HELP ASAP! Suddenly NO SD CARD Found! Tried Everything...

[Kris Garvey]

I was putting new video files onto my phone (ext. SD card) with this 32gb micro card I've been using for about 6 months with NO ISSUES, and I have always put videos on my phone this way. I open the phone by 'browsing files', and copy/paste video files either to the internal memory or the ext. card, pasting them into a 'My Files' folder, and then the 'Movies' folder. I have always done it this way, and until the last update, I always used the regular 'Video Player' app, but recently noticed it did not want to play or show a lot of my video files it had shown before it had been updated. So I downloaded the app 'HD Video Player' which was working last night before I added new videos. After adding the files, and leaving for a day trip, I noticed the phone kept saying in the top Notification Bar, "Preparing SD Card" and then "Blank SD Card", showing a tiny SD card with a '!' in it on the Notification bar. When I check the Notification window, it says "SD Card is blank or has unsupported files". I went into the Settings>Storage and under the SD Card stats, it has one option: "Mount SD Card". Trying that only repeats the same notices in the top bar, with the occasional pop-up window asking if I want to Format my Card. I have not done so, hoping that erasing everything is a last resort.
When plugging my phone into my laptop again, the external card is not detected at ALL.

Can anyone PLEASE tell me what to do to get my phone working again with the card detected? I've checked all video files that I had added to the phone, and none of them are a different format than I have used before, nor are they corrupt at all. I've tried powering down the phone, taking out the card and making sure there isn't dust or anything else preventing it from reading properly, then re-inserting and powering up. :'(

What can I do next to save the cell phone file system on the card and getting it working again?
Thanks in advance!

 

[B. Diddy]

Remove the microSD card from your phone (making sure it's been unmounted first, which shouldn't be a problem since the phone won't even detect it now), and insert it into your computer. Use Windows Explorer or the Mac equivalent, and see if all of your video files are there. If you can access them, then back them up immediately, and reformat the card using Windows Explorer, preferably in FAT32 format. This will, of course, completely erase your SD card. Once that's done, reinsert it into your phone and see if it reads. If not, then it may be that your SD card simply failed. This kind of thing will happen eventually all SD cards after enough read-write cycles, although 6 months is a little fast--makes me think the card was slightly defective to begin with.