Develop Bugs

SD Card Randomly Appears Empty

Hey, I've had my Evo for a couple weeks now, and have recently started experiencing an issue that has been since happened quite frequently - the SD card will randomly appear empty, and I won't be able to add files to it. The only way to get around this, it seems, is to reboot the phone.
At first I thought my MicroSD card that came with the phone was defective, so I got Best Buy to exchange it today, but it just started happening again! My phone is rooted and running the latest RvU ROM, if that could have anything to do with it. Does anyone have any help, or is this just a hardware problem? (If it is, I'll just exchanged the phone at Best Buy, since I'm within my 30 days.)
Thanks!

vonStemmington said:
Hey, I've had my Evo for a couple weeks now, and have recently started experiencing an issue that has been since happened quite frequently - the SD card will randomly appear empty, and I won't be able to add files to it. The only way to get around this, it seems, is to reboot the phone.
At first I thought my MicroSD card that came with the phone was defective, so I got Best Buy to exchange it today, but it just started happening again! My phone is rooted and running the latest RvU ROM, if that could have anything to do with it. Does anyone have any help, or is this just a hardware problem? (If it is, I'll just exchanged the phone at Best Buy, since I'm within my 30 days.)
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same thing for me. I tried Baked Snack and now Fresh 0.5.3, both have the same issue. Rebooting seems to work for a short time, but it always fails when I'm using programs that access the SD a lot such as the Gallery app or the Camera. As long as I stay clear of those it seems to hold up a bit longer, but I've had it fail while using Astro File Manager too.
When I was running The latest stock OTA I had no issues. I posted a similar question in the threads for both ROM's with no response yet. Because of that, I was beginning to think I had a bad card too.
I don't want to go back to stock. I just can't understand why this keeps happening.

Glad to know I'm not the only one.. I just wish there was some resolution to this.
I contacted HTC and they said it wasn't a known issue with the phone, so they said I should go to Best Buy and exchange it. So maybe our SD slots are just defective?

I have this problem too. It empties every day it seems and I need to reformat the SD card just to get it working again. It erases all my pictures and video and is very frustrating.
It seems to happen most often when I am taking a picture or going into Gallery, but has happened in other instances as well.
I hope HTC releases a solution that addresses this.
Also, it tells me in the notification bar that the SD card is damaged or unsupported file type or something along those lines.
And for the record, I am running a stock Evo.

i welcome u guys to my world.i been having the problem since day one tried everything and nothing worked.fully rooted,new radio,tried few roms,formated SD card,put in a new SD card and still that random SD failure.i reboot about 3-4 times a day and its really irritating.im afraid i might brake my evo one day or jus claim for a new one.

GHOST99K said:
im afraid i might brake my evo one day.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is how I feel

I'm tempted now to go back to stock and verify, but I never had a single issue on my phone until it was rooted. However, it's possible that the problem was there and I didn't encounter it.
If I take that step and find that it is still an issue on the stock OTA, I will most likely try to get the card replaced or have the phone if it persists after a new card.
It's very inconvenient and makes the camera pretty unreliable. Plus I am a field tech, and I store .pdf's on the card for different devices. If the SD is frakked I can't be sure I can get to important paperwork in the field.

It's not the SD card.I have already reformated the SD and even put a new 16gb SD card but same issue everyday.
Sent from beneath the earth using XDA App

It's definitely not the SD card. I've formatted it, gone to Best Buy and had the SD card replaced, and used a different SD card.
It could be the ROMs we're using, but I've got a serious problem with this phone if using a rooted ROM does this.. And few other people are experiencing the problem. That leads me to believe it's a hardware defect.

My suggestion jus get your phone exchanged ASAP.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

Yeah.. I've contacted Best Buy and they'll let me know when they get their next order in

Unfortunately I am am outside my 30 day exchange period so I cannot do that.

Well, I hate to break it to you guys, but custom ROMs is not the issue. I am stock and have had my phone since launch morning (June 4) and today, for the first time, my SD card contents disappeared. I was changing wallpaper when the default wallpaper kept coming up as the wallpaper. Note that the when selecting a wallpaper, the gallery showed all my images (cached?) but when I went to Gallery, nothing was there. I pulled the battery to reboot and now the SD card contents are back.

