I accidentally removed a MicroSD card from an Android device running Android 12 while it was being ejected. This happened because it took longer than usual (less than a few seconds), and I pulled it out without looking at the notification. Now, when I insert the MicroSD card into any Android device, it tells me to format it to use it, as a problem has occurred. It also gives me the option to format it and extend the internal storage. The third option is to skip both and do it later, which keeps the SD card unreadable by the system. The MicroSD card contains a lot of data that’s important to me, and unfortunately, I had no backup, as I always considered my MicroSD as an external storage medium for such data. I would really appreciate any help on how I can resolve this issue and make the SD card data accessible again by Android.
Thank you for reading! 🥲
Edit: Don’t ask me why or how. But I put the SD Card into a phone running Android 14, and booted it. The SD Card could be actually read by the phone after it finished booting. I turned the phone off again, pulled the SD card out and put it back into it’s original running Android 12 and magically it works again! My theory is that the Android 14 recognized and automatically fixed what was wrong and this made the card readable again to older Android versions.
Thanks to everyone who commented!
I had no backup, as I always considered my MicroSD as an external storage medium for such data.
I know you’re not looking for advice that would have been great before things went wrong, but… When they say to have a backup up on external storage, they don’t mean make the backup and then delete the original. Then the “backup” is just the original.
Also, I don’t think that microSD life expectancy is that great. I wouldn’t it trust it as a sole keeper of backups.
Good luck.
This. The way I think of it, if data isn’t backed up, that data doesn’t really exist. At a bare minimum, keep important data backed up in two separate locations. Ideally you should follow the 3-2-1 backup rule (a main drive, backup drive, and cloud backup fulfill the requirements).
If you can load it on a linux vm, you can use
fsck -v /dev/mmc0to try to repair it.Might also want to make an image of the device with
dd if=/dev/DEVICE-NAME conv=sync,noerror bs=128K > sd_card.imgfirst. It’s often a good practice to make a raw backup before doing anything that changes the device.
If it’s that important, send it to a data recovery company and pay them. I’m sure this would be an easy job.
For important data I’d say utilize a data recovery company. IMO it’ s too risky to try doing something yourself and making it worse.
