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I made a fatal mistake

I encrypted my mobile SD four years ago. The phone had a problem a few days ago and I did a factory reset without decoding. The decryption key is no longer active in the settings! My camera folder contains over 5,000 photos and videos up to 40 GB in size. These are family memories. I recorded all the moments of my son growing up with this mobile phone. Now I see the files, they are the right size, but because they are encrypted, they no longer run on my phone and laptop.

My phone is Samsung Note 8 and I encrypted the memory with the same phone.

what's the solution?

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morteza hamedani
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    It's gone. And it's an important lesson: Backup everything you want to keep. If you lost your phone, what would you do? Start doing backups *now*, and consider it a wake up call. – vidarlo Jul 20 '21 at 08:05
  • Potential duplicates: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/116750/how-to-decrypt-a-microsd-card-after-a-factory-reset-of-the-device-used-to-encryp?rq=1 and https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/31676/recovering-encrypted-sd-card-after-android-factory-reset?rq=1 – schroeder Jul 20 '21 at 08:40

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On the Samsung website they clearly state the following:

Important: If you reset your device to the factory defaults with this setting enabled, the device will not be able to read your encrypted files. Disable this setting before resetting the device (follow the same path and touch "Decrypt SD card").

Source: https://www.samsung.com/ca/support/mobile-devices/how-do-i-encrypt-files-on-my-sd-card-using-galaxy-note8/

It appears there is no immediate solution to decrypt these files.

Jeroen
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  • Do you read all the pamphlets, information site, etc. before using the device? This is so important that Samsung must provide a way to support it. For example, it saved the decryption support key in Gmail Information security is very important, but preserving information and memories for each person is more valuable than a mobile phone. Special attention should be paid to this. This is a big mistake of Samsung, suppose my cell phone is in the water and its hard drive is burned, or any other physical damage ... Now my SD memory is intact but encrypted. What is the solution? – morteza hamedani Aug 22 '21 at 05:37
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If there's no key for the encrypted files, there's no use in trying to decrypt them. Do you have any backups of the phone that might include the key?

conf_t
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  • As soon as you reset the phone, the key is gone. Source: https://forums.androidcentral.com/showthread.php?t=868302&s=d9437482826d155562559c07f097a37b&p=6157514&viewfull=1#post6157514 – Jeroen Jul 20 '21 at 07:18
  • Unfortunately not. I tried to back up before resetting, but an error occurred. So I just copied contacts, text messages, notes and photos from the phone memory and then reset the phone to factory settings. Of course, in My Gmail, there is backup of contacts, etc., but there is no backup for decryption – morteza hamedani Aug 22 '21 at 05:43