Is anybody else having problems with locally saved photos disappearing from their Pixel phone DESPITE every setting that would allow the phone to auto-manage file storage after the cloud backup being DISABLED???

I triple-checked G-Photos & G-Files; it definitely wasn't me who deleted or moved pictures that exist in the cloud but no longer on my phone. I do a manual monthly backup via usb. I also pay for the G-One 2 TB plan for it to also save my camera files.

The first time I became aware of this was in July, when I realized that my phone was missing all photos from the first half of June. Now, I'm missing some photos from the start of August. The respective gaps seem to be from a whole timeframe; not random singular pictures/videos here and there.

I went ahead and painstakingly downloaded the missing pictures from June back onto my phone; they showed up in the 'Restored' folder for a little while — before they disappeared from there AGAIN. WTF???????

I'm positively livid and mistrusting of my phone. No other apparent technical issues with the device itself whatsoever. I have no interest in using Gemini and limited it as much as I could; I have a hunch that this is somehow linked to the last update.

Is there any way I can fix this?!

Selfie or not

Is anyone else having issues with uploaded albums?
I uploaded a large album, the upload "seemed" successful.
The count shows about 600 rather than the correct 4000 or so.
It's been about 24 hours and only a partial amount appears in the album.
I can see the new photos in the Photo Section, but not in the album?
Any thoughts or guidance?
Should I delete and re-upload or will it populate in a few days?

I have certain Collections on my old phone based on my pets or a trip I took that don't appear on my new phone. I'm not having luck figuring out how to download those collections, so any advise would be great