Best course of action to fix (restore data from) SD card? - General Questions and Answers

So I connected a Samsung evo 32gb SD card to my PC using a card reader. It browsed fine but when I tried to make a new folder on the card, not sure what happened but the next thing I know it says "would you like to format" when I connect the card to the PC. In disk management it reads the correct capacity and says RAW drive.
What's the best course of action to recover my data? Any help is appreciated.
Thanks in advance

Once a SD-card by Windows gets detected as RAW, what means its filesystem isn't detected / accepted by Windows, it's no longer usable , a special forensic recovery utility is needed to get data stored on it back, unless there is hardware failure given. The latter you can check with GSmartControl.

jwoegerbauer said:
Once a SD-card by Windows gets detected as RAW, what means its filesystem isn't detected / accepted by Windows, it's no longer usable , a special forensic recovery utility is needed to get data stored on it back, unless there is hardware failure given. The latter you can check with GSmartControl.
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Thank you for your response. Could you please recommend a recovery utility that works best with sd cards? I promise I did my research even before posting this thread. This is just rechecking bc a lot of the resources I've found are 2+ years old.

Related

Unmountable SD Card, need help

I didn't know where to post this since it's not device specific.
The other day my GS3 displayed a message saying i can remove my SD card. I went to my file explorer app and I couldn't access my SD card. I took it out of my phone and put it in my pc, my computer made the noise to let you know you know it discovered a new device but then it notifies me that it failed to install drivers or software. I also tried it in my old GS Epic 4G running CM 10 and it gave me the same notification saying i can remove my SD card. So now I have an unmountable micro SD card and i would really like to recover the information off of it. I have run across a couple places that have said to format it then use recovery software but I don't know how to format a sd card that windows doesn't recognize.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using xda premium
Your card probably died, so unless you have specialized recovery or forensic software that can image the card, you're SOL. You could also try taking to a data recovery shop and see if they can do anything for you.
You may be able to recover your data with a freeware/shareware program but they're usually limited to recovering only certain filetypes.
If you've given up already and just need to format the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool should be able to reformat the drive even if it doesn't appear in explorer.
vianorth said:
You may be able to recover your data with a freeware/shareware program but they're usually limited to recovering only certain filetypes.
If you've given up already and just need to format the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool should be able to reformat the drive even if it doesn't appear in explorer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Alright I'll try that
Sent from my SPH-L710 using xda premium

Get data from sd card fromatted as internal(Android 6 Marshmallow)