I had the same thing happen with me. I've also experienced other strange things related to the card. When hooking the phone up to my macbook, sometimes files copy and sometimes they don't (to the card). I was thinking it was an app corrupting the card. I've tried large files (100-200mb) and small files (like apks or old video game console roms). It seems that when data is going to the card very aggressively, it doesn't wasn't to copy. What I mean by aggressive is like 2+ dialog boxes of files being copied at the same time.
More often than not, it seems like lots of small files pisses the phone off and it parts me back by bowling the card. Lots of files means hundreds to thousands.
I saw this thread awhile ago but didn't look at it until today. At least I'm not going crazy or even maybe have a bad card. The cards never gave me any problems with the devices its been in for maybe the last 3 years until last week.
I gotta find another card to try. I am using sandisk 16gb. Maybe a different brand? Anyone try that yet?
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

I'm doing a test now. I removed the suspect 16gb card from the phone and put in a 8gb card that has never been in the evo ever. I put the 16 in a sd adapter which goes into a usb adapter. All are official sandisk. I formatted the 16 in my macbook as fat32. I am now copying 8557 files to the card which size total is about 6.97gb. After a few minutes, I'm down to 6291 files to go and almost half way finished copying. I have not received one error message or anything that might lead me to believe there is something wrong somewhere. I'm starting to think there's nothing wrong with the card(s). It's the gd phone! I am so pissed now!!!! I keep looking back at the progress window and it's chugging along no problem. I am thinking about something tho. When I was changing cards I noticed that even when the card's lock bar was down, the card could wiggle a little. HMM. I'm gonna get a piece of thick paper and put it on top of the card and see if that helps make the card not want to wiggle as much when the lock bar is in place.
I will report back if I find out if it works or not in like 24 hours or less.
I don't think it makes any difference what rom you are running but I went to the one stock rooted "EVO_1.47.651.1_Rooted_stockrom.zip" one calkulin posted.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=712695
That link is just in case someone stumbles across this post later and wonders what I'm talking about.

So far, so good. I will give progress reports when I'm at work when I'm able to. I hope I may have stumbled across a simple fix to a defect.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

I had the issue you guys are talking abou this is what I did to resolve my issue.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Just got a new SDHC card and simpleroot worked. The SDHC that came with my phone died. I placed a spare in there that was a 2gd regular micro and Hboot would not read the IMG for nothing.
If simple root is not working then it's the Sh!tty card acting up.
Happy ending for me.

vonStemmington said:
It's definitely not the SD card. I've formatted it, gone to Best Buy and had the SD card replaced, and used a different SD card.
It could be the ROMs we're using, but I've got a serious problem with this phone if using a rooted ROM does this.. And few other people are experiencing the problem. That leads me to believe it's a hardware defect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For those who post before reading the thread, I am STOCK and this also happened to me. Battery out/in fixed the issue (for now).

So far I'm going on around 16 hours without the card screwing up. If you wanna try this, get a business card. Pull the card out of the phone. Lay the card on the business card at a corner. Measure about twice as long and normal width. Cut the business card. Fold the piece in half length wise so its the same size as the sd card. If it's too big, snip the non folded end of the paper and measure it so that its the same size as the sd card. Put the card into the phone and make sure its ask the way in. don't force it to hard. Then hold the card down and slide the paper, folded end first, on top of the sd and into the card bay. Make sure the paper isn't sticking out of the card well where the battery would be on top of. Gently push and lock the lock bar down onto the card. If you have to push firmly then the paper is too thick. Place the battery in the phone and put the cover back on. That extra bit of thickness added to the card I think is keeping it from scooting around in the sd card well and judging by the size of the contacts on the card, it wouldn't take much movement to get off the contacts. The folded end under the lock bar and the other end being held down by the battery I think is doing the trick. Just power down before removing the battery next time.
So far, this is working for me and I'm keeping my fingers crossed...
Just another update and bump off the topic...
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

I agree the ROM probably isn't the problem, but definitely come back and let us know if the paper helped at all. It could just be that the SD card is loose.. It seems like sometimes if my SD card stops being read, but I leave the phone alone, it'll work again later, without rebooting, which is odd.

