Samsung SD card encryption not recognized - General Questions and Answers

So I have a Samsung Galaxy s10+, I recently noticed that my SD card is not recognized by my phone as encrypted. All files are there just can't open anything. I've tried restarting the phone wiping cache partition, and a few free recovery software. I can see the files and file paths I just can’t Open them. I also notice that on the sd card there is no .metaEcsFile I'm not sure if I deleted that file but I do remember deleting a .metasomething file. But it was in my recent files and I'm pretty sure it was recently created date and time wise to when I deleted it. I'm not certain if that was the cause of the problem or not as I didn't check my SD card till some time after that file had been deleted. There are 2 things I haven't done that people have said work and I'm worried they will mess up the SD card and make any data recovery impossible. One of the things is to "encrypt" the SD card which would work if there was one key per device. But I'm not sure. The other thing is to copy data to a PC, format the SD card, encrypt the empty SD card, and put the files back on the SD card.
Many people said that updating to the October patch would fix the issue I was on march of 2021 security patch when this happened and updated to October of 2022 patch. There is another update however it says you can’t downgrade so I haven’t done it Incase I need to downgrade.
Any help would be appreciated very much.
Thank you.

Never encrypt SD cards... or backup data drives.
Personally I would reformat the card and start over, unencrypted. If you don't have the data backed up you're boned to a greater or lesser extent.
Sounds like you lost the folder encryption key. They may be able to be decrypted but it will be a pain. I think each folder uses a different encryption key although I may be mistaken.
Firmware upgrades and updates can and do break Samsung's. If you insist on doing either it's imperative to have all critical data redundantly backed up first, as it always should be anyway.

get a card reader for PC, use testdisk or runtime GetDataBack for (ex)fat and try to undelete .metaEcsFile

Related

[Q] Root formatted SD Card! Please help.

I didnt know the root would format my SD card, so I foolishly used my main 16gb sd card to root it. My quick question is, is there any way I can get all my data back? I have many nandroid back ups but I wasnt sure if the nandroid back ups backed up the SD card or just the phone/rom image?
Cant recall what I would have used to back up my SD card
Oooooh, even if I dont get an answer to this, I just discovered that I made a back up of my SD card on my desktop in April of this year so im fairly peachy. Me from the past must have known future me was going to be stupid. Way to go me from the past. Im such a bad ass
Thank god..cause I had a lot of important data, photos, vids, and music on that card. Excuse me while I continue to pat myself on the back for being such a damn bad ass....
You could try a file recovery program on your SD card. It depends whether the data has been actually overwritten, or whether the partition has just been erased. If the data has been overwritten, it probably won't be possible to get it back this way, but if the card has just been formatted then the data will still all be there, it's just the partition isn't readable by the os, you could well be in luck!
Have a bit of a search around google, most recovery software costs about $40 usually, but you could probably find some from less err legal sources, if you looked hard enough.
I've used R-studio to recover data in the past, but it was a while ago and I can't remember how effective it was, but might be a place to start looking if you don't have any ideas.
Good luck!
Search for photorec. It has a program to recover data deleted from sd cards. It's opensource. There are versions for Linux, windows, and Mac. It will copy deleted files to a directory on another device.

