SD Card Damaged Please Help!!

[Dr. Polo]

I own a Droid Charge and updated it to Gingerbread last night. So far I have had only one major issue with it, it won't be recognized by my computer. I had my sd card from my Samsung Fascinate with all my music and lots of pictures so this wasn't a big deal to me. I simply downloaded new music onto my phone and added pictures with the camera. Other than that, it's glitched a few times but nothing major. It worked fine until this evening.
I updated to Gingerbread last night without a hitch, everything seemed to be working correctly, no troubles whatsoever (a much different story than my update from Eclair to Froyo on the Fascinate). Then I tried to take a picture at a birthday party. "Damaged SD Card" popped up in my notifications. I tried accessing the pictures through the gallery app and it said "No SD Detected." However when I reactivated the camera I was able to access my pictures through the lower left hand image viewer button. A half hour later even that doesn't work.
I'm really confused and very much scared about losing all this data. I have over 2,000 pictures from both the Charge and the Fascinate on this card with only a select few backed up on Dropbox. The pictures on there span 2 years of my life filled with excellent memories. Alzheimers runs in the family and I'm afraid to forgot everything. Can anyone help me recover this data?

 

[EricasMyTouch3G]

I'm currently on a BlackBerry (but looking to switch to Android next year), and this question comes up a lot when an OS update goes wrong (had it happen to me twice), but could apply to Android: Did u update with the media card in the phone?

I've never owned an Android device before so I don't know if it is possible to go back to the older OS on the phone and then try to redo the update again to see if the phone can recognize the card (again, this has been my experience on the BlackBerry OS).

 

[mikedt]

Put it this way, it's never a good idea to do any firmware updates without doing backups to a PC or to the cloud first.

To the OP, have you tried reading the SD-card data with your PC?

 

[Dr. Polo]

I did indeed update with the sd card in the phone. I'm not sure how to revert OS's so I think I'll try using another sd card reader (possibly my friend's phone) and see if that will recognize and if not, then it'll get hairy. Thanks for the suggestion though.

 

[Dr. Polo]

Put it this way, it's never a good idea to do any firmware updates without doing backups to a PC or to the cloud first.

Looks like I've learned this the hard way

 

[Dr. Polo]

Put it this way, it's never a good idea to do any firmware updates without doing backups to a PC or to the cloud first.

To the OP, have you tried reading the SD-card data with your PC?

I have no other SD card reader other than the phone and even before this issue it wouldn't recognize the phone when I plugged it in.

 

[EricasMyTouch3G]

Ouch. I feel your pain. Good luck with whatever works to get your pictures back if you can get them back.

 

[Dr. Polo]

Thanks, I appreciate the support.

 

[mikedt]

I have no other SD card reader other than the phone and even before this issue it wouldn't recognize the phone when I plugged it in.

When you plug the phone into your PC, are you getting something like 'USB connected. Select to copy files to/from your computer.' in the notifications. If so, select it and the phone should appear as a USB removable disk.

EDIT:

To enable the phone to appear as a USB drive you might need to do Settings > Wireless and network > USB settings > select mass storage option.

Also is the phone's SD-card storage built into the phone, or is it an actual physical removable SD-card? If it's removable, suggest you buy or borrow an SD-card reader

 

[Dr. Polo]

When you plug the phone into your PC, are you getting something like 'USB connected. Select to copy files to/from your computer.' in the notifications. If so, select it and the phone should appear as a USB removable disk.

EDIT:

To enable the phone to appear as a USB drive you might need to do Settings > Wireless and network > USB settings > select mass storage option.

Also is the phone's SD-card storage built into the phone, or is it an actual physical removable SD-card? If it's removable, suggest you buy or borrow an SD-card reader

It is removable, and its the same one I had for the Fascinate, I was able to connect through the Fascinate but it wouldn't with the charge. I get the message when I plug the phone in, but I also get the USB message when I am just charging it in an outlet.

 

[mikedt]

It is removable, and its the same one I had for the Fascinate, I was able to connect through the Fascinate but it wouldn't with the charge. I get the message when I plug the phone in, but I also get the USB message when I am just charging it in an outlet.

So what you need to do now, is to get hold of an SD-card reader. See if you can view and copy the contents of the SD-card directly on your PC.

 

[Dr. Polo]

Not having immediate access to an SD card reader I dusted off my old LG Voyager which has a microSD slot. After having a few restarts it stayed on long enough for me to put the microSD card in and unfortunately nothing came up. Not a good sign, but there is the possibiliy that the three year old Voyager is faulty.

 

[Dr. Polo]

So I've got a sd card reader and all my files show up but when I try to access anything it gives me "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error" Is there anything I can do? I don't even know what I/O means!

 

[tsaunders]

Have you tried running chkdsk on the drive?

 

[darkuni]

IF you can get a PC card reader to SEE the memory as a legitimate drive (directory listing or not), I cannot recommend GetDataBack ENOUGH ... if ANYTHING is going to help you, this is it.

I've posted in similar threads ... SD memory isn't a hard drive. There aren't several points of failure. There aren't mechanical tricks to getting it to boot "one last time" (freezer for read/write heads, quick reset for slow spin up, etc). I've been through a LOT of SD cards in my days ... when one goes, it is just GONE. I've RARELY recovered anything significant.

It is too late to lecture about backups, but I lost SO MUCH because I am just too lazy to make backups - it BREAKS MY HEART to see someone possibly lose so much over a missing backup.

Good luck man. Let us know how it comes out.