Develop Bugs

Unavailable SD Card issue after (any) Rom Upgrade...Please help!

This is my first post, and I'm usually pretty careful about following instructions. I'm currently running Skyraider's 3.0 RC2, but to my dismay, I am finding that my phone still refuses to recognize my SD Card. Under settings it says it is unavailable, and when connected to PC, it gives an option to mount to disk but doesn't mount upon selecting this.
My phone is rooted with S-Off and 2.15 radio...Did a full wipe of everything before I flashed 3.0 RC2. Shows that my kernel is now King #2, but I have had this issue with many other roms and kernel combinations. I have been unsuccessful in finding a solution when searching the forums, and the only way to regain functionality is to restore a previous backup without any roms installed.
Any help is much appreciate. Thanks!!!
P.S. I've also tried mounting the card in clockworkmod's advanced recovery settings, but this does not change a thing. Internal storage is also currently unavailable. Mount through usb in recovery does work, but this doesn't help when I cannot access my sd card after boot.

I had a similar issue a couple days ago after upgrading from stock 2.1 to SkyRaider 2.5.2.
When I'd go to set my ringtones, the option for the SD card wasn't there. As if it wasn't reading it was in the phone at all. I opened up Astro file manager to see if it could read it and it in fact did. I could see that all the ringtones were still on the card right where they should be and they would play from Astro when I clicked on them. But, the option to actually set them still wasn't there.
I'm not exactly sure what 'fixed' it, but I went in to set my notification tone and suddenly the option to select from the SD card was there. Then, I could then access the card to set ringers as well. I'm sorry I don't have anything more specific. The card just seemed to suddenly decide to let the OS know it was there. I also rebooted the phone a couple times as well as removing the card while the phone was in use and reinserting it. Not sure if any of that helped the situation or not.
I had asked about this in two separate threads and not one person responded, so I'm guessing the issue is rare.
If you don't get anywhere with it, maybe try a different SD card just to see if it shows up.
Good luck.

I've had the same issue but was able to resolve it. Mount the sd card from a laptop or PC. If you can read the card copy the contents onto the PC (I placed mine in a separate folder). Then go into tools and do an error checking. After replacing the SD card back in the phone see if everything is ok. this fixed my SD card. However, I've had the SD card lose its primary disk notation so I had to reformat and then transfer the previous save files on the SD card from my backup an that solved my other issue. Also, some times the SD card speed can cause this issue and it is perfered that you a class 4 or better. I hope this helps.

Well, I took your advice and pulled the sd card only to mount it separately and scan it for errors. None were found. I've also reformatted and restored all the files that were on it. Phone still does not recognize card or internal storage. My phone did, however, recognize another card I had on hand and I believe it may be a compatibility issue between my 8 Gb A-Data brand Micro SD card and 2.2 roms. FYI...It's a class 6, and the one I tried that was recognized was a 6gb sandisk (class 4). I'll look into getting a 16 or 32 gig sandisk in the near future and keep you posted. Thank you guys for your insight.

always 'safely remove hardware' (stop the device, etc.) from your windows machine before unplugging your incredible
if you don't, you end up not being able to see the SD card until you restart your phone

Just reformatted my SD card, checked for errors after unmounting etc... and now it seems to work ok, although one of the music players I normally use doesn't seem to recognise it!!

[Q] CyanogenMod 7 is ruining my SD cards

Now I'm not moaning about CyanogenMod here, I'm just trying to understand how I can fix the issue.
Basically, I had CyanogenMod 7 RC2 on my Desire Z. That was it.
Eventually I saw through ROM Manager that the full release of 7 was out so I downloaded, took a backup, wiped everything and did a fresh install of the new ROM.
It installed fine, but none of my apps that needed root access were getting it.
So I booted into recovery, restored my backup, root was back.
I then installed 7.0 over my RC2. That worked fine, but again root was gone.
At this point, my phone started damaging SD cards.
It suddenly started saying that my 8GB card that came with the phone was damaged. I tried to fix it on the phone, but it just said 'Checking card' and then giving up.
Putting it in an old MP3 player, it is not detected at all.
Putting it in a card reader, the card is unreadable and when I try to format it Windows says the card is 'read only' (this is not due to the reader).
I put a functional 2gb card I had lying around into my Desire Z and it broke it in the exact same way.
My question to you guys is - what could be causing this and how do I fix it because I have a 16gb card coming and I'm obviously cautious of putting it in the phone.
Also, how would I go about flashing the new Cyanogenmod 7.02 ROM if my phone keeps breaking SD cards I put into it?

