Hello dear FP community,
I wanted to move files from my FP3+ to my SD card (to free some storage space), and apparently it formatted the SDcard instead…!
So now all my files are lost (pictures, videos, etc.), phone AND card are empty, AND the card is now apparently corrupted (in RAW format).
I tried several tools to recover the data from the SD, but it looks either empty, corrupted, or some weird files are found, super light and that can’t be opened anyway.
The “Storage” menu on the FP3+ is also unstable now, so I can’t explore it to try and fix anything.
Any explanation about the phenomena? Has it happened to anyone yet? And any ideas about how to recover lost data, on the phone or on the SD card?
Thank you so much,
Elodie
Welcome to the community forum elodie32 and so sorry to hear about your problem.
To be honest it’s not looking good, but maybe you could check to see if there’s a Fairphone Angel near you who might be able to help or advise.
It sounds to me as though your SD card may have been formatted as an extension of internal memory, instead of being removable. Are you familiar with the “Android SD card paradigm”?
P.S. - In view of the unstable state of the file manager, it’s possible that in order to get the phone back into a good working state you may have to perform a factory reset. I strongly advise copying any files that you can still access, and backing up or making notes of app configurations, passwords etc.
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Thank you for your answer!
Indeed it wasn’t looking good. For a few more days I tried retrieving lost data from the phone and from the SD card with various software, but nothing worked, and as the phone was unstable I performed a factory reset, after a complete save. The reset worked, but I wasn’t able to backup anything, apparently even the saving crashed.
Well it’s a good way of learning to let things go 
But it made me very doubtful about purchasing a new Fairphone to replace this one in a few months, my trust is kind of broken. This one lasted 4 years tops before crashing, and that sounds very similar to any other brand, so I’m not so sure it’s such a big change in consuming habits.
Any way, I hope no-one encounters the same problem as I did. It’s very alienating.
Have a good day,
Elodie
Please be aware that users with other phones than Fairphones shared the same experience according to the internet. It’s more of an issue with halfway recent Android versions, even if it was not a good idea technically from the very beginning.
Don’t let your SD card be formatted as Internal Storage. On any phone. Ever. Reasons are given in our sdcardguide, which @OldRoutard already linked to.
@urs_lesse … since you posted an /e/OS screenshot with how /e/OS addressed this issue here and since you tend to have access to the different Fairphones:
Do you know how current Fairphone OS on the Fairphone 3(+)/4/5 handles this in the meantime? Was a warning or something similar implemented?
There is definitely no warning against internal storage (phone storage) on Fairphone OS (I wonder if Google certification would tolerate such a warning), but my most recent experience was that at least on the FP5 portable storage (external storage) is now suggested first, with the other option only offered once you swipe on from the first screen:
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