Develop Bugs

SD Card keeps becoming unavailable

Has anyone else come across the problem where the micro SD card seems to just stop being available to the phone? I'd say maybe once or so a day, anything that reads data from the SD card, such as the music app, stop working. If I try and play a song, it just hangs and does nothing.
I tried a search and somebody in the G1 forum had a similar problem but it didn't really contain any conclusions on what it is likely to be.
Anyone else had this issue? What is it most likely to be, the phone or card?
Thanks.

yeah I've had this occasionally with the camerea and seperately the 3d gallery software I installed.. have no idea why

Yea I've had that a couple of times actually. Just have to turn it off and on again and its ok, but its annoying.

Yeah, rebooting does sort it out, but it's starting to happen every day now, sometimes a couple times a day. If it's just a dodgy card or whatever I'd rather get T-Mobile to sort it sooner rather than later.

hmm a dodgy card.. included with the phone, that sucks

Backup your SD Card data and then try formatting it to see if that helps.

Cheers, will give that a go tomorrow. I might ring up T-Mob tomorrow anyway just to make them aware of the issue I'm having.
If I format it, will I be able to copy all the contents back on to it?

aljwatson69 said:
Cheers, will give that a go tomorrow. I might ring up T-Mob tomorrow anyway just to make them aware of the issue I'm having.
If I format it, will I be able to copy all the contents back on to it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, back it up to hard drive on your PC, then after you have formatted your SD card, copy back the contents from the hard drive to your Removable disk (SD card).

I've had this a few times Took the card out, reinserted and restarted the phone. Seemed to fix it, but it is annoying.

Sorry I can't remember when and how I know this.
But backup the card on your PC
Then format it in/with the phone and this should solve the problem I believe

I had killed one of my 16 GB card in Nexus one.
I found a problem that if i use Win 7 or Vista i must remove the device by using safely remove the USB device. Since now am doing this way i never had any problem.
Word of warning you could simply kill a card if you just remove a device.

My first thought was it has something to do with the USB connection. If you safely remove device in Windows - the phone 'prepares' the SD card.

I was having the same issue. I connected to the PC and mounted the SD card. I performed a disk check on the card and it found some errors which it then repaired. I then unmounted the card
I haven't had any issues since.

I formatted my card yesterday and haven't had any problems so far. thanks for the advice.

I ended up replacing the card. All of the previous advice didn't work for me or if it did it didn't last. I reckon there was a bit of a dodgy batch supplied by SanDisk.
~Since replacing I've had absolutely no problems whatsoever, it used to happen at least every 48hours. Very annoying when you try to take a photo and it tells you there's nowhere to save it.

I've been having problems too when taking pictures, which is really annoying!
And i'm not sure whether this is a related problem or not, but it could be...when trying to receive a file over bluetooth it sometimes says it doesn't have permission to receive the file or something along those lines, could this be the SD card playing up?
I'm on T Mobile, would they replace the SD card?

Not sure if it is the same reason, but I had all kinds of problems including the one you've described.
I'm on Orange, they told me that my SD card wasn't covered by Orange Care (the orange phone insurance). I said I didn't have Orange Care anyway and that surely it comes under the 12 months manufacturers warranty. They said pop it into the shop which is a bit of a drive and would cost me more than the value of a new card to get there.
At the time I wasn't certain it was the card as I didn't have a 2nd to try it with. Given my problem was very intermittent I decided the bother of going into the shop - it wasn't worth it for a £5 card. Now that I've bought a new one that works perfectly, I'm going to head into the shop with the old one next time I'm passing. The problem is I don't really need it replacing now! You could always lie and tell them you've tried your friends card at home for a couple of days and it worked perfectly?! No harm in trying.

hassan said:
I had killed one of my 16 GB card in Nexus one.
I found a problem that if i use Win 7 or Vista i must remove the device by using safely remove the USB device. Since now am doing this way i never had any problem.
Word of warning you could simply kill a card if you just remove a device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mhh - maybe I've had luck, but I use my over 1 year old 8gb cl6 card from magic/mt3g and never use that win function while unpluging anything (not while data transfer). So maybe depends on quality or manufacturer?
Sent from my HTC Desire

2-3 weeks since I've formatted my card and now I'm carefully unpluging my phone only when it's charging it hasn't happened ever since
Zilch said:
I've had this a few times Took the card out, reinserted and restarted the phone. Seemed to fix it, but it is annoying.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hate to say it, but it will happen again. Have card reader or other phone prepared, just in case your sd card stops working totally

Camera images never saved, disappeared from gallery.

