Solved SD card reported missing but still seems to be there

[cwwozniak]

The MicroSD card on my Moto e phone went missing this morning. I had the phone face down in do-not-disturb mode overnight. When I flipped it over in the morning I had alerts the microSD card (PNY 32GB Elite Class 10 U1) was not supported and another alert that it was missing. Shutting down and restarting two times did not change anything.

When I first installed the SD card in March 2021 it was set up as removable storage. I reconfigured it as internal storage a few months ago and everything seemed to be working fine back then. I had thought I had installed or moved a number of apps to the microSD card, but only Firefox is now shown as missing.

I removed the card and cleaned the contacts with some IPA and a cotton swab. It is still reported as missing.

Here is what I think is the weird part. I have my phone set to save camera photos to only the SD card and not use any cloud storage. I turned off data and WiFi and tried to take a picture. I got a popup error that the photo could not be saved as there was no SD card. This is what I expected. However, the phone's photo album shows all of the photos taken from when I got the phone through some taken yesterday. If the card is truly not detectable by the OS, how am I able to view the photos?

The phone shows up in Windows 10 file explorer when I connect the phone by USB to my desktop PC but does not show any folders in the phone at all.

How do I get the phone to recognize the SD card again? I don't have any spare microSD cards at the moment to test if the original card had somehow gone bad.

The OS is Android 10 Kernel version 4.9.206-perf+

 

[cwwozniak]

It turned out that the microSD may actually be bad. I purchased and installed a new one. It is recognized by the phone. I will keep it as removable storage for now.

I discovered that the photos were (also?) saved in the phone's built-in 32GB memory. I had the phone forget about the old memory card and I can again take and save photos.