SD card got messed up, and game data was on it.

[NERV Agent]

This morning I turned on my smart phone only to find a message like "SD card format not supported" and that I needed to reformat the thing.

Unfortunately, I had Android games installed on that thing. Most notably, Metal Slug Defense where I acquired a bunch of limited time event only units over the past 3 years.

I have not reformatted the disk yet. I already ran "chkdsk" and it wouldn't work because it was a "RAW" volume. I tried a program called "Recuva", and it gives me an error like "invalid" drive.

I also noticed a folder in my phone (not the SD card) called "com.snkplaymore.android003". Could this be my precious Metal Slug Defense save data? I haven't reinstalled MSD on my phone for fear that the installation might wipe it all out.

Also, I didn't use cloud saving, because last time I did a few years back the process actually deleted all my game data.

How do I fix my SD card and/or recover all my MSD game data?

[Ghost X]

That situation would suck. If it is an online game, maybe your game is also saved elsewhere. Perhaps contact the game company and see if they can help you recover anything.

[NERV Agent]

I tried reformatting it in my PC and it said it couldn't format it. I tried formatting it inside the phone, and I get an error like "command failed 179,64 public".

[NERV Agent]

Phew!

I put in a brand new SD card in my phone, reinstalled MSD and immediately moved the application to the SD card. I ran the app, and all my game data is still there! Unfortunately, all the other files (pictures, documents, etc.) are all gone.

[Lex]

I know those feels. My phone was stolen last year and I had been relying on iCloud backups rather than PC for a long time, and I lost thousands of photos and videos of my life because of it. Not to mention all the app data. Unbeknownst to me not everything was being backed up to iCloud, so I have very little left compared to what was on the device. Taught me a valuable lesson about not becoming reliant on these devices, and thankful that modern era cloud services meant I didn't lose absolutely everything.

The photos and message history are the main hurt tbh ;-;

[Tennyo]

This happened to me recently. Tons of pics and videos gone. It sucks.

[NERV Agent]

Yeah, it's gone. And I had pictures and videos of different places I've been to in my life on that disk.

Before the disk crashed, it was in my Samsung Galaxy S5 and I was wasting time on YouTube until my battery life went down to 1%. When I saw this I turned off the phone and began charging it, because it has been my experience that such devices charge faster when they are off. I think that's what killed it.

Did you ever notice how men always leave the toilet seat up that whenever you shut down an Android device with an SD card inside, it says something like "Ejecting SD card, do not remove"? I think what happened was there was not enough energy left in the battery to perform the "eject" operation before turning off the phone, and that killed it.

So let this be a lesson, if you rely on an SD card on a portable device, don't let the battery go down to 1%. Stop and recharge once you go under 25% just to be safe.