Honor 8 Asking for SD Card Password After Restart

[Android Central Question]

Normally, whenever I restart my Honor 8, I get prompted to enter my 4 digit pin. However, a few days ago, I restarted my phone and after entering my usual pin, I immediately got prompted to enter a password for my 32 GB microsd card. This was the first time I ever received this message and I know 100% that no password was ever set on the card. Similar to other people's situations, I had my pictures from the past 6 months including my overseas trip that was stored on the card and have no way of backing up anything.

Simply put, has anyone experienced something similar? Before a few days ago, I had no issues accessing my music and photos on the card. Now, I can only see files saved to the phone itself.

I did buy a card reader and try to see if my computer could access the card but nothing was recognized. I also took an old android phone that I no longer use and put my card into it but it also did not recognize anything. It seems that whatever happened, the card is tied to my Honor 8. If I pull the card out, the password option disappears. If put the card in, then I get the password prompt. Hopefully someone can speak of a similar situation and share their experience.

 

[Rukbat]

have no way of backing up anything.

First, go to Google Photos and see if they're there. Photo backup is on by default.

Music is another thing - but you do have a free Google Drive account that you can back things up to, and MEGA is also free. (And there are about a dozen other sites - there's really no legitimate reason today to not back everything up (even your apps if you want to), unless you have some files that are classified secret by the government, and then they probably have their own backup servers. (I currently have about a TB backed up on various accounts, all free. If we had the internet in the 70s, I'd have tons more. I don't throw out software - you can never tell when someone desperately needs a program to ... and I've already written one a few decades ago that I can make a few changes to and sell again.)

If the pictures aren't backed up to GP, there's probably nothing you can do unless you know some Huawei software engineers who can create the password from the phone's firmware. One of the things the password depends on (and there may be a few others) is the phone itself - the encryption for the password is done based on that. When you enter the password, it's encrypted again, and the two encrypted passwords - the one on the SD card and the one you entered - are compared. If they match, the encrypted password is used to decrypt the card. (Standard years-old encryption method.) Even putting the card into another Honor 8 wouldn't decrypt it. Even the NSA would have a tough time decrypting it if you used a - oh, 20 character password.

Using 4 digits to lock a phone made it easy for people to spend an hour on a phone they stole and get it working - so thank phone thieves for forcing the manufacturers for coming up with unbreakable passwording.

 

[anon(123479)]

was the sdcard encrypted ?