Why Did My SD Card Automatically Format?

[AC Question]

I Downloaded Some Student App From The Play Store And Suddenly My SD Card Formatted, I Have All Pictures And Videos Backed up, My Apps Were Still There, But I Also Lost All My Music , Which I cannot Get Back, Is There Anyway To Get My Music Back?

 

[Rukbat]

1) Download PhotoRec burn it to a disk (CD or DVD) and boot the computer with it.

2) Put the SD card into an adapter and plug it into one of the computer's USB ports (not into a hub).

3) Let it rip.

It'll recover any block of bytes that look like a file it recognizes. (Look at the list on the site - it knows more file types than you've heard of. Music files, definitely.) So you might not only get back your missing music, pictures and videos, you may get back files that apps put there for temporary use, and if the card used reworked chips, files that other people saved on the chip. It recovers to your hard drive, though (you NEVER save the restored file to the storage medium you're restoring FROM - you can overwrite other missing files by doing that), so you probably have enough space for everything it recovers. (Believe it or not, if it's a 32GB card, it may recover more than 32GB of files. [The same goes for any size.] Some blocks on the card may look like pieces of different files, so you'll get that one block on more than one file.)

4) Check your SD card. If it's a counterfeit card (say, a 4GB card being sold as a 32GB card - and that's about as common as bird droppings on statues), the memory chip is 4GB, but the controller has been programmed to say it's 32GB (there's a lot more in that little card than just a memory chip), and it says 32GB in ink on the card. When you save up to 4GB on the card, everything works. As soon as you try to save a file that goes over 4GB, the card "zeros out". If the controller were programmed to 4GB, you'd just get an error that there's no space left, but this controller lets you keep adding files (because it's programmed to "be" larger than 4GB), there's no space to put the new file on, so everything goes FUBAR. This is why I buy only SanDisk cards. They make the chips (as does Samsung - and they're the only two manufacturers who do - every card uses SanDisk or Samsung chips), they make the cards, and they stand by their products. (And they're very easy to deal with if you have a problem - which is very rare.) They cost a bit more, but quality always does. (Samsung is good too, but difficult to work with if you have a problem.)