If you manage to find one that can at least expose the card as a block device, then you can take an image of the data. You could also try various alternative readers. That will not help with recovery at all and it will likely cause further damage. I would not recommend opening it up under any circumstances. But I really would not expect any results, and at best you might manage to read some of the data off of it before it dies again. You could try pressing the card together (in case it became a little loose?) and maybe cleaning the contacts with a little bit of Isopropyl alcohol on a swab. SuperUser contributor Bob has the answer for us: Is there any hope of recovering the data from this microSD card?

What can she do to recover the data from her microSD card? She does not have access to a Linux computer, but does have access to her Android phone. Doing so resulted in the error: “ The device is not ready.“

After trying #3, she tried opening the ‘Removable Disk’ in FreeCommander.

The card reader shows up as ‘Removable Disk’ in Windows Explorer, but clicking on ‘Removable Disk’ in Windows Explorer results in the error: “ Insert disk: Please insert a disk into the Removable Disk.“ The computer recognized the card reader and installed drivers for it.

She then put the microSD card into a USB 2.0 external card reader and inserted the card reader into a USB port on a Windows 7 SP1 computer.

The computer did not recognize its presence at all.

She took the microSD card out and put it inside a full-size SD card adapter, then inserted it into a Windows 7 SP1 computer.

Her phone was then unable to read the microSD card at all.

Today, her phone suddenly said something along the lines of: “ Your SD card is blank or an unsupported format.“.

The phone was never exposed to water or temperature extremes.

She used the card in her Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone for over a month.

The store will take it back, but that does not really help.

The microSD card is less than two years old (probably about a year old).

I told her I would post this and see if anyone could help. I am trying to help a friend who is very concerned that she has just lost all of the data on her 32 GB SanDisk microSD card. SuperUser reader RockPaperLizard wants to know if it is possible to recover data from a microSD card that cannot be read:

Recover micro sd