I moved a large collection of videos from my Samsung Galaxy A14's internal storage to a new 128GB microSD card to free up space. The transfer initially appeared successful: the videos were visible in Samsung Gallery and their thumbnails loaded normally. Later, the phone warned that it was having trouble reading the card. The videos remained listed in Gallery, but their thumbnails became white icons with exclamation marks and none would open. After removing and reinserting the card and restarting the phone, the videos disappeared completely.
The phone and my Windows PC both recognize the card, and Windows shows it as a healthy 117GB exFAT partition with almost all space free, but none of the transferred files are visible, even with hidden files enabled. I have not formatted the card, run CHKDSK, repaired it, or written any new data to it.
I'm currently scanning the physical card with QPhotoRec using a whole-partition scan and video file types such as MP4 and MOV. At about 25% completion, it has found no files. The card was purchased online, so I'm also concerned that it may be defective or have a fake capacity.
Because I used Move rather than Copy, I'm worried that the phone deleted the originals after believing the transfer had succeeded. If PhotoRec finishes without finding anything, are there other safe recovery steps to try? Is recovery from the Galaxy A14's internal storage realistic, or would modern phone encryption make that effectively impossible? I want to avoid doing anything that could overwrite the missing data.
1 Answer
A counterfeit or failing card is a real possibility, especially when it was bought from an unfamiliar online seller. Some fake cards report a large capacity but only contain a much smaller amount of actual flash storage. Once the real space is exceeded, new data can overwrite earlier data or appear to copy successfully while not being reliably stored.
Do not format the card, run CHKDSK, or test its capacity by writing files while recovery is still the priority. Ideally, make a sector-by-sector image of the card first and perform recovery against the image rather than the original. If the videos are important, a professional recovery service is safer than repeated software scans. If PhotoRec finds nothing, the files may have been deleted, never physically written correctly, or the card’s filesystem and flash translation layer may be damaged.
I bought the card online and now suspect it may have been a fake-capacity card. I’ll avoid writing to it and focus on imaging it or getting professional help before attempting any capacity test.