Why did my SD card and main storage disappeared ?

[Android Central Question]

Tab 4 8 running Android 8.1. Tablet has worked very well for two years.
Problems started yesterday with message from Dropbox: app has stopped, again and again and gmail checking for new mails at the same time again and again... aaaand SD card just disappeared ( I have it for internal storage use)
Looking at file manager where it shows Personal space, it shows O available out of 0. When trying to view documents, photo album and downloads in File manager. The error message “failed to enter directory” appears.

The majority of the apps continue to work. I I’ve tried clearing the cache with no change. I suppose the next step would be to do a total reset.?

In Google photos, I can see part of my photos but not all of them. I can't download anything, all my files are gone...can't save a screen shot. I un installed Dropbox and reinstalled but can't open it...
My main storage is 13.28Gb out of 16gb...so still some space...
I think I would do with some help... thanks

 

[mustang7757]

Try putting the sd card in the computer see if it reads it , might have a corrupt card .

I'll leave a link to register so you can communicate here, as a guest account u cant .

https://forums.androidcentral.com/showthread.php?t=409154

 

[anon(10614692)]

If you are using the SD card as adoptable storage, it sounds like it failed. You can kiss goodbye to anything on it.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Yeah, I agree with Galactic Zoo -- it sounds like the SD card failed, which can cause other things to crash if you had it formatted as Internal Storage. You may just have to do the factory reset. You could try reformatting that card, but if you do, I recommend only using it as Portable Storage (and don't use it as the sole storage for important data -- make sure you back up to somewhere else as well, like the cloud or a computer hard drive).