unable to turn on USB Debugging after failure

[Android Central Question]

I have a xiaomi redmi note 9s. While transferring photos to a sd card something went wrong. this is the current situation:
* the file manager on the device does not show the photos
* about this device tells that 68.5 of 128 GB of memory is used (64 of which is internal and 64 on the sd card). this corresponds more or less to the situation before the problem occurred, so it looks as if the photos are still there somewhere.
* I can access the device using android file transfer on my Mac but all photos are gone. it reports that 55.43 GB is available. I am unsure if that is on a total of 128 GB (including the sd card) or 64 GB (not including the sd card)
* I switched on developer options, but when I want to switch on USB Debugging, the usual popup does not appear, instead the previous window is shown. If I try again the USB Debugging is not on. As a consequence, data recovery software (I am using Tenorshare UltData) fails to connect with the device.

?? Is there another way to turn on USB Debugging?
?? are there data recovery tools that work without USB Debugging turned on?
?? if I uninstall some apps, would that help?

All help is greatly appreciated!
Bert
#1

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! It sounds like you had formatted the SD card as Internal Storage, correct? If so, it may be that the card became corrupt, or was counterfeit to begin with (which can lead to system crashes). This is why we typically recommend against using an SD card as Internal Storage.

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