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Micro-SD not working

L

lemmons

Lurker
Hello,

I have recently formatted my Phone. After it was done I plugged in my micro-sd and got the notification that in order to use the card I have to either format it as internal or extarnal storage which also deletes everything on the card. Now i'm not quite sure but I believe I already formatted it as internal storage when first using it and because of that I am not able to access it via PC thus not being able to make a backup.
Is there any way to access the data on the card? I would be very thankful vor any help since i had quite a lot of files on the card.
 
If you did indeed initially format that microSD card as 'internal' then actually it's not a matter where your microSD card is not working, it's working just as it was set up to do. When you formatted it as internal (aka portable) in your phone, there are a couple of changes involved --
1) the card is changed from using the FAT (FAT32 or exFAT) file system to ext4 (ext4 being the same file system as your phone's internal storage), and
2) it's encrypted, with the encryption key tied only to your phone (the card, until reformatted, is at that point only usable with that phone as the encryption links the two).
So basically there's not much you can do to retrieve your files from that microSD card, it's encrypted so any and all data on that card can no longer be accessed, the encryption key was wiped when you did that Factory Reset. What you should have done is use the same option in your Settings to set the card up as internal back to set it back to external before you did the Factory Reset.
But reading through your post, it almost seems like you're not quite sure whether that card was set up as internal or external. Again, the card's file system gets altered and that significantly changes how you can or cannot access whatever data you want to. If you did set up the card as external (which in that case it's still a FAT variation and un-encrypted), and you still can't access anything on it on your PC there could be an issue with the microSD card adapter you're using, the USB cable, or even some random, correctable issue with your PC itself.
 
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