Why are my pictures gone from my onedrive folders and no longer on my PC or backup USB?

Question

onedrive has deleted my photos from a backup usb. all my old family photos are gone except for a few that onedrive made into collages. i have uninstalled onedrive from my pc but am heartbroken to lose those photos. they can NEVER be replaced as all of the people in them are dead. and how the hell did onedrive take all my photos from my android phone??? this is an invasion of my privacy!!!

Answer 1

Hi, Paula Black

Thanks for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A forum.

I’m really sorry you’re dealing with this, losing irreplaceable family photos is brutal. What usually happened in cases like this is the photos were inside a folder OneDrive was syncing (sometimes even if that folder was redirected to an external drive), so a sync, “free up space,” or delete action got mirrored across devices.

Here are some suggestions you can try:

First check OneDrive on the web: go to OneDrive > Recycle bin and restore anything you see, because deleted synced items often sit there for recovery.

If you have Microsoft 365, use “Restore your OneDrive” to roll everything back (up to the last 30 days), which can undo a mass delete/overwrite event.

On your PC, look in File Explorer for cloud icons next to files or folders, that means they are “online-only” (not actually gone), and opening them or marking “Always keep on this device” pulls them back locally.

For the USB, stop using it right now, copying new files can overwrite recoverable photo data, then try a reputable file recovery tool or a local recovery shop. This sometimes works if the drive has not been used much since.

On Android, OneDrive only uploads photos if Camera backup (or Samsung Gallery sync) was enabled, it’s a setting you can turn off, and Samsung Gallery linking can also cause deletes to sync both ways.

Hope this helps. Feel free to get back if you need further assistance.

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