Constant "sd card was unexpectedly removed" errors

Ok so this started happening when I switched to unofficial CM9 from this forum. Constant "your sd card was unexpectedly removed" errors. Usually right when I open the camera app, or try to play music. Go figure. Once I reset the phone (doesn't always work) the problem goes away until I leave the phone long enough for it to go idle I guess. First thing I figured was the OS change. So I restored a backup. Same problem. Backed up the sd card and wiped the phone and sd card. Reinstalled CM7.2. Nope. Same problem. Forgot to mention, I had already tried both of my spare 16 gig cards, two of which were from a different manufacturer. One I formatted with my computer, then other I left alone and just deleted the files from it with the phone to rule out my computers card reader going bad. Both had the same exact issues. I even switched to a sense based rom called UKB. Same. Problem. Although this time it seems to be a little better. Worked all day yesterday at least, problem only coming back after the phone was on charge all night. I could live with that but I doubt it'll keep that up all night. I've read just about every forum post on every forum. Loads of people suggesting reformatting without using quick format, formatting with different settings, using various apps that change the cache size. Regardless, none of this was necessary before, and definitely shouldn't be necessary now. I'm a couple months past my warranty or I would get a replacement like I did before when I had headphone jack issues. Really sick of my phones all going bad before upgrade. Maybe if I called they would see that I have not been a happy customer, but a customer nonetheless since like 1998. Who knows. But anyway, does ANYONE have any suggestions? And please don't suggest going to settings and hitting mount. That suggestion is in just about every forum post about the problem and it oddly drives me crazy. Probably because of how obvious it is. That option is always greyed out of course. Thanks in advance to anyone who's willing to help. I always want to smash this phone every time I need to take a picture of something really cool and my phone decides to act up.

Come on guys, nothing?

I'm having the exact same problem, and I'm 100% stock, always have been. I have no idea what's going on, but it's really frustrating, especially because of all my apps I keep on the SD.
Sent from my ADR6350 using xda app-developers app

lfrench0 said:
I'm having the exact same problem, and I'm 100% stock, always have been. I have no idea what's going on, but it's really frustrating, especially because of all my apps I keep on the SD.
Sent from my ADR6350 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well the best part? Now the phone doesn't recognize the card at all. This phone has been in a case since purchase. Never been dropped. Has been tested with multiple cards in multiple formats. But looks like HTC is yet another company that designs phones to intentionally break over the course of a year or two. Go figure. Phone is only a little over a year old. Then again the board is older since it was a refurb. First phone had issues with the headphone plug.

alexmawdsley said:
Well the best part? Now the phone doesn't recognize the card at all. This phone has been in a case since purchase. Never been dropped. Has been tested with multiple cards in multiple formats. But looks like HTC is yet another company that designs phones to intentionally break over the course of a year or two. Go figure. Phone is only a little over a year old. Then again the board is older since it was a refurb. First phone had issues with the headphone plug.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe try unexpectedly inserting the sd card? /s
But in reality, that stinks.

gtdtm said:
Maybe try unexpectedly inserting the sd card? /s
But in reality, that stinks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Haha that one made me smile. I can just see myself in the dark with one of those long armed desk/work lamps shoving an sd card into my phone and yelling "SURPRISE!" while laughing like an evil villain. This truly has driven me nuts though. I've been stuck on my sad old OG Droid. You know, the one that made android popular but is painfully slow when you're used to a phone overclocked to 1.5 ghz. Even with this one at 900 mhz (all it can handle with a standard voltage kernel without crashing) it often freezes up multitasking. Navigation takes a good couple minutes to fully load a small route, and it simply isn't gonna happen if music is playing.
HOWEVER, I decided to try again. Dinc2 recognized a card again. Not sure why. Whatever. So because the card works even temporarily, I flashed a new radio and am now downloading unofficial cm10 and all that good stuff. Gonna flash everything after triple wiping, then I'll wipe cache again after flashing everything. Just maybe that new radio and lots of murdering the wipe button, it shall survive. It just doesn't make any sense to be a hardware problem since it's only intermittent when the sd card is suddenly active after not being accessed for some time. I can sit there taking pictures and video for hours while playing music. But once the screen is off for 10 minutes and I go look at those pictures, the sd card is suddenly removed. I'll keep you updated. Downloads are complete. Muahahahahaha

So I did end up flashing CM9 instead, because CM10 was just too buggy for my liking. However I used the newest kernel available. It was in the unofficial CM10 forum post.
Radio seems to have fixed the problem though. SD card hasn't unmounted once. We'll see how it works out over the course of the day but it copied all my music over wifi last night, finished at about 2AM, then sat there until I woke up at 6 completely idle. Picked it up and went straight to gallery, and it loaded pictures. Took a snapshot with the camera, then played a song. Everything looks to be in order. I flashed the radio that was apparently in the leaked ICS developer update.

