How to Fix “Sorry this media file doesn’t exist on your SD card storage”

Method 1. Copy the Missing Media files to the Original WhatsApp Folder

All the media files like images and videos sent to you on your WhatsApp messenger are auto saved in Gallery under the WhatsApp folder by default. So, when ever you get the error message “Sorry, this media file doesn’t exist on your SD card/internal storage”, you should first check if you can find those files in the Gallery. If yes, it means that you might have moved them to a different folder than the default “WhatsApp” folder.

To correct it, find the missing images and videos in the gallery and then, copy and paste them into the WhatsApp folder. After you have done that, try again to open those media files in WhatsApp. You will be surprised to find that the problem has been resolved successfully.

Method 2. Reinstall App and Restore from Backup

Sometimes, it may happen that the file you are trying to access is either deleted or corrupted. In such cases, the WhatsApp application may show you the same error. WhatsApp backs up your messages, images and videos (optionally) on your Google Drive(on an Android smartphone) on a daily basis (frequency can be changed from the Settings).

If you have accidentally deleted a photo or a video and wish to recover it, all you need to do is first uninstall the app and then reinstall it. Once you install the app, you are provided with an option to restore data from previous backups. It will redownload all the WhatsApp media files saved in the cloud backups and save them back to your device.

This method is easy, quick, safe and guaranteed. However, it depends on cloud backups created previously. If you haven’t created backups of the images beforehand, you may not be able to recover them using this method.