I have a micro sd card 32gb Transcend which I use as android internal memory and was working for one year.
Yesterday suddenly stopped working and my Motorola moto g(3rd) device not recognizing it anymore.
When i insert this card and starting my device it shows that it "checking" it for 2 minutes and then it shows "no card".
I would like to get my data from this card(photos and videos) is there a way?
I have a second moto g device to which when i insert this card it shows "cannot read card" and asks format "as internal" or "as storage"?
If i choose "as storage" i will lose my data?
Please move this post to the appropriate thread.
thanks for helping
The card was formatted as internal before it was stopped being recognized. So the card is tied to that phone and is encrypted. No matter which of the options (adoptable or portable) you choose, the second Moto G (or any other marshmallow phone) will format it first deleting all the data. I am not sure if you can recover your personal data though, sorry.
Broadcasted from Zeta Reticuli
Welcome to the joys of adopted storage... It puts incredible amounts of read/write cycles on the card, causing "early" failure. Really this is not early failure, sd cards have limited writing capabilities and using adopted storage does this causing failure.
When you use adopted storage, the data is encrypted to that device and there is a decryption token generated that is stored on the device, for whatever reason that encryption token is no longer valid (likely due to a failure of the card) and the data is lost.
Your card can no longer be trusted, I would suggest replacing it.
This is another reason why regular backups of data, both manually and automatic, are essential in devices. I suggest implementing a backup plan in the future.
acejavelin said:
Welcome to the joys of adopted storage... It puts incredible amounts of read/write cycles on the card, causing "early" failure. Really this is not early failure, sd cards have limited writing capabilities and using adopted storage does this causing failure.
When you use adopted storage, the data is encrypted to that device and there is a decryption token generated that is stored on the device, for whatever reason that encryption token is no longer valid (likely due to a failure of the card) and the data is lost.
Your card can no longer be trusted, I would suggest replacing it.
This is another reason why regular backups of data, both manually and automatic, are essential in devices. I suggest implementing a backup plan in the future.
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Is there any application that can get this "decryption token" from device and read the sd card?
makis_g3 said:
Is there any application that can get this "decryption token" from device and read the sd card?
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Click to collapse
Nope. The purpose of encryption token is to prevent the use of card in other systems. It will take a great deal of hacking to get the token and put it into another phone, that too if it's possible at all. The token is randomly generated AFAIK and is not supposed to be used between different devices.
Broadcasted from Zeta Reticuli
makis_g3 said:
Is there any application that can get this "decryption token" from device and read the sd card?
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Click to collapse
Not really... IF (and that is a big if) the data is intact AND you are rooted already, the token can be retrieved via an ADB superuser shell, then you need to have a modern Linux installation that has a microSD card reader and you need a fair understanding of using the command line and mounting an encrypted file system manually. The big if here is if the file system is not corrupted, but if it wasn't corrupted then the phone would be able to use it. Also, if you are not already rooted (actually, your bootloader unlocked) then the process will wipe the device including the decryption token.
http://nelenkov.blogspot.com/2015/06/decrypting-android-m-adopted-storage.html
If I unistall from my device applications that used to be in sd card, is there any chance for sd card to work again?
Thanks for your replies
makis_g3 said:
If I unistall from my device applications that used to be in sd card, is there any chance for sd card to work again?
Thanks for your replies
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No... If it can't read the card it can't use it. The fact it's checking for so long says it can do something with the card, but that operation if failing. If you are already rooted there maybe some options of manually doing an fsck but other than that the best you can hope for is to reformat the card in another device and salvage the media for non-critical usage as standard storage, but the data is lost
You could try rebooting several times, you might get lucky and it will mount by chance, but don't much hope in it.
My GF has a Moto G3 2015 (1GB RAM, 8GB storage) which I had configured with a 32GB SD-card as adoptable storage. After this month's OTA, the SD-card is no longer recognized and there seems no way to recover any of the data. It also checks a couple of minutes for the SD-card and then says 'no card'. If I put the card in an adapter and a Windows pc, it says the card is healthy in disk management but it does not show the card in Explorer, I guess due to the formatting and encryption.
This is the second time her phone has issues with adoptable storage. First time the internal storage was full while there was still plenty of room on the SD-card, but this was apparently because I had only configured the SD-card as adoptable storage after 6 months of use, which caused the internal storage to have filled first. I expected adoptable storage to treat the internal storage and SD-card as one, but this is not true. I gave the phone a factory reset and immediately set the SD-card to adoptable storage before installing any apps, this took care of the problem until now.
I would not recommend using this option on any phone. Just buy a phone with enough storage and use the SD-card as external storage which is what I do on my Honor 7. I had told her to wait for the 2GB/16GB version which was going to be released a couple of months later but you know women, once they have their mind on something, they can't wait .

Corrupted my adopted SD storage during 5.1 update - is reformat my only option?

The update process hung for ages, so I restarted the device. This seems to have resulted in a corrupted sd card - which was being used as adoptable storage.
The tablet now no longer recognises that there's even an sd plugged in. If I connect it to my computer it seems like the partition table is still all there, but something fundamental has broken making it impossible to use the sd.
A brief Google seemed to suggest that, if it was even possible to recover the card, it would require reformatting. I'll do that if I have to, but I was hoping there was another option...
phunni said:
The update process hung for ages, so I restarted the device. This seems to have resulted in a corrupted sd card - which was being used as adoptable storage.
The tablet now no longer recognises that there's even an sd plugged in. If I connect it to my computer it seems like the partition table is still all there, but something fundamental has broken making it impossible to use the sd.
A brief Google seemed to suggest that, if it was even possible to recover the card, it would require reformatting. I'll do that if I have to, but I was hoping there was another option...
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Most probably the update was taking long because ur sdcard isnt fast. I own a shield k1 with a 32gb extreme pro sandisk sdcard as adoptable storage full of games, the whole update took like 10min including the optimising apps part. And rebooting it midway of course corrupted its data that is encrypted specifically to your device, that's why it PC cant view its data (even the parts not corrupted). So ur best choice would be to format it.
Unfortunately, I think it must be properly dead. I tried to format it - in fact I didn't even get that far. When I went to delete the partitions in order to create and format a new one, cfdisk said the write had all worked, but, in fact, the old partitions remained intact. I tried some other software to re-partition it, but the result was the same.
no problem
use this app on windows ¨HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool v2.1.8 Español (Portable)¨
sure recover it
open with administrator
ever when i use win32diskimager , i need tu use only this program to recover all gigabites of my sd and usb memorys
sorry for my english im from spain!
good luck!!

