I hope Android and SD cards work the same way as other OSs and common file systems in that normal deletion does not physically remove the data from the storage device, but only from the file table (please correct me if I'm wrong). Under Windows, I always get the error message that the card needs to be formatted first.Īfter the accidental deletion, the microSD card was immediately removed from the phone, so I'm fairly certain that the files are still 'healthy'. The microSD card is not encrypted and quite new, but for some reason, I've never been able to access the card from any PC when plugged into a card reader - only through the smartphone or when the phone is connected to the PC via USB and only using the MTP protocol.
I accidentally deleted important documents (about 100 PDFs) that weren't backed up yet from a 64 GB microSD card, which is used as the primary storage in my unrooted Android 9.0 smartphone.
