Samsung S8 Plus update issue

[Android Central Question]

Hi,

A recent update (couple of days ago) which came through on VZW S8 Plus basically reset the device, wiped the SD card clean, as well as what was on internal, rebooted to what is pretty much a new device. Has anyone else experienced this? Also, within 2 days, there is another system update notification on the device? So far, using a couple of recovery programs, have been unable to recover the sd - any really good program ideas that may work?

Thanks!

 

[Rukbat]

PhotoRec will recover anything that's still on the card (even if the filesystem is corrupted or gone). There are Windows, Mac and Linux versions. (It's free.) It's forensic software - it doesn't write to the card. It may take days, if the card is large enough, but it works. (You won't get the file names back - they're not in the files, they're in the filesystem, which PhotoRec doesn't look at - instead you get generic names File0001 and the correct type, so you might get File0001.jpg or File0001.mp3. For pictures and music there are programs that can mass-rename a folder full of files from their header information (EXIF for pictures, iTAG for music, etc.)

If PhotoRec doesn't find anything, it's not there, so don't waste time or money on something that claims to be able to find missing files. (This is software that should be selling for thousands of dollars, but Christophe isn't greedy.) The question is whether this runaway "update" just formatted the card (almost any good recovery program will work on that) or it actually zeroed the card out (nothing will work on that).

 

[TheWayOfYahweh]

Thank you very much for that detailed reply! We will give PhotoRec a try this evening and see if anything comes up! Again, thanks!