A subscriber asked me where all his media files are gone after updating to Android 4.2 or higher from a lower Android version.
It’s worth mentioning that if your device is not rooted, then doing a factory reset will completely wipe all data, include user files – like songs or pictures. But if your device is rooted, factory reset only kills the settings, but leaves the media folder intact. However, when upgrading to 4.2 and higher, the media files are nowhere to be seen, even though the device free memory indicates the files are sill there. It turns out starting from 4.2 and higher, Android introduced multiple user accounts for the system. And each user gets its own home folder. So inside the media folder, you can see subfolders with numeric names starting from 0. Since you normally have only one user on your device, that is yourself, you have only one folder data/media/0, and not just data/media as was before the update.But in the root of the media you can still see all your media files, intact from the u update! So just copy those files to the /0 folder, and you will get all your media files back. Just don’t forget this is for rooted devices only.