Disregard the suggested fix I posted prior. I mean if you have the problem you can try it... since it seemed to fix it for a day. But it's right back to it again. Downloaded and installed ukb evolution 2.1, and it did the same on that as well. So I guess I live with it for the time being, never buy an HTC device again, hope like crazy a moto device lasts longer, and fork over the scam of an extra year of warranty when I upgrade. Really, what kind of world do we live in where we have to spend money for a company to stand by their product for longer than a lousy year? When standard contracts are for two years, it leaves an entire year where the device can just stop functioning properly, like this one, and then you're stuck paying 600 bucks for a device that cost HTC maybe 100 bucks to make. And even at that ridiculous cost, it still takes two iterations of android before they even suggest that they might update the device to the older version, over three years after launch. Awesome little fact, if the one year warranty restarted when I got the phone replaced in the first place for an issue with the headphone jack, I would still be under warranty. But nope, it wasn't replaced with a new device, but someone elses phone that was then fixed and then sent to me. I still hate that I can buy a brand new phone, and get a used one in return because these companies refuse to build a phone without trying to design it to die at the end of it's "useful" life. People will pay to upgrade if they want to. If the phone barely lasts the full two years if that, someone in their right mind simply wouldn't buy from them again. My original droid was out of warranty by 8 months when I had it replaced TWICE. Why? Because I had it replaced 5 times before that for headphone jack problems. Only reason I didn't buy another moto phone was because they decided to lock down bootloaders for good, while HTC was announcing that they were becoming dev friendly and unlocking their devices. Customers always get screwed. Alright end rant. Sorry guys, extremely frustrated.

I had the same problem on the Samsung Galaxy Y Pro, FWIW. Probably unrelated.

Same here with a 2 year old dinc2. SD card works fine as far as the phone is awake. Works fine in other phones and computers either...

Every 6-12 months, I have this problem and it's blindingly frustrating. As it turned out, my MicroSD card was starting to get tired, and swapping it out with a brand new flash card from Staples resolved it completely. Just like the OP, I had two used 32GB MicroSD cards -- one of them an expensive high-speed Sandisk -- that reported no errors under Windows or CWM. Installing it in my DInc2 (CM10), it would run for a while, but then just decide to unmount.
It may sound illogical, but try purchasing a new, inexpensive MicroSD card (I bought another Sandisk) and see if the problem goes away permanently.
- Dave

I tried two different sd cards on two different roms - cm7 and evervolv and the cards kept dismounting about twice a day. I then turned on "protect sd card" under developer options on evervolv rom. I don't know what it does but haven't had the problem for about a week. It might be a coicidence though. Will see...

fixed
surfthesummer said:
I tried two different sd cards on two different roms - cm7 and evervolv and the cards kept dismounting about twice a day. I then turned on "protect sd card" under developer options on evervolv rom. I don't know what it does but haven't had the problem for about a week. It might be a coicidence though. Will see...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had the same problem for monthes. I had gone through all the efforts to fix it. finally I found a clue.
On the back cover, there are two pairs of pins which supposed to connected to the terminals on the phone, which are not connected well. so I bent the springs up a little bit and made connection well. (be very careful not break the springs). then SD card show up right away. It's being working for days and no more problem.
hope it helps everyone.

sd card issue
Same issue with my HTC incredible s.....phone not in warranty....plz help guys.....
Some says its software ...some hardware....all assumptions.....
tc truly sucks.....camera sucks...music sucks.....overpriced.....etc etc.....but wen u pay
Such a lot of money u expect something good....such an awesome name HTC INCREDIBLE ...incredible ma a$*..
Somebody plz help....

This is incredible 2 forum...but just busting your balls....try a new SD card
Sent from my ADR6350 using xda app-developers app

My dinc2 started with this problem about 3 months ago. I was running the psychochilly cm10.1. Then I decided to try the miui v5 ('alpha'?) rom which had a known bug that the SD card won't Mount. After about two minutes, it crashed, so I just decided to restore my psychichilly backup. Thenextday i noticed that the sd card was unmounted several times when I wanted to take or look at a pic. I found that if I took my otterbox off, along with the back plastic and tapped the back of the phone near the bottom on the edge of the table gently it would magically recognize my SD card. Not too long after it would pop up that 'SD card unexpectedly removed' message. So. Whether it's hardware or software related, I'm not sure. But I'm thinking hardware. On the other hand, I had to use the tacoroot method to s-off. Maybe an effect that took a whole year to happen. Either way I think the only way to fix this issue, besides reflowing the motherboard around the SD card slot, is to replace the motherboard, which I just might do. Kinda itching to flash the new PAC.