To make a long story short, I took some irreplaceable pictures today that disappeared.
I have my camera saving to my 64gb memory card. I took a few pictures and a couple of panoramas and they ended up showing up glitchy and useless.
They didn't appear in the gallery with the exception of a few images.
It looked odd.
I rebooted the phone and tried to go into the gallery and they just weren't there. The previews showed up momentarily and then they vanished.
Now when I try to take a photo to go to my external memory, it works fine. It didn't pre-reboot.
Is there a method of:
A: Recovering my lost 10-15 images.
B: Ensuring that this doesn't happen in the future.
For the record, my card seems to be working fine. Music on it loads up quickly as well as any other images that I loaded onto it. Files open and there is zero lag. I don't suspect that the card is corrupted or anything.
Thanks guys.

silentecho13 said:
Is there a method of:
A: Recovering my lost 10-15 images.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could try something like Recuva: https://www.piriform.com/recuva
I successfully used that to restore files deleted from microSD cards a few years back.

johnus said:
You could try something like Recuva: https://www.piriform.com/recuva
I successfully used that to restore files deleted from microSD cards a few years back.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks!
I'm unfortunately on a Mac. Guess I'll boot into boot camp and install it and give it a go.
I hope the pictures actually existed as files though and not some cached object.

Update:
Overnight, the saving issue arose again. I'm forced to use internal storage when using my camera.

I've seen this problem before. So SD cards don't work well with Samsung devices. I bought a Samsung SD card and never seem this problem again. I recommend you do the same.

b0Ne83 said:
I've seen this problem before. So SD cards don't work well with Samsung devices. I bought a Samsung SD card and never seem this problem again. I recommend you do the same.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wish I wasn't broke :/
I'm using a SanDisk 64gb. Guess I've gotta dig up some cash and get a Samsung.
I don't see how this is an issue though.
What is your card formatted in? My current is in exfat. I'm thinking the format may be an issue.

It may be a kitkat issue. Google "kitkat SD card write". Root users are using a fix that sets permissions so the sd card can be written to by all apps as expected.
Sent from my SM-N910T using XDA Free mobile app

Dumbo53 said:
It may be a kitkat issue. Google "kitkat SD card write". Root users are using a fix that sets permissions so the sd card can be written to by all apps as expected.
Sent from my SM-N910T using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right before I came across your post, I found some info on the kitkat issue with sd cards. I'm guessing that's what's causing this problem. Odd because it's the default Samsung camera that's messing up.
Oh, how I miss root. I just hope we get root soon. I'm pretty close to selling this phone and hopping on Tmobile.

I had this problem happen with very VERY irreplaceable pictures, on my backpacking trip to china, one of the most irreplaceable pictures of my entire life was taken, appeared glitchy in gallery, phone reset and it was gone.
after taking out the SD card, and doing many deep scans to try and recover the deleted pictures, it seems the pictures arent there, which leads me to believe it somehow tried to save it in internal memory (which cant be mounted as a drive, so cannot be recovered).
if you can somehow flash an older version of android (like 2.xx) you can mount your phone as a drive, and then attempt to recover deleted data from your internal SD..
yeah all i can say is ,,|,, you samsung.

I too have the same problems as the OP. And I am on SAMSUNG micro SD card! Guess it is one of those first batch gremlins?
However, I think the problem has gone away after I switch on the image "preview" option. Give it a try.

I had the same issue with a 64gGB SanDisk micro SD card. The camera would seem as if it was taking pictures but nothing was actually saved; they just shows as corrupted files in the gallery. I lost countless irreplaceable images from our honeymoon because of this. Once I switched to a 32GB Samsung micro SD card I never had the issue again, also saving the pictures directly to the internal memory solved the problem. I use the SD card for music as well so it has to be something with the phone writing to the SD card. From what I've read it's a issue with the compatability with samsung and non samsung sd cards for some reason.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using XDA Free mobile app

Never had this issue with any of my Samsung phones (S2, S4, and now the Note 4). I'm using a SanDisk Class 10 32GB. I'd recommend pulling the files off the SD and doing a format. Download the App SD Maid as well for routine maintenance on your SD. Good luck.