This error can be because when ever you install a CyanogenMod ROM over another, It leaves files your new ROM think is useful such as data that the new ROM doesn't support. It is damaging your SD Card because it keeps attempting to fix the error but is making it worst by trying to remove system files. Your best bet is to try another ROM and see if it does the same thing and report it to CyanogenMod Developer Team if it only does this to CyanogenMod ROMs otherwise it would be just a virus on your SD Card feeding off of personal data. If it is only CyanogenMod ROMs, we will adress this issue ASAP. Hope I helped

Thank you VS4, you are indeed helpful
I've since heard some people have managed to fix their SD cards by formatting them in ClockworkMod but I can't even mount it first in order to do this! Is my card truly dead?
Also, do you think the reason that CM7.0 had no root (even when it was a clean install) was due to me not 'fixing permissions'?
Thanks

Just a note to say that I've managed to fix it!
Despite being unable to 'mount sdcard' in clockworkmod, I found I was able to activate USB Storage and through this I was able to format the card (Windows 7 was previously saying that the same card was 'read only' in a multitude of card readers).
I hope this helps any poor chap with the same problem.

I had this exact same problem, munched 2 of my 8GB cards, and had a 16 on the way. I somehow fixed it before the 16 came and I've never had the issue since, glad to see an explanation of it.

Thanks, nofixio!
I had the same problem on my Samsung Fascinate with CM7. It ate my 16GB SD card to the point where the phone wouldn't recognize it, CWM wouldn't mount it, and it wouldn't show up on my computer in multiple SD readers.
I wasn't quite clear what you were suggesting when you said you were able to "activate USB Storage." I thought maybe you meant within CWM. That didn't work for me, but I was able to boot the phone up with the problem SD card in it and turn on USB storage as normal. Suddenly my computer could not only see the SD card, it could see all the files that were on it before it died! I backed everything up, formatted the card in Windows, and everything's good now. Thanks for the tip!

rfschmid said:
Thanks, nofixio!
I had the same problem on my Samsung Fascinate with CM7. It ate my 16GB SD card to the point where the phone wouldn't recognize it, CWM wouldn't mount it, and it wouldn't show up on my computer in multiple SD readers.
I wasn't quite clear what you were suggesting when you said you were able to "activate USB Storage." I thought maybe you meant within CWM. That didn't work for me, but I was able to boot the phone up with the problem SD card in it and turn on USB storage as normal. Suddenly my computer could not only see the SD card, it could see all the files that were on it before it died! I backed everything up, formatted the card in Windows, and everything's good now. Thanks for the tip!
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how do i activate usb storage? i have several memory cards that stopped working out of no where and i have important files on them. PLEASE HELP!!!

hotboyray said:
how do i activate usb storage? i have several memory cards that stopped working out of no where and i have important files on them. PLEASE HELP!!!
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I'm not sure why you would ask this in such an old thread but... Try just plugging it in to your computer maybe? What ROM are you on?

noneabove said:
I'm not sure why you would ask this in such an old thread but... Try just plugging it in to your computer maybe? What ROM are you on?
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im running cm7 ... it wont read from computer. i tried several micro sd card readers. it just tells me it cant format. its just like what was mentioned before.

Weird, I've never had any problems with Cyanogen 7 roms. I've flashed one over another and had no issues at all, Mayb because I use SuperWipe before hand? Or maybe its a certain sd card issue???

Running Desire Z and Andromadus Beta 11 I had similar problem after I had applied remote wipe from Exchange (wanted to see if it works). Remote wipe worked: it destroyed contents of SD card and erased phone back to factory settings. After wipe mounting SD card failed and Andromadus seemed to be unable to format the card.
Solution: Booted phone to Clockwork recovery and applied advanced -> Partition SD Card.
Posted this on this thread since it came first when searching solution.

hotboyray said:
how do i activate usb storage? i have several memory cards that stopped working out of no where and i have important files on them. PLEASE HELP!!!
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Go into Recovery (Clockwork), go to mounts and storage, then scroll down and it should say mount USB storage.

