How do I get my s7 edge to use the SD card again for storage??

[Android Central Question]

I bought my s7 edge new two years ago. At the time, I added a 32gb micro sd card. This entire time, I've used it as regular storage for the phone.

After all this time though, it was getting full of photos. So I turned off the phone, popped it out and copied all the files to my pc for storage since I figured it would be faster than going through the phone directly. (In the past, when I've plugged the phone in to transfer files, it takes forever.)

When I put the sd card back into the phone and turned it back on, now the phone doesn't recognize it as storage anymore!! It is showing up with a little card icon and it just prompts me to "transfer files" - but I don't want to take files OFF, I want to continue using it as internal storage!

What is going on?? Why does it suddenly not work? All I did was take it out to transfer files faster!

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Go to Settings>Storage. Is there an option to Mount SD Card?

 

[missmturner]

Sorry, I forgot I had a login. So this is me still.

I don't have Settings > Storage. The best I have is Settings > Device Maintenance > Storage.

At that point though, it just shows me how to clean up storage. if I click the three dots at the top, I get "Storage Settings" and that tells me

Device Storage
28.97GB
used out of 32.00 gb

Internal storage
28.97 gb used of 32.00 gb

Portable Storage
SD Card
28.44 GB used of 29.71 GB

And an icon to unmount it.

That's it. What the heck??

 

[B. Diddy]

That shows that the phone still detects the card. If you use the My Files app, can you explore the directories on the SD card? The icon you see in the notification panel might just be a reminder that you've inserted an SD card -- you can typically just dismiss that notification.

 

[missmturner]

Ok this is so weird. Last night and this morning, I couldn't even view the files on the card. Like, when I went into my gallery, the 7,000 pics weren't even showing up as an album. Hence the panic.

Now they are there. I really don't know why it took like 12 hours to actually "see" the card again nor why I couldn't dismiss the sd card notification about transferring files during that time either.

It seems to be working at the moment though so I'll take it. I appreciate the reply.

 

[B. Diddy]

Glad you found them! It may be that the phone was taking a while to re-scan the card and rebuild the database for the Gallery app. Remember that the Gallery app isn't a location -- the phone periodically scans all storage locations for new image files and adds them to the gallery's database, and the Gallery app displays them.

If you haven't already, I'd take this opportunity to make sure your photos are backed up somewhere safe, because SD cards are inherently one of the least reliable storage media available to you. Never use an SD card as the sole storage for valuable data. I highly recommend taking advantage of Google Photos auto-backup: https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6193313?co=GENIE.Platform=Android&hl=en. Choose High Quality instead of Original Quality to get unlimited cloud storage for your photos.

 

[stanglifemike]

@B. Diddy When using Google Photos, how much worse is "High Quality" than "Original Quality"?

 

[B. Diddy]

Before I got a Pixel phone, all of my photos were uploaded in High Quality (one of the benefits of having a Pixel is getting unlimited Original Quality backups to Google Photos). I've never really noticed a difference in the quality. High Quality is supposed to limit photo quality to 16 megapixels, with only a small amount of compression. You'd probably only notice if you save photos as RAW files (a huge, lossless format), but with a typical jpeg, it shouldn't be an issue.