HELP Please - Lost all my photos on my SD Card

[Sundubious]

Did the new update to 4.3 cause this?  I lost all my kids photos from July to December including Christmas and so on.  Yes I know I should have backup more often but is there any way to retrieve it?   The Micro SD card can't be read by my computer or this phone.  Any solutions or is the card pretty much dead?  Terribly distraught, and upset! 

[Sundubious]

OH NO I am researching all over Google, and it seems like SD cards getting fried on SIIIs is a common problem!  I am going to be sick now knowing I lost all those pictures!  Here I was thinking of upgrading to the Note 3.... I am OFFICIALLY done with Samsung phones!!!!    

[FormerMarine]

I just lost (yesterday) a ton of photos on my S3 data card as well.  I had disabled the option to let Google back them up as I am worried that someday Google may choose not to make them private. 

I lost a lot of great photos.  After poking around Google, I found Wondershare - but it only let's you do a certain amount and then you have to pay $40 to upgrade to retrieve all of your data. 

BS.

[Sundubious]

^ Same here.  I did not want my pictures to be uploaded to Google automatically so I disabled that feature. 

I have been searching Google for a solution to retrieve the lost photos and ran across this article. 

http://digital-photography-school.com/recover-images-from-a-damaged-sd-card

I havn't had a chance to try this program called Zero Assumption Recovery, but I thought I update my post.  CNET has it on their site also so I believe it's virus free. http://download.cnet.com/Zero-Assumption-Recovery/3000-2248_4-10061981.html  

[bearone21]

yo folks, the s3 didn't come with an sd card, you bought one or provided it from another phone & they do die over time.

i doubt very seriously that 4.3 was the culprit.

[datamedics]

If the card is recognized when it's connected to a computer, check the drive properties.  If it shows a negative size or 0 sectors, you're in trouble.  MicroSD cards with hardware failure are really expensive ($$$ Thousands). 

If the size looks normal try a program called TestDisk which you can download here:

http://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk-6.14.win.zip

It's an ugly dos like program, but it's really good at finding lost pictures, and it's completely free.

If that doesn't work send it to these guys

http://www.data-medics.com

[Sundubious]

You doubt it but in my opinion considering the massive amounts of problems users have been experiencing with 4.3, isn't it a possibility that 4.3 had something to do with this?  I only updated my phone to 4.3 a couple weeks ago, and the SD card I have had since I bought this phone back in July 2012, then all of a sudden two weeks after the update, my SD card died?   Just COINCIDENCE? 

[Sundubious]

Unfortunately the card can't be read on the computer.  I tried several PCs and it's just not being read.  It's looking like this SD card is dead, done for, see you later, adios amigo, bye bye! 

I need an alcoholic beverage!

[datamedics]

Does the card even detect when attached?

[Sundubious]

No the phone cannot read the damaged card.  Under storage it doesn't saying anything about unmounting and when the phone is hooked up to the computer, and using Kies, nothing is detected either.