MicroSD card not recognised by android phone.. after transferring files to it!

justpassingthrough24

Desperate plea for help please!

I ordered a SanDisk microSD card for my Samsung Galaxy S8. My phone initially recognised the card fine, and I transferred across a large amount of files - at least 10GB worth of photos, videos, and things I need for work.

Now, the phone is suddenly not recognising an SD card at all. I try and access the card via storage to "mount/unmount" but there is nothing there, and nothing on the SanDisk memory app which I initially used to transfer the files across. I haven't removed the card once (until now) so it can't be due to physical damage. I've updated software, cold rebooted, taken the card out and reinserted, etc. and still no luck!

I am mildly panicking on how I am meant to retrieve these files or if they've gone for good? Does anyone have any ideas? 

HillStreetBlues

have you a laptop that you could test it with (expect need an adaptor).

Neil_Jones

Mounting an SD card in Android is the same as formatting it, so when you tried to remount it Android will probably ask you whether you want it as internal or portable storage - the former wipes it and ties it to the phone, the latter means you can use it outside that phone.

Hopefully you just copied your files rather than "moved" them?

cerebus

Where did you order the card from ? Could be fake you see especially from amazon or ebay

I do hope you have back ups of the stuff you have copied?

justpassingthrough24

I did order it off ebay from a seller with good reviews but seems I may have been hoodwinked

Oddly it was working fine when I first got it which was when I was able to transfer all the files across. I am clearly very naive as I didn't back anything up. Now it just isn't being read by my phone at all - not even the option to format etc.

I don't have a laptop SD card adapter to test it on my laptop right now, but I imagine if the card is faulty it won't work here too?

Is it worth taking it to a phone / computer store to see if anyone can retrieve the files / anything I can do myself?

cerebus

If it is fake then the card overwrites the files as they are copied across to make it seem like it's Legit

There are programs you can use to to test the card , names escape me right now but hopefully someone else will help me out here!

You need to get a sd card reader regardless,  tesco sell them for a fiver last time I looked or online if you can wait a couple of days a little cheaper
Poundland used to sell them for a quid not seen them in there for a while however 

Oh and get yourself an external drive and start to make regular back ups saves further heartache 

HillStreetBlues

cerebus said:

There are programs you can use to to test the card , names escape me right now but hopefully someone else will help me out here!

I use H2testw on Windows.  There are apps on the Play store that test as well, but never used any of them.

facade

I got caught by a fake Sandisk card from eBay. It was as Cerebrus says, it worked perfectly for the fist 32GB, then from there it overwrote the files.

I got a refund though

Anyway, the give-away was simple, on the packing the slot for the hanger wasn't pushed out. Other than that it was a very good fake. (I've no idea why fake sellers don't push that slot out, I suspect that the seller was conned into buying a job lot of "cheap memory cards from a shop that had closed down" and didn't realise they were fake)

https://sdcardexpress.co.uk/blogs/news/sandisk-ultra-microsd-card-how-to-recognise-genuine-card

justpassingthrough24

Thanks for the helpful replies everyone.

I'll try and run the card on these apps when I get myself an SD card reader - if the card even reads!

For now, I just need to know if I have lost these files for good or if there's some way to retrieve them?

HillStreetBlues

justpassingthrough24 said:

For now, I just need to know if I have lost these files for good or if there's some way to retrieve them?

You might be able to retrieve some, but as pointed out above, it will either throw up an error or write over files.
The most you could   get back is the actual size of the SD card, which will be a lot less that it displays.
Most likely  all files will be lost.