🇩🇪 🇬🇧 Wie falsche SD-Karten-Formatierung am einfachsten rückgängig machen? / How to undo wrong formatting of sd-card?

:uk: I’m a little late to the SD-card-fuckup party: I too made the mistake of using an obvious feature that has worked in other devices for years, instead of backing up first and reading the support forum. Oh well. One piece of advice for the manufacturer: if you can’t fix a bug even after at least 4 years, but you have knowledge of it, maybe you should at least put a warning sticker on the SD slot so customers know about it beforehand. This is really lame. My wife has gladly supported the Fairphone idea since the FP 1, but if her vacation photos were lost, I can guarantee you that the FP 3 was her last.

The photos are (in all likelihood) not lost, as uploaded to Google Photos. The remaining question is: What is the easiest way to undo the incorrect formatting? I would like to avoid having to completely set up the device from scratch. Is a complete reset really necessary or can I move apps etc back to the internal storage and reformat the card as portable?

:de: Ich bin ein wenig spät zur SD-Karten-Fuckup-Party: Auch ich habe den Fehler gemacht, eine naheliegende Funktion zu verwenden, die in anderen Geräten seit Jahren funktioniert, statt zunächst ein Backup zu machen und das Support-Forum zu lesen. Nun gut. Ein Rat für den Hersteller: Wenn man einen Bug auch nach mindestens 4 Jahren nicht beheben kann, aber Kenntnis von ihm hat, sollte man vielleicht wenigstens einen Warnsticker an den SD-Slot kleben, damit die Kunden sich vorher informieren. Das ist echt schwach. Meine Ehefrau hat die Fairphone-Idee gern seit dem FP 1 unterstützt, aber wenn ihre Urlaubsfotos verlorgengegangen sein sollten, kann ich euch garantieren, dass das FP 3 das letzte war.

Die Fotos sind aller Voraussicht nach nicht verloren, da zu Google Fotos hochgeladen. Die noch offene Frage ist: Wie kann ich die fehlerhafte Formatierung am einfachsten wieder rückgängig machen? Ich würde gern darauf verzichten, das Gerät komplett neu einrichten zu müssen. Ist tatsächlich ein kompletter Reset erforderlich oder kann ich Apps etc zurück in den internen Speicher verschieben und die Karte neu (portabel) formattieren?

Tanks in advance, vielen Dank im Voraus
a grumpy
m_t

Android 11, Build 8901.4.A.0017.3

You don’t have to reset the phone just use the phone to reformat the SD which means you will loose and personal data still on the card.

What does that mean? It was a new sd card. There is nothing else on it. But the Memory-page in Settings (at least I guess this name, it’s Speicher in German) tells me, on inserting the card the phone moved 11 GB of apps to sd card and 1,9 GB of other (andere) data. Will that be re-migrated to internal memory by the phone, when I reformat the SD?

Hopefully yes, but individual cases may not work the same depending upon what apps were in itiall y moved. If you try to reformat it will hopefully ask if that is what you want, so don’t press options to quickly and miss something important.

Was genau meinst Du denn mit fehlerhafte Formatierung? Falsches Dateisystem verwendet? Wenn die Formatierung nicht erfolgreich war oder nicht bis zu Ende durchgeführt wurde (obwohl das ja ziemlich flott geht) sollte man die Karte natürlich nicht einsetzen - dann wäre Datenverlust wahrscheinlich (aber dann gleich sofort, nicht erst später). Falsches Dateisystem führt dazu, dass die Karte gar nicht erst eingebunden wird, dann kann man auch nichts draufschreiben, was verloren gehen würde.

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If I see it correctly, one moved app is Threema. Of course, I’m afraid that chats will be lost. It is not recognizable for me, if it’s the case with messages and phone book. So I will make backups of everything as a precaution. sigh

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Ich habe den Fehler gemacht, eine neue SD-Karte, die ich zur Speichererweiterung eingelegt habe , vom Telefon als “Interner Speicher” formatieren zu lassen. Das liegt zwar nahe, wenn man nur den Gerätespeicher vergrößern will, und klappt bei meinen Samsungs auch prima, führt beim FP3 aber zu Datenverlust, in meinem Fall der kompletten Foto- und Videogalerie. Richtig wäre “Portabler Speicher” (oder so) gewesen. Das Problem ist alt, es gibt dazu schon einige Threads. Habe ich aber leider erst danach gesehen.

At least I can confirm that this is how it worked: I formatted the SD in the FP as mobile storage and nothing more was lost. All apps are working.
Nevertheless, all media (pictures, videos etc) and all own files and downloads on the device were initially deleted. Fortunately I had backed up the pictures manually a few weeks ago and synced them with Google Photos in the meantime. However, all media (voice messages, pictures, videos) that were received via Threema are still lost.
My wife, whose phone it is, is surprisingly forgiving, but I would not and certainly will not purchase an FP in the future.
FP supposedly can’t reproduce the bug it’s known about for years (makes you wonder how thoroughly it’s been tested) and therefore fix it. However, it is also not warned. This is despite the fact that all personal data on the phone can potentially be lost. Not cool.

This is not an FP issue but an Android one since Android 6

The problem is excacerbated by being given an option upon inserting an SD as how it is to be formatted with the Internal option being the first.

As many people don’t look in to the difference they often chose the easy option. Personnally I format SD cards in my PC before using them in a phone.

There’s no warning as you note as this is a Google Android issue that fairphone are not licensed to intefere with.

There is some guidence on the Fairphone website

https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360048780971-FP3-Install-a-Micro-SD-card

It’s always a big pain, when data is lost, so I can understand, what you are saying:

but, all data not included in a backup can get lost at any time, so it’s not a fault of Android or Fairphone, when you loose data, but your own fault.
The phone can get damaged, stolen or lost, the SD card is prone to become faulty, a virus can struck your computer and encrypt the data of all connected devices and so on.

So without a proper backup routine, you can only blame yourself.

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Correct, but it’s still baffling that such a troublesome choice still gets offered.
And Fairphone can be blamed for this, as there was a time when this feature wasn’t easily available to the user (when the Fairphone 3 started out with Android 9). This can be handled much better.

As far as I can remember, that was always the first choice on the FP3.

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