Hello everybody, I own a ZTE Blade Zmax 7.1.1 and I'm having problems. Few days ago I decided to format my SD card so I was able to move my music and apps over to it like I've done before on another Android phone. Well, once I did the format, a suggestion came up about automatically moving my data, photos, files, etc all to the SD card, said it would take 17 minutes. So I did the automatic move and let it do it's thing. Towards the end I didn't watch the phone and it finished. I assumed it restarted itself and after that, my SD card disappeared from ES File Explorer I downloaded. If I go into storage in settings, it shows the SD card is full of the data it moved approximately 15 gigs which sounds right. I've tried looking for a solution online, but nobody explains nothing about what I want to do. I would either like to return all the data, files, etc back to the phone, or somehow be able to access the SD card like I've been able to do before the format. I don't have a computer, I'd figure this could all be done on the phone since I did this on the phone. But I'm no expert, that's why I'm here. Thank you for reading and I hope somebody here can help me out.
Hi if you can register a account here , me or other members be happy to assist you.
I'll provide a link to register so you can communicate here.
https://forums.androidcentral.com/ask-question/409154-join-android-central-community.html
Welcome to Android Central! When you format an SD card as Internal Storage, the phone recognizes the card as an extension of its Internal Storage, and so it won't report the files on there as on a separate SD card. Have you looked for these files under Internal Storage?
Remember also that when you format as Internal Storage, the SD card becomes encrypted to that phone, and only that phone can read the card. If you remove the card and put it in another device, that device won't be able to read it since it doesn't have the encryption key. This is very important to know, because if anything ever happens to the phone that formatted the card, the data on the card is essentially lost forever.
Remember also that when you format as Internal Storage, the SD card becomes encrypted to that phone, and only that phone can read the card. If you remove the card and put it in another device, that device won't be able to read it since it doesn't have the encryption key. This is very important to know, because if anything ever happens to the phone that formatted the card, the data on the card is essentially lost forever.
The OP of this thread, @IckyVicky327, sent me a PM with this reply, since she was having difficulty posting to this thread:
"I do understand the encryption of the card, and it being useless to other devices. I dont plan to change devices. However, the card identifying itself as internal storage seems odd. When I go into my ES File Explorer, it would usually show up top "internal storage" then "SD card" next to it with the size right underneath them. Internal storage is 15.7 gigs lighter. What i've done was format the card then I automatically moved my phone files,pictures, music, onto the card. After it was complete, everything seemed fine until I tried to access my pictures and the music files I had on the actual internal storage. They are not where they should be.I can go into settings>storage and I can see the card has my 15.7 gigs. But only options it gives me are to unformat and it will delete everything I put on the card. I do not own a computer either so I'm on the device now. I just want to undo what ive done. If it helps,my phone is not rooted. Thanks for helping out!"
Go to Settings>Storage -- is there a listing for the SD card there? If so, tap it, then tap the Menu button, and see if there's a Migrate Data option there, which should move all data back to Internal Storage.
"I do understand the encryption of the card, and it being useless to other devices. I dont plan to change devices. However, the card identifying itself as internal storage seems odd. When I go into my ES File Explorer, it would usually show up top "internal storage" then "SD card" next to it with the size right underneath them. Internal storage is 15.7 gigs lighter. What i've done was format the card then I automatically moved my phone files,pictures, music, onto the card. After it was complete, everything seemed fine until I tried to access my pictures and the music files I had on the actual internal storage. They are not where they should be.I can go into settings>storage and I can see the card has my 15.7 gigs. But only options it gives me are to unformat and it will delete everything I put on the card. I do not own a computer either so I'm on the device now. I just want to undo what ive done. If it helps,my phone is not rooted. Thanks for helping out!"
Go to Settings>Storage -- is there a listing for the SD card there? If so, tap it, then tap the Menu button, and see if there's a Migrate Data option there, which should move all data back to Internal Storage.
Rukbat
Retired Moderator
It also doesn't have a root directory - that's on the internal storage (/emulated or /sd0 partition) so even if the data weren't encrypted, the card would show as unformatted.
Also, if he had, say, a DCIM folder on the card and one in internal storage, the files would have moved, but they'd still "be in"* the internal DCIM folder. (That's one of the reasons that Samsung [and LG, I believe] chose to not implement adoptable storage - you can lose track of where things went. The major reason, of course, is that it eats SD cards for breakfast.)
But if he finds the folders that had been "on the SD card", the files should still be in them.
*Files don't actually "move" when you move them on the same physical+logical device (in other words, from C: to C:, or from internal DCIM to internal DCIM), their directory entries are moved. So a file isn't "in" a directory (or folder), it's associated with that folder. It resides in the storage medium, eMMC or SD, in the case of an Android. In this case, the file is put on the SD Card, removed from internal storage, then its information (name, size, dates, etc.) is written to the directory it "belongs to" - which is usually going to be in eMMC (internal) storage.
IckyVicky327
Member
IckyVicky327
Member
-
Hello, Rukbat thank you for your reply. The SD card is a 32 gig card(same as internal). It was empty when I started the format. That's why I wanted to add all the files, music, apps to the card. It seems my pictures and music have disappeared from any kind of view. But all apps work fine like they did before.
The SD card currently shows 15.7gigs. but interaction with it is unavailable.ive looked all through my phone's files to find the SD card or even my pictures, found nothing. It looks almost like a fresh phone. Thanks for your to and I apologise to all for delayed replise, im gonna look into downloading the app to communicate here easier
IckyVicky327
Member
IckyVicky327
Member
IckyVicky327
Member
This is what it says when I tap migrate data. What would this do?
Attachments
This should migrate any data you had moved to the SD card back to the phone's internal storage, although I'm not sure why it says it will free 301 MB on Phone. Check the SD storage info after you migrate, and see if it went down dramatically. If so, then you moved everything back to Internal Storage, after which you can reformat the card as Portable Storage.
IckyVicky327
Member
IckyVicky327
Member
Okay so I did the migrate, and it seems to have deleted most of what I had on the SD card. It's still not accessible, but now it's obvious now it's set as phone storage since data has disappeared and the sizes match. It seems Its almost like its the internal storage I can't access. I went into ES and most of the files have nothing in them when they did before migrate. I went ahead and tried to see if it created a new general folder deeper in the system(far as I can go without root) which is a gance lin the third picture, I pressed delete to show the size of boh files holding everything I know on the phone. Both of those folders claim to be empty but they aren't. Nothing has been returned to it's proper place.
Attachments
IckyVicky327
Member
You're looking in /DCIM/Camera on Internal Storage with the file manager to look for your photos, correct?
IckyVicky327
Member
Yes and I also looked in Google photos and my gallery. They only hold the recent pictures I've taken or screenshots. It almost appears I'm looking on the SD card and only the SD card since it's set for internal. None of that data moved to the phone otherwise the original storag wouldve went up backup greatly near full storage. Before I started, phone storage was about 4 gigs away from being full.
IckyVicky327
Member
Original phone storage would've never been down to 3gigs with all the hardware apps, that's impossible without a root.
Hmm, it's tough to say what really happened. Adoptable Storage can be a bit of a crapshoot, since some manufacturers implement it worse than others, which could lead to data loss. Another possibility is a corrupt or counterfeit card -- counterfeit cards are typically programmed to report more storage than they actually have, and if the user tries to store more data on the card than it can handle, that can cause various kinds of corruption or data loss.
@Rukbat, you have any more ideas on this?
@Rukbat, you have any more ideas on this?
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