I am trying to help a friend who is very concerned that she has just lost all of the data on her 32GB SanDisk microSD card. I told her I would post this and see if anyone could offer help.
Here are the details:
- The SanDisk microSD card is less than two years old. Probably only about a year old. The store will take it back, but that doesn't really help. She wants her data.
- She used the card in her Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone for over a month. The phone was never exposed to water or temperature extremes.
- Today, her phone suddenly said something like "Your SD card is blank or an unsupported format".
- Her phone was then unable to read the SanDisk microSD card at all.
Here's what she has tried:
- Rebooting her phone. Had no effect.
- Taking out the SanDisk microSD card and putting it inside a full-size SD card adapter, and inserting it into a Windows 7 SP1 computer. The computer did not recognize its presence at all.
- Putting the SanDisk microSD card into a USB 2.0 external card reader and inserting the card reader into a USB port on a Windows 7 SP1 computer. The computer recognized the card reader and installed drivers for it. The card reader shows up as 'Removable Disk' in Windows Explorer. Clicking on 'Removable Disk' in Windows Explorer results in the error "Insert disk: Please insert a disk into the Removable Disk".
- After trying #3, tried opening the 'Removable Disk' in FreeCommander. Doing so results in the error "The device is not ready".
She does not have access to a linux box, but does have access to her Android phone.
What can she do to recover the data on her 32GB SanDisk microSD card?