Following today's system upgrade my SD card won't mount

I've had my Idol 3 for a couple of weeks now and I just love it . . . so do my 'green' friends! However . . .
My Idol 3 got a major upgrade today, and now the phone won't permit mounting of the SD card . . . home of many apps!
The option under Settings/Storage is not greyed out, it's just that when I tap 'Mount SD card' nothing happens. I'm also getting a continuous notice, i.e. "SD card safe to remove".
The card was not removed either before or after the upgrade, but since I have had the above problem I have done reboots, restarts and hard reboots, and and have removed and replaced the card a couple of times . . . . I'm at a loss on this one!
Does anyone have any suggestions that will help me get the SD card mounted please?
Many thanks!
Just maybe a very strange coincidence here. I have been using the same 32gb sd card since I bought this phone and never had a single issue with the card or the phone (related to the sd card). This morning I checked to see if there was an update, I did not download or install it (since I'm rooted) but man ever since that moment I have been having f-ed up sd card issues. The same types of problems with it randomly unmounting the card and telling me the card is safe to remove, finding the card unmounted and touching the Mount button does nothing and just now I removed the card and my Chromebook is asking if I want to format it... WTF?
All this makes me wonder if Alcatel secretly installed some updates in the background today even though I did not intend for a system update. Hmmm.
I had similar issues with a sandisk microsd.....with it randomly losing everything on the sd....I switched to a samsung microsd and the issue went away so I think it's just very picky with the cards and you should try different manufacturers...also fat32 seemed more reliable than exfat. Samsung and Adata are two I had good results with outside sandisk which I previously considered the gold standard.
Thanks folks.
At this time I don't think it's an SD card issue unless the update corrupted it.
I mean, it was fine before the upgrade guvnor!
phototraveler said:
Thanks folks.
At this time I don't think it's an SD card issue unless the update corrupted it.
I mean, it was fine before the upgrade guvnor!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Backup the data to pc...format the card in the phone...copy the data back.
Same happened to me on the first OTA update and on this OTA update. I took my SD card out, put in a computer, copied all my files to a desktop folder, re-formatted the SD card, moved all my files from the desktop back on to the SD card once the format was complete and the phone mounted the card no problem. Total PITA and will consume about an hour and a half of your time to do all this. Not sure why this keeps happening on OTA updates, but next time, if Alcatel releases another OTA update, move all your apps back to the phone and remove your SD card prior to initiating an update. Only think I can think of?
Thanks both. Formatting is apparently the only way to go except that my computer wouldn't read the card via the phone.
Soooooo, I have mounted the micro SD in an adapter, and the card is currently being copied to my computer.
I'll let you know how that goes after I've done the format and copied things back.
Maybe just removing the SD card prior to an upgrade will prevent corruptions, or do you think that the upgrade 'needs' the SD card in place?
phototraveler said:
Thanks both. Formatting is apparently the only way to go except that my computer wouldn't read the card via the phone.
Soooooo, I have mounted the micro SD in an adapter, and the card is currently being copied to my computer.
I'll let you know how that goes after I've done the format and copied things back.
Maybe just removing the SD card prior to an upgrade will prevent corruptions, or do you think that the upgrade 'needs' the SD card in place?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As the external sd is considered "optional" there is no reason you can't pull it prior to doing an upgrade to eliminate the chance of it getting corrupted.
If you have TWRP flashed and your situation is like mine was you'd find IT could read the card just fine and adb access while in TWRP copied off the data for me so seems related to the actual rom.
The solution
As some of you may have expected, and suggested, I was able to resolve my issue by . . .
1 Backing up the data on the SD card
2 Formatting the SD card
3 Copying my data back to the SD card
However, the .android_secure folder on the SD card was 'locked' by the phone, so I removed it and using Windows Explorer I copied the contents - all my apps that had been moved to the SD card - manually.
If you go this route yourself, your 'favorites' that you dragged to the home screen will be missing, so you'll have to re-do that process. It only takes a matter of minutes.
I want to thank those of you who responded with suggestions that pushed me all the way to the top of my 'success' mountain. The view is great!
Now if only the upgrade hadn't corrupted my SD card in the first place. Grrrrrr!
However, for those that don't realize it, the Idol 3 is a terrific phone that is soon to increase in popularity and recognition.
phototraveler said:
As some of you may have expected, and suggested, I was able to resolve my issue by . . .
1 Backing up the data on the SD card
2 Formatting the SD card
3 Copying my data back to the SD card
However, the .android_secure folder on the SD card was 'locked' by the phone, so I removed it and using Windows Explorer I copied the contents - all my apps that had been moved to the SD card - manually.
If you go this route yourself, your 'favorites' that you dragged to the home screen will be missing, so you'll have to re-do that process. It only takes a matter of minutes.
I want to thank those of you who responded with suggestions that pushed me all the way to the top of my 'success' mountain. The view is great!
Now if only the upgrade hadn't corrupted my SD card in the first place. Grrrrrr!
However, for those that don't realize it, the Idol 3 is a terrific phone that is soon to increase in popularity and recognition.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You might consider installing syncthing and running it on the pc and phone...it uses p2p technology to sync folders between devices....open source version of bittorrent sync. Glad you are back up and running.

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...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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!!

decrypting SD card with software

Hi everybody
I had to wipe my S7 edge due to the pattern not being recognized (known bug) and I would like to know if there is any hope recovering my pictures from my SD using software, when I googled "recover photos encrypted sd Android" the first page is full of software, some form easeus, rescue digital media, Yodot, etc, I even found one that say to just copy the files to a pc, wipe the SD card on phone, copy the files back to SD, encrypt SD and the decrypt and I should have my pictures back, I try this last step as it doesn't require any software but still wondering if any of the software mention will work
thanks
Advice on decrypting SD card with software after factory reset
Any one?

Encrypted SD Card

Hi,! I have a galaxy note 8, this is the problem I have:
I encrypt my sd card from the mobile (sandisk extreme 32gb sd card) android system version 9,
I have a problem right now, it doesn't let me decrypt the sd card,
when I'm going to decrypt, I don't get that option, I get the option to encrypt... (as if I hadn't encrypted it before)
I do not understand what could have happened, I can enter without problems and see the files of the sd card, but when going to open a video or file of the sd card, it is not seen (because it is supposedly encrypted)
I hope someone can help me
Marchiu said:
Hi,! I have a galaxy note 8, this is the problem I have:
I encrypt my sd card from the mobile (sandisk extreme 32gb sd card) android system version 9,
I have a problem right now, it doesn't let me decrypt the sd card,
when I'm going to decrypt, I don't get that option, I get the option to encrypt... (as if I hadn't encrypted it before)
I do not understand what could have happened, I can enter without problems and see the files of the sd card, but when going to open a video or file of the sd card, it is not seen (because it is supposedly encrypted)
I hope someone can help me
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
U should of never done that in the first place like who encrypts a SD card
Sent from my moto g(7) play using Tapatalk
informative post
Hi, I have been checking all the files on the sd card thoroughly, it seems that it has not got to encrypt all the files, I can listen to some loose songs, and see some loose things, but in a percentage I can agree to see 15% of the sd card 85% is encrypted, is it possible that it has encrypted badly? And is it possible that security patches, having installed it had to do with this problem of decryption? (it just happened I installed after encrypting in android security patch), hopefully someone can help me

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