My 64GB SanDisk SD card was giving unexpected unmounted errors, so I picked up a Samsung 64GB SD card. The unexpected unmount errors went away, but now I have this problem. Pictures are not saving to the SD card correctly. Sometimes it says media not found. Others the preview/thumbnail looks fine but the full view is just grey.
I am going to try saving to internal memory and manually moving to the SD card as I run out of room.
Sent from my iPad air using Tapatalk

Tablet destroying SD cards?

In August, I bought a 128GB PNY microSD card. It lasted almost two months, and then the tablet started acting funny. It would randomly unmount the card, it couldn't find my music files, and apps I had moved to the card would just disappear. I assumed the card was broken, so I eventually replaced it with a 128GB Samsung card. It's worked fine until the other day, when it started exhibiting the exact same behavior. I haven't been able to fix it.
I've tried formatting them both, but nothing seems to work. Windows can see the cards and the contents, but it's not able to format either card - it reads them both as write-protected, even though they're not. The only thing I can think that might cause it besides my tablet is Link2SD. I use this to move the large app data to the card since I only have 16GB of regular space. Could this be causing it? I'm at a loss, and I can't keep buying new cards. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I regularly read this forum and this is the first time I've heard of an issue as described. I bought a a cheaper 64Gb mSD card and used it with my Tab S day one. I've never had an issue. Could be you just have been unlucky? Were your cards from recognized brands? I suspect that the larger GB cards have lower yields so you need to buy a better quality card.
Sent from my SM-T800 using XDA Premium HD app

3DSammy said:
I regularly read this forum and this is the first time I've heard of an issue as described. I bought a a cheaper 64Gb mSD card and used it with my Tab S day one. I've never had an issue. Could be you just have been unlucky? Were your cards from recognized brands? I suspect that the larger GB cards have lower yields so you need to buy a better quality card.
Sent from my SM-T800 using XDA Premium HD app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I definitely won't rule out being unlucky, it's definitely in my blood. I just find it odd the exact same thing would happen to two cards, months apart and with different brands and purchasing locations. PNY isn't super awesome, but they're not garbage, and Samsung is fairly prominent.

Samsung phones and tablets are occasionally said to be sd card killers. The GS3 definitely was, killed like 3 cards with the same result as you got.
Sometimes I feel it also affects certain sizes of card. The GS3 ate 16gb cards, but not 32gb cards. So it's quite possible that a different size card may have a longer life.
Not saying this has any base in research, just my experience.

Andante1980 said:
Samsung phones and tablets are occasionally said to be sd card killers. The GS3 definitely was, killed like 3 cards with the same result as you got.
Sometimes I feel it also affects certain sizes of card. The GS3 ate 16gb cards, but not 32gb cards. So it's quite possible that a different size card may have a longer life.
Not saying this has any base in research, just my experience.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've read this on other forums as well, specifically the GS3 part. I wish there was a way to be sure. What happened to destroy the cards?

I am using a Samsung 64GB and Link2SD. Haven't encountered any issue so far. But on a related topic, I managed to destroy a 1 year old Sandisk USB drive yesterday while trying to format it as NTFS. Now Windows won't recognise it al all. It could just be that the flash memory had defects to begin with.

Does Windows make the bell sound when you insert your microsd, if it does you should be able to recover it, if it does not and you have checked the reader is working the microsd might be dead, if you have an sdhc adapter see if a camera or any other device will recognize the card, if it does format it in that device then see if windows will see it, I had an 16GB microsd a few years ago completely die when i froze while i was copying music to my phone, nothing would recognize the card after that it was totally dead, and i got a refund.
john.
snapper.fishes said:
I am using a Samsung 64GB and Link2SD. Haven't encountered any issue so far. But on a related topic, I managed to destroy a 1 year old Sandisk USB drive yesterday while trying to format it as NTFS. Now Windows won't recognise it al all. It could just be that the flash memory had defects to begin with.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Tinderbox (UK) said:
Does Windows make the bell sound when you insert your microsd, if it does you should be able to recover it, if it does not and you have checked the reader is working the microsd might be dead, if you have an sdhc adapter see if a camera or any other device will recognize the card, if it does format it in that device then see if windows will see it, I had an 16GB microsd a few years ago completely die when i froze while i was copying music to my phone, nothing would recognize the card after that it was totally dead, and i got a refund.
john.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Windows does recognize the card, and I can see the contents of it and copy all content OFF the card. However, trying to format it just tells me the disk is write protected. I've done everything in my power to try to unlock the disk, including third-party programs and commands in the DOS prompt, but it's still write-protected. So bizarre!

