Accidentally deleted my pictures in my collection.media folder

[Serkan]

I am using ankidroid and made the mistake to accidentally delete my picture
folder; collection.media using my gallery application f-stop, while
cleaning other pictures. I tried to sync my account in order to get my
missing pictures back, but because I had already synced my progress
afterwards it presumably deleted the media on the web server, too.
I tried to override with an earlier backup, both with ankidroid and the
desktop version. sadly, all it does is change my statistics and progress to
that point in time. I've also tried to download the shared decks that I
have been using in order to get the missing pictures that way. however
importing the same deck again only updates the notes and doesn't provide
the missing pictures of that deck. I have only used shared decks, but
manually searching and downloading over 15k pictures seems impossible.
I have tried to add some pictures of this issue, and if you require any
further information I will try to assist as much as possible. I hope you
can help me remedy this issue as soon as possible.

[Mike Hardy]

Hi there!

This sounds like a tough one to fix. The best I can think of is to make
sure you have a good backup of your collection with timing, then delete
the affected decks, synchronize that full deck deletion out to ankiweb,
re-add the shared decks and synchronize again (this should get the media
downloaded?) then restore your backup.

I will be the first to say I have no idea if this will work because I'm
not sure if the media will then have the same filenames and be
referenced correctly, or whether the filenames will be altered during
import.

A second best would be to restore from some sort of phone or computer
backup, but you have to be pretty obsessive about backups to actually
have valid phone backups so that's an even longer shot

It is possible to raise a ticket with the main Anki site and ask for a
restore - I believe I've heard that work for people before.

Good luck -
-Mike

[Martin]

Look for help at https://anki.tenderapp.com/ - I had the same issue not long ago, and they have been very helpful to restore the media collection