Galaxy S4 not reading + erasing SD card suddenly when phone has always worked fine?

A

AC Question

Hi guys,

I've had an S4 for a few months, had the screen replaced one time after dropping it, but still works fine. My 32gb SanDisk SD card, containing about 16gb worth of music and photos, has been doing its job for the past 3 years or so as well.
Yesterday morning I turned on my phone, as I always do, and went to the music app, but all of a sudden no music was there whatsoever. I went to Settings>Storage and it said that there was no SD card inserted, so I reinserted the card, but I got a message in the notification tab saying that the "SD card is blank or has unsupported file system".
As dedicated as I am, I formatted my entire SD card on my computer and put all the music back on it. When inserting the card into my S4, it read all the files perfectly. No issues at all. I turned my phone off in the evening. However, this morning I turned it back on, went to the music app again, and nothing was there yet again. I'm getting the same error message.
Both of these options (blank or unsupported file system) seemed impossible to me, as both my phone and card have always been working fine. Maybe I could have accidentally damaged my SD card while connecting it to my computer, or maybe the SD card slot of my phone has been damaged? I'm going to buy a new 32gb card just to be sure that it's not my phone malfunctioning, but maybe someone here has the same problem and knows what's going on?
 

B. Diddy

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Mar 9, 2012
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Welcome to Android Central! The card might just be failing. SD cards don't last forever, and quality can vary, even within a company. Counterfeit cards are also a problem--you can check your card's integrity by using SD Insight.
 

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