Cannot Access MicroSD Card within Windows

Hello,
I have a HTC A9 phone using Android 7.0. I replaced my SD Card with a larger one for more storage. I am trying to copy my music I downloaded over the years from the old SD Card onto my Windows 10 and 8 operating system. Both systems say the SD Card needs to be formated. The I receive an error "The file system cannot be recognized". I believe it might be a GPT file system, maybe I am wrong.
My question is, how can I access the SD Card and remove my music without losing it? Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you,
Peter Costa
Hello. Try to reinstall driver in pc. Or try paste card inserted in mobile. If you have SD card encryption contra changes in other devices, please turn off it Pc doesnt see you old card because SD card may be encrypted (visible only in your phone).
You are correct that the card is encrypted from being previously used by my HTC A9. Unfortunately, my phone had to be reset and the SD Card was replaced with a larger one. The encryption was not decrypted or my files removed. Now when I take out the new card and insert my old card, the phone only gives the option to format it. I have over 3000 full CD's on that encrypted card I can't get access to.
My brother helped me fix my phone but he did not know what was on the card. I guess no good deed goes unpunished. Just looking for a possible solution.
Maybe some type of data rescue or forensics company. Anyone have any ideas or maybe I am not understanding something. Any more advice.

sd card write problem

hi yesterday I unexpectedly remove sd card (samsung) without unmounting from htc u11 now I can not write to it. can not format the sd card from phone as well from pc. recently I updated my htc u11 to oreo also. I dont know is it because of unexpectedly remove of sd card or oreo update because I dont remember that after oreo update I use(means download something) my sd card. If anyone have the solution thanx in advance.
How old was sd card? Could be just bad luck, and card died, happen to me. And what pc - win version you tried formated? It should let you do it whitout any problems.
If the external sd card was being written to at the time it was disconnected then it will be broken. If it wasn't then try to recover it using a pc.
The oreo update won't have changed anything with the external sd card so you can rule that out.
Sometimes, when you pull out the memory card unexpectedly (also the pen drives or even memory sticks on pc) you can lock the card. It denies to write on it. This happens due to the chip controller of the memory card. The only solution is to repair it on PC with special software tools from manufacturer or from russian/chinese/vietnamese forums which can reset that lock 'flag'. That sw contains drivers to raw access the chip controller.
MoshPuiu said:
Sometimes, when you pull out the memory card unexpectedly (also the pen drives or even memory sticks on pc) you can lock the card. It denies to write on it. This happens due to the chip controller of the memory card. The only solution is to repair it on PC with special software tools from manufacturer or from russian/chinese/vietnamese forums which can reset that lock 'flag'. That sw contains drivers to raw access the chip controller.
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thanx to all for the reply. This is samsung evo 32 gig sd card. @MoshPuiu please pm me if you know any forum or software.
Hi,
Try to format your SD Card using this tool "MiniTool Partition" on Windows.
https://www.partitionwizard.com/
Windows doesn't do the right job to format SD Cards.
Cheer's
luarpc said:
Hi,
Try to format your SD Card using this tool "MiniTool Partition" on Windows.
https://www.partitionwizard.com/
Windows doesn't do the right job to format SD Cards.
Cheer's
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanx for your reply I use it(minitool partition) and also easeus but no one work. They show that your disk is formated but when I check in explorer data is still there. Is there any other software or method to format.
raokashan said:
thanx for your reply I use it(minitool partition) and also easeus but no one work. They show that your disk is formated but when I check in explorer data is still there. Is there any other software or method to format.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try to search something like that: 'mass production utility', usually under this name you can find utilities to access the chips. It is time consuming to find what chip/controller your card use and find an utility which can access that chip since samsung do not publish such a tool...
You can try ChipGenius or another sw to find details, you may digg in sites like 'http://www.flashdrive-repair.com' to find a way of repair.
raokashan said:
thanx for your reply I use it(minitool partition) and also easeus but no one work. They show that your disk is formated but when I check in explorer data is still there. Is there any other software or method to format.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So, are you looking for SD card recovery software like this list: https://www.cisdem.com/resource/sd-card-recovery-software.html#FAQ
Or to format the SD Card? https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/storage/how-format-sd-card-3529689/

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