Error – SD Card Unexpectedly Removed
Have you ever encountered the “SD card unexpectedly removed. Unmount the SD card before removing to avoid data loss” error message?
The “SD card removed unexpectedly” error has perplexed many users according to a recent study. For instance, a user described his problem in forums.lenovo.com:
I'm getting the SD card unexpectedly removed error on my phone for the past few days. Initially, it happened when I opened the Boom Beach game. But later it happened randomly and more often. There is no problem with the device because I tried a different SD card and it worked perfectly. And the SD card worked perfectly on other devices. How to solve this? Please help!
forums.lenovo.com
Generally, to fix the SD card keeps unmounting issue, you had better find out the causes first and then try the corresponding ways to solve it.
Why Does My Phone Keep Saying SD Card Unexpectedly Removed?
What causes the error message – SD card unexpectedly removed? The possible reasons are as follows.
- The connection between your phone/digital camera and SD card is loose. So, the device cannot detect the SD card successfully.
- The SD card is not formatted. Sometimes when the SD card needs to be formatted but is not formatted, you will receive the SD card unexpectedly removed error message.
- The SD card is incompatible with your device. It is recommended to check the version and instructions of both the SD card and your phone or digital camera to see whether they are matched.
- Your phone or digital camera is damaged. You can connect your SD card to your PC to check whether it is working normally. If it works fine, then it means that there is no issue with your SD card. If not, your phone or digital camera may get damaged.
- SD card has been attacked by a virus. You can run antivirus software to scan the SD card and remove viruses.
- The SD card is broken after long-term use. It is time to buy a new one.
- …
How to Fix SD Card Unexpectedly Removed
After knowing why your camera or phone keeps saying “SD card removed unexpectedly”, you need to find a reliable way to fix it.
Solution #1. Re-Insert the SD Card
If your phone or digital camera keeps saying “SD card unexpectedly removed. Unmount the SD card before removing to avoid data loss,” you can try reinserting the SD card into your phone. For instance, you can follow the steps below to reinsert the SD card and restart your phone:
Step 1: Turn off your phone and then remove the SD card.
Step 2: If your phone comes with a removable battery, take the battery out for minutes.
Step 3: Turn on your phone again and go to Settings > Storage to make sure the SD card is removed.
Step 4: Turn off your device again, and then insert the SD card back into its slot.
Step 5: Now switch on your phone to check whether the problem is fixed.
Solution #2. Unmount and Re-Mount the SD Card
Some users said that they solved the SD card keeps unmounting error on their Android smartphones by unmounting and re-mounting the SD card from Settings.
The steps are as follows:
Step 1: Go to Settings > Storage.
Step 2: Click on Unmount SD Card, then tap OK to confirm in the pop-up window.
Step 3: Turn off your phone and remove the SD card. Then insert the SD card back into the device again.
Step 4: Go back to Settings > Storage.
Step 5: Click the Mount SD Card button which will only appear while the SD card is unmounted.
Solution #3. Format the SD Card
Sometimes, if the SD card is not formatted, you will receive an error message saying your SD card has been removed unexpectedly. In this situation, to fix this issue, you should format your SD card.
However, formatting will erase all data on the SD card. What should you do if you don’t want to lose your precious photos as well as videos on the SD card?
You need to do the following two things:
- Recover photos and videos from SD card.
- Format the SD card to remove the unexpectedly removed error.
Now, I guess you might be wondering:
“How to effectively recover photos and videos from the SD card that says the removed unexpectedly error?”
Process 1. Recover Photos and Videos From the SD Card
MiniTool Power Data Recovery, free data recovery software used for Windows users, can help you effectively recover lost data from SD cards. It not only supports scanning and recovering SD cards files from SD cards, but also supports recovering files from SSDs, HDDs, USB flash drives, CDs/DVDs, and other file storage devices.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery can restore multiple types of files, such as Office files (Word documents, Excel files, PPTs, PDFs, etc.), pictures, videos, audio, and so on.
Now click the button below to free download MiniTool Power Data Recovery to have a try.
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Major Steps to Recover SD Card Files by Using MiniTool Power Data Recovery.
Before you do:
- Remove the SD card from your phone and insert the SD card into your computer via a card reader.
- Launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery.
Step 1. In the main window of MiniTool Power Data Recovery, select the target SD card and click the Scan button to start SD card data recovery. Here if you cannot see the SD card on your screen, you can click the Refresh button located in the upper right corner to refresh the drives list.
