I almost lost a bunch of data so I decided to post this as a warning; I hope it helps.
I had my phone plugged into my laptop (via USB). The USB storage was NOT turned on; I only wanted to charge it. In a hurry I just unplugged it an left (without doing the "remove external drive" first).
The next day, everything was gone - pix, videos, music - everything. The apps that were installed on the SD card were still accessible, but an entire folder I had with back-up .apk files was gone. I plugged the phone into another laptop. The LOST.DIR had pretty much all the files and I was able to slowly recover them. (The larger ones were clearly .m4v. I renamed the others to .mp3/.jpg to see which were songs or pix, and I still had some small files - presumably .apk's.) Then the stupid VISTA wouldn't let me "remove external drive"; it kept saying it was still in use, although I had closed the windows explorer and all other windows.
I unplugged the phone anyway and this time the phone said that it didn't recognize the SD card and that it needed to be formatted. I wasn't happy but I hit "format". Nothing happened. I turned the phone off and back on... nothing! It wouldn't mount the card either. I turned off the phone, removed the card, turned it back on, turned it off again, put the card back in and turned it on. Everything was back to normal.
2 lessons are to be learned from all this:
1. Do NOT unplug the phone without doing the "remove storage device" first, even if the USB storage isn't turned on.
2. If you do get in trouble, try the steps that I did: power cycle the phone, then turn it off, remove card, turn on and back off, put the card back, turn it back on. It worked for me.
I had my phone plugged into my laptop (via USB). The USB storage was NOT turned on; I only wanted to charge it. In a hurry I just unplugged it an left (without doing the "remove external drive" first).
The next day, everything was gone - pix, videos, music - everything. The apps that were installed on the SD card were still accessible, but an entire folder I had with back-up .apk files was gone. I plugged the phone into another laptop. The LOST.DIR had pretty much all the files and I was able to slowly recover them. (The larger ones were clearly .m4v. I renamed the others to .mp3/.jpg to see which were songs or pix, and I still had some small files - presumably .apk's.) Then the stupid VISTA wouldn't let me "remove external drive"; it kept saying it was still in use, although I had closed the windows explorer and all other windows.
I unplugged the phone anyway and this time the phone said that it didn't recognize the SD card and that it needed to be formatted. I wasn't happy but I hit "format". Nothing happened. I turned the phone off and back on... nothing! It wouldn't mount the card either. I turned off the phone, removed the card, turned it back on, turned it off again, put the card back in and turned it on. Everything was back to normal.
2 lessons are to be learned from all this:
1. Do NOT unplug the phone without doing the "remove storage device" first, even if the USB storage isn't turned on.
2. If you do get in trouble, try the steps that I did: power cycle the phone, then turn it off, remove card, turn on and back off, put the card back, turn it back on. It worked for me.