Music/Podcasts, disappeared from SD Card

[Alex Simpson1]

I have an S4 with a 16 GB SD Card installed. I have moved many apps and as much data storage as possible onto the SD card. Today, my podcasts and music show up as empty (and the podcast app says external device is unavailable (so it can't redownload them). Data points:

• When I go into My Files, it can't see the SD Card.
• When I go into ES File Explorer, I can see the SD card but can't see the music folder/nothing is in the podcasts folder.
• I put the card in the reader and plugged it into my Mac, and it says it's not a supported device/asked me to reformat it.
• When I go into Settings/Storage, nothing happens when I try to mount it.

Weird part -- I took a picture and it saved a picture on the SD card. And I can see it through ES File Manager and open it. But, then the camera said it was unavailable (presumably because no storage). Now it's working again.

Is this card just shot? Should I reformat it? What happens if I reformat it -- do I have to go get all of the apps again and designate them to go to the card (or will that happen automatically. That was very tedious.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Unfortunately, the card is probably failing or corrupt. This is not uncommon, especially with Samsung devices. If you had a PC, I'd suggest running chkdsk, but I'm not sure what the equivalent is on a Mac: http://forums.androidcentral.com/am...guide-using-chkdsk-fix-corrupted-sd-card.html

If you reformat the card, you'll definitely lose all of the data. The apps that were moved to SD will probably become "broken," so you'd need to uninstall them from the phone, then reinstall again. Some apps may automatically move to SD, but not all, so you'd need to check yourself.