What is causing some photos and videos to get replaced by 0 byte files?

Question

Some of my photos or videos get replaced by 0 byte files every now and then, which is quite infuriating. Even more confusingly, sometimes later they do reappear. I don't want this question to be too specific to my case, so I'm instead asking:

How I can determine the culprit?

Some more details: My Huawei P20lite is rooted (thus more methods available for diagnostics) and I'm running Syncthing in order to synchronize my media. On the plus side this means thanks to Syncthing's simple file versioning there's a chance the original file is still available in .stversions, on the negative side it could be the very culprit.

How to identify the app/process which re-mounts partitions R/W, creates files and changes file permissions? — Irfan Latif, Jan 08 '22 at 08:56
@IrfanLatif Great thanks! That sounds like the answer to my question, though it turns out to be more complex than I hoped for — Tobias Kienzler, Jan 08 '22 at 09:00
I've sometimes seen this when an SD card reached it's EOL (usually in Samsung devices which seem to eat them for breakfast). In that case, even files you deleted showed up after the next reboot… — Izzy, Jan 08 '22 at 16:15
@Izzy Thanks, the confusing thing is those files sometimes later re-appear unbroken. The SD card is almost brand new, but I guess there's always a chance of bad luck, so I'll check it more thoroughly — Tobias Kienzler, Jan 23 '22 at 09:43
That matches what I've seen on those Samsung devices (more than once, different Sammies). For the external card, you could use a card reader and check them on a Linux machine. Plenty of guides on the net for that, e.g. this one. — Izzy, Jan 23 '22 at 13:20
@Izzy I've got a Huawei one, but the SD card is from Samsung IIRC. I'll check it more thoroughly - maybe I can also check the internal memory via TWRP — Tobias Kienzler, Jan 24 '22 at 07:31
(Side note from comments elsewhere, Syncthing should not to be to blame, but I'll have to check everything more thoroughly) — Tobias Kienzler, Jan 24 '22 at 07:33
Not saying it must be the very same issue. Just reminds me of it. And checking cannot hurt – even if just to rule out that possibility. — Izzy, Jan 24 '22 at 08:01

What is causing some photos and videos to get replaced by 0 byte files?

0 Answers0

Linked