I accidentally removed a MicroSD card from an Android device running Android 12 while it was being ejected. This happened because it took longer than usual (less than a few seconds), and I pulled it out without looking at the notification. Now, when I insert the MicroSD card into any Android device, it tells me to format it to use it, as a problem has occurred. It also gives me the option to format it and extend the internal storage. The third option is to skip both and do it later, which keeps the SD card unreadable by the system. The MicroSD card contains a lot of data that’s important to me, and unfortunately, I had no backup, as I always considered my MicroSD as an external storage medium for such data. I would really appreciate any help on how I can resolve this issue and make the SD card data accessible again by Android.
Thank you for reading! 🥲
Edit: Don’t ask me why or how. But I put the SD Card into a phone running Android 14, and booted it. The SD Card could be actually read by the phone after it finished booting. I turned the phone off again, pulled the SD card out and put it back into it’s original running Android 12 and magically it works again! My theory is that the Android 14 recognized and automatically fixed what was wrong and this made the card readable again to older Android versions.
Thanks to everyone who commented!
Plug it into a computer and see what the computer says.
I usually use Linux for that because it offers good error messages and I know the tools. But other operating systems might help, too.
And if you start writing to the card or executing recovery tools, make a backup / image first.
If the files are very important, maybe don’t tamper with it and ask for help. Like a repair shop, your local Linux community or any trustworthy computer expert friend.
The biggest enemy is probably encryption, if it’s encrypted. The files are definitely still there if you just ripped it out. In the old days you could just run a recovery program and get everything back.