I inserted my SD card into my Mac and it initially showed 12GB of content. When I tried to copy the files to my Documents folder, the process failed, and suddenly the SD card appeared blank.
I don’t think the files are gone, and I also got the error message : “The disk wasn’t ejected because one or more programs may be using it”.
Any advice on how to fix this and recover my data?
It sounds like your SD card may have a file system issue or some kind of corruption.
Let’s try these basic steps first:
- Close all programs.
- Reinsert the SD card.
- Restart your Mac.
- Run First Aid in Disk Utility.
Maybe this post can help you: Can’t Eject External Hard Drive on Mac, Try These Fixes!
Maybe you can log out and log in Apple account, or shut down your Mac completely.
Then open Terminal to unhide files, type defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles true; killall Finder.
If all of these fail, you’d better consider using some data recovery tools like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac. It will scan the SD card and recover all gone files.
It’s also possible that the card itself is damaged:
(1) Try a different device:
Insert the SD card into another computer or a camera to see if the files are accessible.
(2) Backup first:
If you manage to access the files, copy them to another location immediately.
(3)Reformat as a last resort:
If the card is still unresponsive and you’ve recovered your data, you might need to reformat it to use it again. Just make sure you select the appropriate file system (e.g., exFAT or FAT32) in Disk Utility.