It's really more possible trouble than its worth. Step 4: Then select your encrypted SD card to open a password box. Step 2: Open File Explorer, which you can do by pressing the Windows and E keys simultaneously. All kinds of things can make it unreadable after encryption. First, slot an SD card to decrypt into your desktop or laptop. Do a factory reset, and the key gets erased with the rest of the user added data, making the card unreadable even though it's still in the phone. If AutoPlay comes up, select Open folder to view files. Take the card out, and it's unreadable in any other device. Plugin your flash drive (you can do this with an SD card, too) and wait while Windows recognizes it. If the phone flakes out for whatever reason, and it can happen quite often, then the card is toast.
While encryption sounds like a good idea, unless you work for the government or a high-tech company saving government/company secret stuff to your card, there's no real need to encrypt an SD card for everyday use. The SD card itself is still good, and reusable, but you would have to reformat it.
Whatever you had on it is now forever inaccessible. Call it a lesson learned, unless you know someone at the NSA. Sorry to say, but there's nothing you can do.Įncryption is tied to the device and the operating system installed at the time that it was encrypted, as that is where the key is stored.
