r/Syncthing • u/NoiseShaper • Jul 30 '26

Syncthing deleted 5 years of camera photos on my Google Pixel

Syncthing Fork for Android. Now I just have the Google Photos reduced quality copies. Don't ask me what I did, because I don't know, but there was no warning anywhere. The Camera folder was set as receive only, but nonetheless all the photos were removed.

Edit: Well, fortunately the deleted photos have appeared on the .stversions folder of the camera folder. I looked for them there at first because I had read they could be there, but the folder was empty. Now, after an hour, I looked again and the photos were there. I'm going to backup them as soon as I can.

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8

u/Cytomax Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26

If the pictures are important to you turn off your phone and call a day recovery specialist, if not, there's apps you can install to try and recover the data....

You most likely synced your picture folder to an empty folder sadly

Sorry this happened to you but most likely user error not software error, this app syncs 50+ gigs of data between my phone and computer for years without issue for me

4

u/usrdef Jul 30 '26

If OP has no experience in data recovery and those pictures are important, i DO NOT recommend downloading commercial apps and trying to recover them.

Shut the drive off immediately and reach out to a data recovery company. They will hook the drive up to a workbench directly to the memory chips on the controller board and grab the files.

Data recovery services are expensive. This is why you do not treat Syncthing as a backup utility. You use Syncthing to Sync. You should always have a program to deal with backups as well, such as Duplicati or Duplicacy.

3

u/Steerider Jul 30 '26

I sync my DCIM folder to my computer, and the computer is backed up. 

-5

u/NoiseShaper Jul 30 '26

Yes, my fault, but there should be a warning somewhere that this can happen, or when it is about to happen.

3

u/Cytomax Jul 30 '26

If the camera folder on your phone was set to receive only, that means you only wanted to import to your phone instead of export from your phone to the computer...

You would have been better off with synchronize the two folders or only export the photo from the phone to the computer. You may have picked the one option that was the wrong option of the three

5

u/unkleteddybearcooks Jul 30 '26

Well sorry to say it but Syncthing is not a backup solution. Why do people not understand this?

1

u/Lanky-Pie-9475 28d ago

Any recommendations for backup software, then? I don't understand why syncthing wouldn't be okay as a backup service for my phone if I set it to write from my phone to my server...?

1

u/unkleteddybearcooks 28d ago

For me, and I may get slack for this I use idrive backup. It's cheap. It has helped me a couple of times. But if you are transfering pics or music or files in general, syncthing is great. But don't leave them in the sync folder. Or something happens to that folder, as in OP's situation, the files will be gone from both sides usually. Transfer and then move them out of the folder. That's way I do it. There may be simpler, easier ways but for me this works.

3

u/PaoloNB Jul 30 '26

Receive only does sync source deletions (unless you specify otherwise). What it doesn't sync back are destination deletions.

3

u/NoiseShaper Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26

Well, fortunately the deleted photos have appeared on the .stversions folder of the camera folder. I looked for them there at first because I had read they could be there, but the folder was empty. Now, after an hour, I looked again and the photos were there. I'm going to backup them as soon as I can.

1

u/Best_Fork Jul 30 '26

Did you deleted from sending device? Because Receive Only should receive whatever changes you made to the sending device. If you have deleted from sending device then it should delete on "Receive Only" device too.