G3 microSD card frustrations

My G3 (AT&T D850) is almost exactly 2 years old...for the last 3-4 months, it has been very flaky, rebooting spontaneously, sometimes 4-5 times in a row, sometimes only once, and doing it for weeks, and then suddenly not doing it at all for weeks. I ran the phone for a week with the SIM card out, and it did not reboot at all, so, thinking that I had a bad SIM, AT&T replaced it. It rebooted once after starting up with the new SIM, went a couple of days without rebooting, then went back to its flaky reboot cycles. So...probably not a bad SIM.
A week ago , the microSD card seemed to have completely failed (SanDisk Extreme 64GB UHS-I/U3). Phone indicated it had no microSD card. I took the card out, put it in my PC, and it read all the data fine. I made a complete backup of the card, reformatted the card, copied all the data back, put it back in the phone...it worked for about an hour. Tried the formatting as NTFS, so that the phone would force reformat the card, that didn't work. Decided that maybe the card was intermittently bad, bought a Samsung 128GB EVO Select Micro SDXC card. Same results...works for a while, sometimes cycles through a "Removed Card", "Inserted Card" cycle every second or so. Using the phone with no card, it mostly works ok, though it does still reboot occasionally. Went backwards to a Lexar 32GB card...all cards formatted NTFS, phone reformats, etc etc. No change in behavior. Looks like maybe the phone flakiness is a bad microSD card/bad microSD card reader?
I'm at a loss as to what to do next....I have to assume the phone is failing? I've searched here and generally on the web, and can find no posts that indicate a similar problem...I can upgrade soon, but not real excited about any of the available phones these days, and I'm pretty adamant about having a microSD slot and a removable battery, which seriously limits my options. Am I screwed, and I need another phone? Anyone experience anything like this before? I rooted the phone the day I bought it two years ago, so now I'm going to try to reinstall the original image and then upgrade to the Lollipop version of the firmware, but I have a bad feeling that I'm just wasting my time...
Any thoughts on this?
TriangleRocks

Might be a long shot, try replacing your battery.

massivebanana said:
Might be a long shot, try replacing your battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply...and I forgot to put in my original post....already have replaced the battery.

Galaxy S4 shutting down randomly

I'm having some trouble with my rooted Galaxy S4 (SGH-M919). The last couple days it just randomly shuts down, restarts, and shuts down again. There's really no rhyme or reason to it, it can be sitting on a table and have it happen, or be in use. Sometimes I can go hours without a problem, then it'll shut down and reboot multiple times within a few minutes. I factory reset the phone, and it did it again within a couple hours. I replaced the battery in June, it was an EBay purchase, so I'm thinking that the battery may be the problem, but don't want to purchase another one if it's not the problem. Anyone else ever have this problem? Is there any kind of app I can install that has crash logs or something like that to pinpoint what is causing the shutdowns? Any help would be appreciated.

Ok, so I'm finding out more as I go here. I took out the SD Card to take stuff off of there, and thought maybe I'll just run the phone without it for a while. Well, it stayed on for about 18 hours with no problem. I popped the SD card back in, and within 2 minutes it shut down on it's own. So, it's a problem with the SD Card obviously, but the question is what? The actual card, or the SD Card reader on the phone?

Does this with other sd cards?

SD card issues AFTER root...

Hey fellas,
This is very strange. I used my phone for a couple of days prior to rooting, I listened to a couple audio books and a fair amount of music. After I rooted the device, now my phone thinks the SD card is getting removed and plugged back in every couple of seconds. I cant even copy a 5mb mp3 file off of it before halfway through it will get unmounted (and then remounted). Any ideas? I have taken the card out, put it in two machines, formatted it, checked it for errors on both and neither computer has a hard time with it....
I am getting quite frustrated here...

Well does anybody at least have any suggestions to where I can start to look for whats going on? I am in the process of wiping my device and starting over

Hell-Razor said:
Well does anybody at least have any suggestions to where I can start to look for whats going on? I am in the process of wiping my device and starting over
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This has been a problem with a lot of S8+ for quite a while. If you Google it you will find blogs and chatboards with loads of information on the problem back to around June of this year. Seems like Samsung doesn't really care about it looking at the conversations going on. They know about the problem but haven't made any fixes for it.
My S8+ does this occasionally also. I have to remove the sdcard and reseat it in the holder and put it back into the phone. I saw several posts of using a older/slower card. I got an older 32gb type 6 card and it worked MUCH better than my class 10 cards.
I also have the problem of my computers not being able to moves files to or from my phone related to the sd card problem. This has happened before and after rooting my phone.
I know this isn't much of an answer, but resetting your phone back to stock isn't going to fix it. We need Samsung to do something to repair the problem. Good luck.
Take care,
OneofTheRabble