Wait for the scanning process to complete. Now you can see all the found files on the selected SD card are listed. To quickly locate the wanted items, you can make use of the Filter or Search features.
- Filter: By using this feature, you can filter found files by file size, file type, file category, and date modified. For instance, you can choose to only view specific types of files, like pictures, videos, audio, etc.
- Search: This feature allows you to search for a certain file or folder by its name.
Step 2. Now you can preview the filtered files to check whether they are the needed ones. You can preview multiple types of files, including pictures in JPEG, JPG, JPE, BMP, GIF, PNG, etc. image formats, DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS, XLSX, and more.
Step 3. Select all wanted files and click Save to choose an appropriate file location to store them.
After applying all the steps above, the data on the SD card should be recovered now.
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TOP RECOMMENDATION:
Next, I want to share other 2 useful data restore tools with you to recover lost photos and videos from your SD card.
1. MiniTool Photo Recovery
MiniTool Photo Recovery is a professional photo and video recovery software. It is specially designed to recover lost/deleted photos and videos from different types of digital cameras and various storage devices including computer hard drives, SD cards, USB disks, etc.
Now, click the following button to download MiniTool Photo Recovery.
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After getting MiniTool Photo Recovery installed, you can take the following steps to get your missing photos and videos back from the SD card that says “SD card unexpectedly removed. Unmount the SD card before removing to avoid data loss.”
Firstly, connect the SD card to your PC and launch MiniTool Photo Recovery to get its main interface. Then click the Start button.
Note: In the new window, you can make use of the Setting feature to specify needed file types. For instance, if you only want to recover JPEG photos, you can only check JPEG Camera File (*.jpg) and JPEG Graphics file (*.jpg) under Graphics & Picture. Then remember to click on the OK button to confirm this setting.
Secondly, select the SD card, and then click the Scan button.
Finally, preview and select all needed data, then click the Save button to store them.
Here is a video tutorial showing you how to recover files from SD cards using MiniTool Photo Recovery.
2. MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android
In addition to MiniTool Power Data Recovery and MiniTool Photo Recovery, you also can try using MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android Free to recover lost data from SD cards. It provides a Recover from SD-Card module to help you effectively restore SD card data regardless of the reasons for data loss.
For specific steps to use this Android data restore tool, you can read: Do You Want to Restore Deleted Files Android? Try MiniTool.
Process 2. Format the SD card
After recovering all needed data, it is time to format the SD card to remove the “SD card unexpectedly removed. Unmount the SD card before removing to avoid data loss” error message. To format your SD card, you can try the following steps.
Firstly, connect your SD card to your PC. Then press Windows + E key combinations to open File Explorer.
Secondly, in File Explorer, right-click the SD card, and then choose Format to continue.
Thirdly, specify the file system, allocation unit size, and volume label, and check the checkbox next to Quick Format. After that, click the Start button to continue.
Finally, Windows will warn you that you’ll lose any data on the drive you’re about to format. Since the useful data has already been recovered, here you just need to click OK to start the format.
When it’s done, you’ll be able to access your newly formatted SD card in Windows. Now, you can reinsert your SD card into your phone or digital camera to check whether the SD card unexpectedly removed issue has been solved.
Also Read: How Do I Fix “Windows Was Unable to Complete the Format” Error.
Solution #4. Factory Reset Your Phone
If the SD card unexpectedly removed error still exists after formatting the memory card, you may need to try to factory reset the Android phone to fix the problem.
Warning: Doing a factory reset will wipe out all data on your phone. Therefore, before factory resetting your phone, you should transfer all data from your device, and then factory reset your phone at your own risk.
Solution #5. Buy a New SD Card
If all the solutions above fail to work, you may consider buying a new SD card to replace the outdated one.
Conclusion
In this post, we listed some useful solutions to fix the Android SD card unexpectedly removed issue. If you have the same problem, you can give it a try.
If you have any other good solutions to fix the SD card keeps unmounting issue, please leave them in the following comment zone.
If you have any questions about recovering lost photos as well as videos from SD cards by using MiniTool data restore software, you can directly send us emails via [email protected]. We will solve it as soon as possible.
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Shirley graduated from English major and is currently an editor of MiniTool Team. She likes browsing and writing IT-related articles, and is committed to becoming a professional IT problem solver. The topic of her articles are generally about data recovery, data backup, and computer disk management, as well as other IT issues. In spare time, she likes watching movies, hiking and fishing.