I had the write protect problem on an card myself a few years ago, I downloaded an app that let me remove the protection and the card worked fine after that.
Does the write protection stop a camera from formatting the card, or only windows, as i said it`s been years since i had my problem.
Have you tried a partition manger app, I have used the one below for years, but i dont know if it will be blocked by the write protection as well.
http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html
John.
greycobalt said:
Windows does recognize the card, and I can see the contents of it and copy all content OFF the card. However, trying to format it just tells me the disk is write protected. I've done everything in my power to try to unlock the disk, including third-party programs and commands in the DOS prompt, but it's still write-protected. So bizarre!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Tinderbox (UK) said:
I had the write protect problem on an card myself a few years ago, I downloaded an app that let me remove the protection and the card worked fine after that.
Does the write protection stop a camera from formatting the card, or only windows, as i said it`s been years since i had my problem.
Have you tried a partition manger app, I have used the one below for years, but i dont know if it will be blocked by the write protection as well.
http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html
John.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I actually don't own a camera, the only things I have that take SD cards are computers and Android tablets/phones. I haven't tried that particular partition manager (Chrome won't let me download it - it says it's unsafe?), but the Windows manager and an HP one someone recommended both say "Failed to format disk."

I have uploaded the app i used, It years old so i most likely does not work but you can give it a try.
John.
greycobalt said:
I actually don't own a camera, the only things I have that take SD cards are computers and Android tablets/phones. I haven't tried that particular partition manager (Chrome won't let me download it - it says it's unsafe?), but the Windows manager and an HP one someone recommended both say "Failed to format disk."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

greycobalt said:
I actually don't own a camera, the only things I have that take SD cards are computers and Android tablets/phones. I haven't tried that particular partition manager (Chrome won't let me download it - it says it's unsafe?), but the Windows manager and an HP one someone recommended both say "Failed to format disk."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would download partition wizard with another browser or force chrome to download it. Its a perfectly legitimate app which I've used many a time.
You need a low level format and partitioning software like that. Windows is useless on its own.
Delete the sd card partition, recreate and reformat.

ashyx said:
I would download partition wizard with another browser or force chrome to download it. Its a perfectly legitimate app which I've used many a time.
You need a low level format and partitioning software like that. Windows is useless on its own.
Delete the sd card partition, recreate and reformat.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I downloaded it through Edge, and everything worked fine. It even seemed like it was going to work, until I hit "apply". Then it sat and thought for a while, and told me there was an error with the format of the disk. Instead of trying to recreate 2 partitions, I tried to just see if it would format at all, and when I applied that change, it said it completed successfully, but the disk was still in it's former state - full of my files, fully readable, and definitely not formatted. I feel like this stupid thing is haunted.

So for this problem, can anyone give me an opinion on whether it's hardware or software based? Such as, do you believe this is happening because it's a Samsung tablet, or with a bug on their current Android version? I'm hesitant to keep putting cards in it, but I want to use my tablet!

Have you flashed or rooted your tablet? , are you on kitkat or lollipop?

Tinderbox (UK) said:
Have you flashed or rooted your tablet? , are you on kitkat or lollipop?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It was rooted, but it was on stock 5.0.2. I used root to run Link2SD.

Link2SD only moves apps not music, so why did your music disappear, have you used any cleaning apps as they can delete files that you want to keep.
greycobalt said:
It was rooted, but it was on stock 5.0.2. I used root to run Link2SD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Tinderbox (UK) said:
Link2SD only moves apps not music, so why did your music disappear, have you used any cleaning apps as they can delete files that you want to keep.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well I had Link2SD moving all kinds of crap. It was linking games, books, comics, magazines...lots of stuff. My music didn't disappear - in fact, nothing did. It's all still there, only the tablet can't see it. My computer can see it, I can copy and open the files, but I can't write anything new to the card, and I can't format it.

