Fairphone 3: Micro SD-Card 128 GB - Pics from my cam not accessible, whatsapp pics not downloadable

Hi,

I have installed a 128 GB Micro SD Card in my FP3 and have a couple of issues now. It has asked me to transfer 10 GB of data to the card straight away after inserting it, which I have done.
First issue now: I am using a gallery app which does NOT show pics from my cam anymore. It has probably transferred all of those to the card, where I cannot find them.
Second issue: Going into my Whatsapp-stream, I cannot download/view pics there anymore, it probably has lost the path where to save them (?).
Third issue: Restarting the phone presents me with an error issue that the SD card can not be found. Going into the Android settings and checking the space on my phone, it shows the SD card tho and also some of the content that is on there.
Are there easy steps to transfer the data back to my phone storage? Can I just eject the SD card (my feeling is thats not advisable).
Can somebody help?
Best wishes,
Lars

Is your microSD card formatted as “phone storage”?
(Have a look at Settings > Storage – if there is no “portable storage” or “Mobiler Speicher” headline above the SD card line, then it’s “phone storage”)

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If formatted as Portable you should see the Eject icon to the right.

For more info

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Thank you for your replies,
I have chosen phone storage. Yes I have seen the eject button, am worried though what happens to the data already on there. Will it restore my old settings and transfer the data back or will it leave everything as it is and lock my data into the sd card?
Best regards!

There’s no eject button usually when the SD card is set as phone or internal storage ??

The best thing is to keep it as internal until you can retrieve the data you want by exporting it.

Clearly you can’t just take it out and reformat it without loosing personal media and app data.

I took it out, it wasn’t a winner tho. All pics from my gallery app had disappeared, Whatsapp still didn’t know where to save pics (can’t download /view) and my camera was unusable. Am not sure how to proceed here… :frowning_face:

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By the way, yes, there is a rider that allows one to eject it also in this setting. Maybe I just try it.

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You might have look at this post to see if the steps mentioned might help you too:

EDIT: Also have a look here although I’m not sure if it also applies perfectly for a FP3:

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Hi and thanks!
Interesting, the SD storage showed 12 GB yesterday, which has shrunk to a mere 8GB overnight. Its getting even weirder: Accessing it, it shows me all kind of rubbish, but my pictures are not among them. So they are the first things that disappeared from the phone, were (apparently) transferred to the SD, but cannot be found there either. It is as if some evil force wanted to make sure it hurts - luckily, I have transferred all of them to my NAS server yesterday. Checking the size of all the files on there, it does not even amount to 1 GB, though it still shows me 8GB. Am now wondering if all these GB are actually taken up by my pics, only I can’t access them.

I just want to make sure I have taken all files before I reinstall everything on my phone. Any ideas where the files have disappeared to?

Have you checked the DCIM folder (default location for photos) or just the “Pictures” folder?

Both yea, they both hold zero files.

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probably this can help to check for the files? PhotoRec | heise Download

Hi there,
thanks, fortunately I had backed up my stuff on my nas before inserting the SD, so they weren’t really gone. I saw no other way but a complete wipe of the phone and set up from scratch. Luckily that worked, was a bit of an unexpected horror show…

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Well I happy your past the bad experience, but like you I always have an off phone backup and the SD card is always portable :slight_smile:

Thanks for keeping the forum updated, hopefully others will take something useful from your posts.

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