OP, you've already gotten some solid advice here, but I’ll add a bit more.
Since the card shows up in Device Manager but not in File Explorer, the next place to check is Disk Management.
Open it by right-clicking on the Start button and selecting “Disk Management.”
In there, look for a drive that matches the size of your SD card.
Let us know what it says under “File System” (like RAW, NTFS, exFAT) and whether it shows any partitions or drive letters.
If you're not sure what you're looking at, feel free to take a screenshot and post it here.
Just hit Win+Shift+S to capture a snip.
If your SD card is not recognized by File Explorer, but shows in Disk Management as RAW,
that usually indicates corruption (the data may still be intact, but Windows can’t mount the volume).
In that case, recovery software like Disk Drill, PhotoRec, or Recuva would be the next best step, as others have mentioned.
But let’s first confirm what Disk Management shows, and we’ll go from there.
EDIT: @Nonprofitech the lock tab on an SD adapter only prevents writes to the card.
It won’t stop the drive from showing up, and it shouldn’t cause it to disappear in File Explorer.
Likely not the root cause here.
