do I was planning on copying everything from my internal device storage onto my computer. When going through the folders to see which ones were empty and I didn't need to copy I came across a folder that I had deleted the contents of earlier that day. Thinking I may have not actually deleted it I did it again.
Before copying the information over I went to check to make sure I had my backup of my nova launcher and noticed it wasn't there, I went to make another backup when I hit restore just to check that there was a back up and there was, and in the folder I had just looked on in my computer.
It was then I realized that the data my computer showed was very old files, things I had deleted months ago and some of the newer files were not being shown. I also noticed that old videos and pictures showed in my gallery app even though I knew I deleted them. I tried rebooting my tablet disconnecting it from my computer and reconnecting it and to no avail I also cleared the gallery app data and that seemed to fix the phantom videos and pictures in the app.
If anyone knows what is going on and how I can correct this issue that would be helpful as it does not seem to be an issue with my phone, Galaxy S3.
Thanks,
Frostbiter
You are using MTP connection to delete files/folder or just a file manager? I had similar issues when i was using my PC to delete stuff from the internal storage so you could try to use a file manager and see if it solves the issue.
I do delete stuff from es file manager, I rarely connect my tablet to my computer but when I do its using MTP and only to put files onto the internal storage or sd card.
The gallery thing happens to more people, we have a thread about a multi-GB cache file somewhere around here.
I have never had it show old files on my pc though. Have you tried rebooting your computer? (I feel a bit like the microsoft helpdesk for saying that... xD) Oh, and a registry cleaner might fix the issue. (for the pc, not the tab.)
I have had my sgs3 not showing up at all every once in a while (i use mtp a lot), but thats probably me being an idiot and killing the media storage process again. (I clear out all non-essential processes when gaming.).
Send from my Samsung Galaxy S3 using Tapatalk 2
I haven't tried rebooting my computer after plugging my tablet it, but I normally turn it off every night and as I said before I rarely plug my tablet it so I don't think it's a cache issues. I'll clean out my registry and maybe I'll uninstall the drivers for my tablet and let them reinstall too.
I was able to fix the issues by switching usb ports I plugged it into, it started showing the proper files when I plugged it into the first usb too. I took a picture while still connected to the first usb port and it showed up in internal storage in my computer so I don't think it's a usb problem.
Thanks for the info on the gallery issue, maybe this cache file and issues I'm having are connected some how.

Lost access to internal SD

I was just putting some more music on my OnePlus One (using MTP on my pc) when I got slightly irritated of all the junk folders on it. I decided I should clean some of them.
After I finished copying my music I noticed my phone couldn't access the internal SD anymore. I did a reboot, same thing. It kind of shows my SD now, but it's almost empty...
When I attach it to my pc, I see the same (almost none) files.
Anyone an idea what I did wrong, and how to fix?
Many thanks in advance.
Have you tried using fastboot to go back to stock? You will lose all of your data if you do this, so hopefully you have a backup on your pc. It seems like something happened with your partitions when you were deleting stuff.

[Resolved] Tablet rebooting randomly + file changes are reverted

Hi,
I've got an nVidia Shield Tablet (not rooted) with a 64GB card formatted as internal storage.
In the past two days or so I have noticed that the battery drains surprisingly fast, and have noticed that it is rebooting by itself, particularly when I'm trying to copy files over.
I'm leaving tonight for a couple of months so I was loading some useful documents and files but then realized that not only was it rebooting often, but none of the files were retained after the tablet reboots itself. I tried to delete some files and when it rebooted those files reappeared too. In file manager the storage space is now at a constant 38.08GB, if I add anything or delete anything when it reboots it just goes back to that 38.08GB mark and all the other file changes would have been lost. However, all the videos / documents / pictures / apps that I had on there still all work with no problems.
Oh and as I was playing with it just now Google Play Services just crashed, which was something that I had seen once before in the last couple of days as well.
Are there any diagnostics tests I can run? I tried mounting the SD card on my PC but since it's formatted as internal storage it could not be recognized by Windows so chkdsk does not work.
Any help would be appreciated! I really hope I can get this sorted out before I have to leave, since I was really counting on being able to use it to do some work. Thanks!
Edit: It seems to have fixed itself somehow... how odd.

