Data retrieval from Micro SD card after Xperia Z3C is dead

[Zepppo]

Hello all,

I have a Sony Xperia Z3 compact that I dropped hard  It's pretty much dead and the screen stays black permanently.

On the external micro SD card I have a boat load of pictures (of my kids) that I would love to recover.

I bought a micro SD - USB adaptor and tried mounting the SD card on my Windows (7 and 10) laptop, but neither recognizes the filesystem. All I get is an error message that reads  "E:\ The directory name is invalid".

After that Windows suggests to format the drive, which obviously I haven't done. Is there any recovery software I could use to get to the data on the card? Any other ideas on how I could get to those pictures?

Thanks so much for your help,

Zepppo

[Jonas]

Hi @Zepppo, welcome to our community.

I'm so sorry to hear about what happened to your phone.

If the SD card isn't damaged in any kind of way there shouldn't be any troubles for a computer or another phone with a SD card slot to access the files on your SD card.

I'm not familiar with the micro SD to USB adapter, so I won't be able to assist you with one of these.

My recommendation is that you try and get a hold of a phone with a SD card slot so you can put your SD card in that phone and then transfer the files to your computer or to a cloud service, for example Google Drive.

I wish you the best of luck and keep me updated!

[Zepppo]

Hello Jonas,

thanks for your quick reply. 

The SD to USB adapter is basically just a USB card reader...

When I try to use the card in another phone, does it have to be a Sony phone or can it be any Android phone with a micro SD card slot? Also, can I assume that Sony phones just use a regular file system (e.g. FAT32, NTFS etc.)?

Thanks again for your help,

Zepppo 

[Jonas]

It doesn't have to be a Sony Xperia phone, any Android phone should do the trick.

File system that are used are either exFAT or FAT32, which both are standard for Android.

Let me know how it goes and have a great weekend!