Well I was going to get caught out one day on encryption and it seems that this has happened now.

I first removed an encrypted SD Card before factory resetting my Samsung Galaxy J2 Core. The phone had also been set to Secure startup. After the factory reset I attached the SD Card and the phone will not decrypt the SD Card. I thought the encryption key of the SD Card may be the same as the four digits that are used to enter the phone.

I have copied the relevant file I need to Windows (which is Contacts.vcf) but cannot seem to find a free app to try to decrypt it. Any ideas and if this is possible at all?

In the worst case that there is no solution, I have only lost two months of backed up contacts, which is less bad than losing all of them. But it also makes me wonder what would happen in a scenario where a phone is completely damaged beyond repair and is unable to work at all, therefore encrypting an SD Card is linked to the phone itself and dependent on it in its current state.

 

Thanks for letting me know. I could have had a much harder lesson as I backed up my contacts in October so am only missing 2 months or so of them.

However I'm not sure I'm going to encrypt the SD Card again so this doesn't happen once more! My phone is offline so the best policy is probably to regularly copy the .vcf files to my PC.

 

For my online phone it's a good idea, but this phone is offline so vcf is likely the best option.