ICS update rendered SD card unusable - HELP!

[bdupree1966]

I just picked up the ICS update over the past weekend. Install went fine, but when it finished up, I now see an alert at the top with the message "Damaged phone storage - Phone storage damaged. You may have to..." Selecting this alert then takes me to a prompt stating "Format phone storage" with Format/Cancel options. When I power off and back on again, I get a brief message on the home screen stating "The SD card is detected to be pulled out. Insert the SD card."

Up until this ICS udpate, I have never removed that SD card. I also have never had problems with it, and always use it for photos, videos, and a very small amount of music. I have some important photos on this SD card I would like to recover, so any expert help would be greatly appreciated. This ICS push is in early stages for those of us who did not grab an early release, so I am hoping there will be some sort of resolution. If not, there will be a lot of unhappy Android phone owners out there very unhappy when they lose everything on the SD card.

My SD card was also encrypted and password protected, if that helps get to the bottom of this. That policy was pushed out by my corporate email (Exchange) account set up on the device. The Verizon store techs removed my SD card and put it in a USB reader. When that was plugged into my laptop, it was also unreadable... message said the SD card needed to be formatted.

If you can help me out, THANKS!

[rivera1305]

Dang dude the only thing I could think of is taking it to Best Buy's Geek Squad and see if they can recover it but I know most of the times they can't so you're probably screwed but you might be lucky! So give that a shot and next time you're doing a software upgrade of any sort try removing the SD card before doing so and save it onto a disc or your computer, at least thats what i do. Good Luck!

[bdupree1966]

Thanks, rivera... appreciate the idea. I may have to try that out. Usually, I am pretty good about pulling photos off that SD card on a regular basis. The push of ICS happened when I was out of town, and I just decided to let it fly instead of dumping contents of the SD somewhere. Won't make that mistake again. Hopefully, I'll get some brilliant tech support from Verizon or Google to see this and let me know how to recover.