OPPO F1f - Files detected but cannot be identified

As of several days ago my phone had this problem where it lists all of my files (e.g. music, videos) as "others" in the Storage setting. These files are accessible through the file manager, but Blackplayer, MX Player, and the stock gallery app cannot find and display them. In addition, these apps would sometimes force close for no obvious reason. The stock file manager also force closed at one point when I tried to access the files manually.
I tried doing a factory reset, which solved the problem at first. However, it returned after I tried to copy some files from my pc. Perhaps this is related?
My phone is unrooted running on the stock Color OS (F1fEX_11_171125).
Anyone here have the same problem? Ideas on how to repair this would be greatly appreciated!
klpex16 said:
As of several days ago my phone had this problem where it lists all of my files (e.g. music, videos) as "others" in the Storage setting. These files are accessible through the file manager, but Blackplayer, MX Player, and the stock gallery app cannot find and display them. In addition, these apps would sometimes force close for no obvious reason. The stock file manager also force closed at one point when I tried to access the files manually.
I tried doing a factory reset, which solved the problem at first. However, it returned after I tried to copy some files from my pc. Perhaps this is related?
My phone is unrooted running on the stock Color OS (F1fEX_11_171125).
Anyone here have the same problem? Ideas on how to repair this would be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Update: It seems that the problem happens when copying certain files through MTP, which in this case was an MKV video. One sign that the problem would occur was that the copy operation got stuck at near completion for a long time. Deleting the file returned the phone to normal.
Hoping that this could assist others who also encountered the same problem.
I was not able to see this bug on my phone, even after transferring lot of music files on SD card via MTP.
I guess that it's more probably related to big files (videos) on internal memory via MTP transfers. Thanks for the info, I hope it's not your flash or controller getting old...

Note 20 ultra Disappearing video, unrecognizable file type.. and more crazy things. HELP!

So last week the tornadoes hit my hometown in Western Kentucky. If you watch TV, then you have seen it. 75% of the town is wiped out.. I have (should I say had) amazing video from that along with the destruction, the fear, there aren't really words for it all.. several friends are having issues with insurance and looting. I'm hoping some of their belongings are on my videos so police can prosecute the looters. (Totally not cool to steal from people who just lost everything.) Here's my dilemma
A couple days prior I changed My settings in my phone to record straight to sd card so I didn't have to move files to it. It's a SDHC. 1024GB MICRO SD. It was formatted because I've been using it for a while... just moving photos over to it from my gallery, no problem. Later that day I went to show the video and when I opened gallery I watched every video I had disappear and be replaced with the grey box and white exclamation. Photos I took are fine... eventually it has now greyed out 95% of my video.
I've tried playing on pc, with vlc, media player, Samsung video player, "unrecognizable file format " They are mp4. Here's what I noticed interesting.
I checked the SD card and it says healthy, no bad sectors.
The time length on each video says 0.00
The size of the file is different from the size shown in my explorer on my phone, pc, and what's shown by a file explorer/recovery program
I changed my settings back to record to the internal memory but still nothing.
I'm guessing headers or something didn't transfer or or hell who knows
I've changed the file extension and name. Nothing
I've tried converting but the file type isn't recognized.
Help! Here's photos of what I see
The last time I saw something like this, there was an issue with the card, not the phone. That doesn't necessarily mean that's your issue. But it's highly probably.
I agree it's the most likely scenario. Best thing to do is take a few similar test videos and replicate what you did on a new or different microsd card and see how it turns out. If it works and retains it then it's the original card. If not then it's an issue with the phone/ hardware itself.
I actually ended up copying the card and put it back in... the recordings I made next were fine! No settings were changed, and it's only the one Day they messed up... could it be because there was zero cell signal in town? Nothing could upload to the cloud.... I know moving files or even recording straight to sd will leave file pieces and signal most definitely should not affect storage on a device. I did get this data off one video though. Any ideas?
I've never heard of a data connection messing with storage of a device unless that device is separate and not directly connected. Again, doesn't mean it can't happen. But the most likely problem is still the card. You said you copied everything back on, what is happening to new content?

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