Remember to Back-Up Often

This has happened to me way too often for it to happen again.

I would like to remind everyone that uses an Android device...really, any sort of device with external memory, to back-up often.

For some reason, it's either Android, Windows, or the card itself that randomly deletes all information from the card making it unusable to the user until formatted. Other times, it can be a permanent loss of information as the card becomes corrupted.

There is no easy way to avoid this from happening from the user's side but the user can back-up the information often. Note that this will take lots of room and is best kept on a PC that has lots of usable memory or another external device that is reliable.

For me, I am using my PC. While it only has 500 GB and I am running out of room quickly, it still is sufficient for the time being.

I created a special folder where I keep copies of everything from my phone's SD card and have it saved onto the computer. This way, in the event the card is erased or lost, my information, or most of it, is still available. It is best to update this copy folder often to avoid losing too much data.

Tonight, my card failed me once again. Fortunately, most of the information was saved, however, not all of it from the past 2+ weeks so there goes quite a bit of data that will be lost including irreplaceable pictures and videos.

Even if not all information, simply make sure to back-up important pictures and videos somewhere for your own sake. You can almost always recover files you downloaded from the internet, but you can't as easily with pictures and videos.

When I do back-up, I simply drag and drop the entire card's contents into this folder and I allow the files from the phone to overwrite what was there. Doing this will make sure that anything that hasn't been updated such as contacts if you added anyone new, will be added to the copied file so it can be as updated as possible.

I suppose I was working the card too hard tonight. While transferring over a large file over the USB connection, I tried moving files from the card to the PC and I think it overloaded. When I unmounted the card and remounted it, it said the card was blank and needed to be reformatted. So it was but I am upset that I was so careless in losing all of this valuable information.

If possible, try to connect your card to your computer via another means besides USB cable PC to phone connection as this doesn't seem like the safest way to do it. Instead, use an adapter whether it be a USB card reader or maybe a card adapter.