32GB PNY MicroSD suddenly dies...Help?

A

AC Question

Here's what happened:

Phone: Galaxy Note 3

Restarted my phone one day and my microSD card stopped working out of the blue. It never had its contents password protected and I frequently use it to play video from. I work a job where I can have music playing while I work and I'm usually playing videos even if I'm not watching them. So to say that it's heavily used it MORE than accurate. I'm not always careful about turning off the phone before I remove the card. But most of the time I do. Until Android's last update I was also constantly using it to store word documents and excel spreadsheets. But apparently how they do external memory access changed and most programs haven't figured out how to write back to disk properly. That's a beef for another day. In any case, Just before this I had also installed a new app called Assistant (Siri for Android) by Speaktoit. I found phone heating up incredibly when I kept it listening constantly for my commands. I doesn't help that it's usually in my side cargo pocket in khakis and I work an active job so I'm always toasty warm. (My leading theory at the moment is that I truly managed to bake the card). Probably not, so moving on...in any case the card won't read anywhere. Not in either adapter I have for my computer, or the phone. I have tried cleaning the contacts with alcohol. There isn't much I can do about the insert slots on either the adpater, phone or computer (MBP mid 2010). So it is basically a brick. Totally inaccessible.

Here's what I know so far:

A somewhat panicked search of the Internet reveals that there's pretty much nothing you can do if your computer can't read the card at all. Windows and Mac Disk Management (Utility) reads the inserted adapter but tells me no media is found. I have a second adapter for a Kingston. Nada when I use it instead. Insertion order for cards has been tried in every combination. Nothing. Tried cmdprompt chkdisk functions. Nothing. (commands: chkdisk [drive letter:\] /r /f) Both were used separately. I'm guessing this means there is literally no communication with the card. Have a Kingston card that I've switched over to. It works in both adapters and the phone without fuss or glitch. Had a few spare HDs floating around and began using one to backup the card's contents as well as the phone. Having done half an information systems bachelor's degree in school the shame is completely on me for letting myself put so much valuable information on ANY media without having it backed up. I now have it set up so that I have a 500GB drive with 15 folders. I have three 32GB storage spaces for this phone. That's five folders for each unit. I now rotate through them as I make significant changes to the contents of the units. A call to a recorvery company in Ottawa reveals that micro SD cards are a special case compared to their cousins. Micro SD cards are made using monolithic memory. (Itty Bitty base, massive free-standing (data) structure). The SD card you might put in your camera has two chips inside. One stores the 1s and 0s that make up your information. The other (a controller) acts as an interpreter of sorts when a device wants to access that information. The controller is the problem in 9 out 10 cases and your data is intact but fancy equipment is needed to read the data on the storage chip. In the case of MicroSD cards there is only one chip and if that chips goes you're almost guaranteed to be sh*t outta luck. The possibility does exist that the malfunction is in the printed circuit board of the card and your data might be in tact. But in order to fix it you need to find someone who does monolithic memory for a reasonable price. Don't send your card to anyone who doesn't have a satisfaction guarantee or a no recovery - no fee policy.

To conclude...does anyone know of anything I haven't tried that may work for this case?

Thanks in advance for your help.
 

B. Diddy

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Welcome to Android Central! Holy cow, you've done more research on this than probably anyone else here!:)

I'm afraid I don't have much else to add. SD cards can get corrupted by a device, and from the posts on this forum, it seems that Samsung devices are disproportionately responsible for these situations. I hope you can find some solution, but in the meantime, be cautious when utilizing external SD cards on your device.