It sounds like your tablet is loosing the location of the files on your microsd, I would say Link2SD is at fault, I would give the developer a email with the problem your are having and see what they say.
EDIT: I just read the reviews of LINK2SD and some people are reporting files are disappearing.
John.
greycobalt said:
Well I had Link2SD moving all kinds of crap. It was linking games, books, comics, magazines...lots of stuff. My music didn't disappear - in fact, nothing did. It's all still there, only the tablet can't see it. My computer can see it, I can copy and open the files, but I can't write anything new to the card, and I can't format it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

greycobalt said:
Well I had Link2SD moving all kinds of crap. It was linking games, books, comics, magazines...lots of stuff. My music didn't disappear - in fact, nothing did. It's all still there, only the tablet can't see it. My computer can see it, I can copy and open the files, but I can't write anything new to the card, and I can't format it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
@greycobalt: I recently had Link2SD card stop mounting the 2nd partition (formatted as ext2, that is used for Link2SD).
I'm using a SanDisk 64 GB micro SD.
1) Did you have this same problem? Were you able to recover your app files when you put the SD card into your computer?
2) Oddly enough, I can see the files on the 1st partition of the card, which is formatted to FAT32 and I can see everything on that in file explorer. You said that these even disappear?
3) What file format did you have for your microSD for Link2SD to be able to link apps to it?

Second time having issues with 64gb sdcard

Hi all,
I am getting very worried with this LG g4.
Last December I had a big issue where I was taking pictures and saving in my sd card, and when the card got a bit full(not totally) all photos taken from a certain point in time were corrupted (normal size but no thumbnail and I could not open them anywhere), as conclusion, could copy existing, could not delete with external software, or in any other day.
End up complaining to amazon and they have sent me a new 64sd card, this time from Samsung.
So far so good, until yesterday where I took some pics and realised the last ones were not appearing as thumbnails. My thought: the same issue again. Decided to restart phone...
Error no sd card can be mounted, it is corrupted!!
Restarted again, tried on another phone, still corrupted. I cant open or see any data from it. It says I have to format?
I don't know if I will lose all my data, and I am thinking about presenting a formal complaint to LG. It must be the phone!??
Anyone with the same issue?
Thanks Tiago

It might be your phone or just a couple bad SD cards. I had an issue with the SD card they provided with the promotion, but it was a different issue. There was no data loss. It just prevented writing to the SD or deleting. I had no problem copying files off the card. Since my 1st SD card, I bought a SanDisk Extreme 64GB. It has worked flawlessly for months.

Can't move apps to SD card

On previous phones, many apps could be moved to the SD card. On this phone, Moto Z2 Play (XT1710-02), none of the apps show the ability to choose the storage location, even apps that allowed this on my previous phone. Did Motorola decide to disable this feature?
Sent from my XT1710-02 using Tapatalk

Just format the SD card as internal storage and let the phone do its thing.

larsdennert said:
Just format the SD card as internal storage and let the phone do its thing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh how I wish this were true. I have tried 2 different sdhc 32gb class 1 cards one sandisk one pyl prime performance. And the phone is saying that both are too slow for internal and that some apps may lag. Figured I see how bad the lag was because I needed the space..... Things seemed to go alright. I mean I'm not aware of any cards faster than the ones I have? Then my phone started going whacky. It reeboot and then got in a perpetual rebooting loop. I could hold power and volume down button to go to Bios and tried to book into recovery mode from there. Nope.
At this point I'm getting pissed and started freaking out....deep breathing. Ok should I factory reset? I figure I really don't have a choice. Then I figured I would try to remove the ad cards. And it worked! Only problem is that I lost some pics and some files and now it says my card is corrupted. So. Much for SD card internal storage.
Anyone got any better advice than " just put it in and let the phone work it's magic?" I don't think anyone would ever come on these forms if that little tid bit of wisdom worked. Right? ?????

I've had card configured that way for a year or two. No problems. You just need good cards. I have plenty of broken cheap sd cards lying around that would likely fail quickly under such load. I also have the phone configured to back up automatically so if it gets lost, I lose nothing. Grab another phone and restore from the cloud.