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How to view SD card files from Moto X Pure?

L

LardWaltson

Lurker
recently just picked up me and my wife S10+s. After having the pure for about i year i figured id try iphone a try since i was always primarily an adroid user. Well after enough of hearing about how my wife hated her iphone i switched back. i have an SD card that was used in my X Pure that has some nice photos and memories from before i enlisted on it and id like to be able to recover them. i stored the SD card in a holder for some time and now that i finally have another android i tried loading it up on the phone and it shows a couple folders where i know there would be some data but there is none. To the best of my knowledge i did not encrypt the sd card. but iirc it was switched to be part of internal memory. i remember vaguely me not being able to access the files even with the Pure connect on my laptop back then aswell. Its 16gb and only gets recognized as having 55mb. do you guys got any tips at all for me to be able to view the files on my galaxy? or recover them someway on my laptop?

(also) the way they enabled to transfer files and videos from iphone to android with the connector provided honestly was the coolest thing ever haha
 
can you connect both phones to your pc? if so you should be able to acces the card that way. or a card reader would work as well.
 
Please confirm as to whether you have your microSD card set up as internal or as portable.
If it's formatted as internal (a.k.a adoptable), the file system on the card is changed to ext4, the same file system as what your phone's internal storage is set up with, and the card is encrypted, with the encryption key tying the card directly to your phone. It's not meant to be removed at that point it's essentially an internal component in your phone. The Android OS on your phone sees the card as just part of the total storage capacity. You can use the Settings >> Storage menu as a very basic file manager to view its contents, but if you're using an installed, third-party file manager app it won't distinguish the card as being it's own separate media.
If it's formatted as portable however, the file system is still FAT32 or exFAT so removing it and mounting on any computer or other device isn't a problem. By default microSD cards will be using the FAT file system. You can use the System >> Storage menu as a basic file manager, or install a third-party file manager app for more functionality.
 
I don't have it formatted with this phone as it was used in my moto back then. I no longer have that phone as that was almost 4 years ago. I know there is at least 8 gigs of data on this sd card and I'd much rather keep the data than just reformatting it. I can see some folders that I can tell were from the Motorola, just literally nothing on the card but some folders where the photos should be, and the card only saying it's 55mb when It is in fact 16gigs
 
Well if you can view at least some of the contents of that card it's probably not set up as internal. That said, is that 55MB the capacity size of the card (not likely in any case), the amount of stored data, or the amount of free storage space?
 
That's not a good indicator the card itself is in a healthy state, copy that 21MB of data off and re-format the card and see if it gets restored back to 16GB. Also, taking into consideration the age of that microSD card, what speed class is it? If you're just going to use it for passive storage of files that's not much of an issue but if you're going to recording video content with your new S10+ to the card you'll want something a lot faster (and with higher capacity, even if it does get restored back to 16GB).
https://www.sdcard.org/developers/overview/speed_class/
 
I was just hoping to get the old pictures that were saved on it before I reformatted it. I do not really have a use for the 16gb card since I got plenty on my galaxy. From what it seems there's not going to be a way for me to retrieve the data from it?
 
Since that card is showing a completely out of sorts amount of storage capacity, it will be surprising if you can get anything off of it. If you have access to a Windows PC remove the card from your phone, mount it in the PC, and try running the chkdsk utility on it to see if that will fix whatever is wrong with it:
https://neosmart.net/wiki/chkdsk/
At this point FAT is a barely functional file system with weak points on data retention, file metadata compatibility, and file/folder permissions. Even back in its day (Win98 and floppy disks) it had stability and reliability issues. It's sadly a curse we all have to put up with even now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table
 
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