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HELP!!! Android is telling me my SD card is damaged.

F

Freeze Time

Member
Hi, about 30 min ago I go to text someone and I see a message that says my card is damaged and it asks me to reformat. I turn off the phone and removed the card and turned it back on and same thing. I tried a different card and that works. I googled my problem and it told me to use a card reader on my computer to save all my data. When I do that, the SD card doesn't come up. When I click on removable disk F: it says that it's not formatted and would I like to format and I don't so I click no. What happened?? How can I get all my data off my SD card so I can back it up before I reformat it. I don't understand why the SD card went back all of a sudden. HELP!!!!!
 
Welcome to Android Forums.

Sorry to hear of your problem. That is the nature of flash memory. It can go just like that, which makes regular backups of important data very important. You can try a different card reader, but I don't think you will get positive results.
 
Thanks, I wish my first post would have been a happy one. What are my options? I have read that there is software that might be able to recover all my data after I reformat but that doesn't make any sense to me. I need to know if it's possible to get my data off the card before I reformat it. I have tons of songs and pics and movies and apps on the card.
 
You could try a utility like Recuva but that is usually for accidentally deleted files, not failed media. I don't know of any utility to recover files after a format. And, I don't know of any data recovery services that work on flash memory. Sorry.
 
So are you telling me I'm screwed lunatic? I didn't do anything wrong. The SD card was in the phone the whole time and just all of a sudden gives me that message.
 
i happened to me.. 6 months ago...

it just went bad.. nothing you can do. data is gone.. sorry.
back it up!

BTW.. welcome to AF :P
 
So this week my tire blew on the freeway, it marked the one year anniversary that I've been unemployed, I had to sell my HDTV and now my sd card dies. FML:(
 
Freeze Time said:
So this week my tire blew on the freeway, it marked the one year anniversary that I've been unemployed, I had to sell my HDTV and now my sd card dies. FML:(
Click to expand...

I feel for you. Two weeks ago our plasma TV died with a click, a buzz and a little puff of smoke. The next day, a stick of ram went bad in my desktop during a system update (yes, it was ugly) and the following day, I clipped off the side mirror on my new car backing out of the garage. Look on the bright side. Statistically, you're done with the bad stuff. Now you got good things coming your way.
 
You can try a recovery utility like Recover My Files. I've used it before on a hdd and got about 50-65% of my data back, which was pretty good, IMO.

Install the program on your PC or an external drive. Use an adapter or card reader and format your SD card. Don't put anything on the card after you format. Use RMF to scan the card and recover anything it finds.

I've never used it on flash memory. No clue if it will work. Worth a try.
 
I don't think it will work with flash memory, but you never know.
I've heard of recovering info from HDD's that have failed, but that is a different memory type.
 
Okay guys so what you are telling me is that I HAVE to reformat it first before any data recovery can happen? Put I put the sd card reader into my USB slot on my laptop and then click reformat and then try software to recover my data?
 
if you have a recover software.. you can try it first, before formatting.. and see what you can get!. then if it dont work.. try reformatting.

but.... when my sd went bad.. it lost the partition too... and there was no way to fix the partition so no formatting could be done. it was NO good.
 
I had this exact situation happen about 3 months ago with a rather expensive, large SD card.

Let me save you about 5 hours of your life.

Take the card out. Throw it in the trash can. Buy a new card. Learn VALUABLE lesson about backing up your cell phone data frequently (or embrace the cloud - it's 2012 now - stop fighting it :) I feel a lot better since I did).

You are NOT going to get a SINGLE THING back ... it doesn't matter WHAT tool you use .. what card reader you buy. It is DEAD .. dead and buried.

I wish I could get back the 5 hours I spent trying to get ANYTHING back off that card.

Hard drives have several failure points ... several means to get data back. SD cards do not.

It's dead. Let it go.

Now, let's move on to how you are NOT going to let this happen again.

Grab a free copy of File Expert from the Market.
Run it and choose SHARE MY CONTENTS.
Select the FTP option.
It will give you an address like ftp://192.168.1.21:2311
Type that into your PC's MY COMPUTER address bar.
Copy the files you want to someplace safe.
Wash, rinse, repeat once a month/quarter.

I use a file manager called Directory Opus (not free .. or even cheap) where I have a nice programmable button that is a "one click" solution to backing up my SD. There are numerous other cheap, free solutions.

I do it religiously now - both on my phone and my tablet. I have learned.
 
scandisk cards.. have a lifetime warranty.. I used it .. very easy. but you have to wait. ship there, they ship back
 
Thanks for the replies even though they were all mostly bad news. I am currently running a free program called cardrecovery so I hope it can save all of at least some of my data. If that doesn't work, I will have to reformat.
 
Okay so I went ahead and tried to reformat the card but the computer said it couldn't. I found my old 2GB card and an SD card folder on my comp with the files I had on my 2GB card before I moved it. The problem is none of my apps like Chomp and quick settings show up on my phone. It's on the sd card on my computer and I even tried moving straight to the card but it's still not working. Anyone have any idea what is going on?
 
If you had the apps installed to your sd card and they weren't moved over at the time of the earlier sd card/backup, then you'll have to reinstall those apps.
 
Thanks again for the help. This whole process has been a mess. My computer nor my phone will reformat my damaged card. My computer says it can't be done and my phone just doesn't respond. I will try the latest file recovery but I am pretty sure everything is gone. It makes sense that the other backups won't work considering all those apps probably have been updated by now. I can't believe my card just failed like that. So strange and lame.
 
It isn't really surprising that when it fails - it is simply DEAD.

Let's look at a hard drive ... there are interface adapters, spinning platters, read/write mechanical heads ... TONS of points of failure. If the platters don't spin up fast enough when you turn on the computer, the drive reports it's dead. But the platters do reach the speeds eventually - so if you do a soft reset of the computer, it WILL boot. If there is a spot on the platter that is bad, the interface is smart enough to mark the area "dead" and move on. Tons of recoverable issues.

Not much in the SD card. Something goes? Dead.

So, I'm going around the world in my horse and buggy spreading the word NOT to waste time, money or energy into trying to bring SD cards back from the dead. :)
 
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