SD card mount problem please help

I've been searching all over for a couple days now and I can't find any solution only people with similar but not exact same problem I'm having. Out of the blue a couple days ago the fat32 partition on my 32GB class10 patriot SD card unmounted and won't mount at all. However the ext4 partition mounts just fine and continues to work as it always has. I also can't plug the card directly into my PC because the adapter that came with the micro SD card appears to not work. My PC doesn't think there is an SD card in it. I tried it with a known good SD card (the 16GB samsung SD card that came with the phone. Which when inserted into the phone mounts and can be used like expected. No new apps where installed or changes made to my phone or the SD card before it stopped working correctly. The same apps and what not have been in use for as long as I have had the 32GB SD card. In fact the currently in use version of CM10.1 has been is use for the last month with no issue regarding the SD card. When I remove the card a notification shows up telling me to insert an SD card. And when I insert the 32GB card the checking SD card notification shows up an a second or two after the SD card is safe to remove notification shows up as if I had told it to unmount the SD card. If I tap on mount SD card in settings the same thing happens. And it also happens after a reboot. CWM can't mount the SD card either. What can I do to fix it so the fat32 partition is usable again?

StoneRyno said:
I've been searching all over for a couple days now and I can't find any solution only people with similar but not exact same problem I'm having. Out of the blue a couple days ago the fat32 partition on my 32GB class10 patriot SD card unmounted and won't mount at all. However the ext4 partition mounts just fine and continues to work as it always has. I also can't plug the card directly into my PC because the adapter that came with the micro SD card appears to not work. My PC doesn't think there is an SD card in it. I tried it with a known good SD card (the 16GB samsung SD card that came with the phone. Which when inserted into the phone mounts and can be used like expected. No new apps where installed or changes made to my phone or the SD card before it stopped working correctly. The same apps and what not have been in use for as long as I have had the 32GB SD card. In fact the currently in use version of CM10.1 has been is use for the last month with no issue regarding the SD card. When I remove the card a notification shows up telling me to insert an SD card. And when I insert the 32GB card the checking SD card notification shows up an a second or two after the SD card is safe to remove notification shows up as if I had told it to unmount the SD card. If I tap on mount SD card in settings the same thing happens. And it also happens after a reboot. CWM can't mount the SD card either. What can I do to fix it so the fat32 partition is usable again?
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Have you tried formatting the SD card in recovery?

As I said I can't mount it with CWM either. The card contains the data for my mSecure passwords as that app was forced to the SD card due to JB changes in android so I can't format it until I can recover the data on it. I need a solution to access the data before I can reformat it assuming that it needs to be reformatted. The SD card was supposed to be this fail safe thing and I didn't need to make backups of it as it was the backup storage stuff. So now I'm all freaking out because I can't access it for all the backed up data on top of the data for one critical app that was forced to reside on it. The good news is that only a few apps data is effected by this the bad news is those apps were all very important. I just don't understand why this has happened. And if using a cloud source such as box will be any more secure and safe than using the SD card in light of this; now I don't trust not losing data in the future on a source that was supposed to not have this sort of thing happen.

Maybe the SD card just went bad. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

DynamicN said:
Maybe the SD card just went bad. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.
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No problem, it's a problem no easily solved, and is a long shot finding anyone who will be able to help. I looked at dozens of sites and forum threads and all sorts of other stuff from goggle searches and couldn't find a solution to get it to mount in either the phone or on my PC to recover the data from it and find out for sure if it is a bad card or not. It might still be under warranty. If it's not I'll be ticked considering how much it cost and how little time I've had it.

StoneRyno said:
No problem, it's a problem no easily solved, and is a long shot finding anyone who will be able to help. I looked at dozens of sites and forum threads and all sorts of other stuff from goggle searches and couldn't find a solution to get it to mount in either the phone or on my PC to recover the data from it and find out for sure if it is a bad card or not. It might still be under warranty. If it's not I'll be ticked considering how much it cost and how little time I've had it.
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Try installing Recuva on your PC, if this program doesn't work for you then you might wanna try another more advanced recovery program like R-studio v6 (Shareware) which is easy to use since it's GUI based.
or testdisk-6.14-WIP (Freeware) which includes testdisk_win.exe for partition recovery and photorec_win.exe for files and media recovery, but it's kinda complicated since it's based on Command Prompt or DOS! so you need to google for a guide for how to use it.

StoneRyno said:
No problem, it's a problem no easily solved, and is a long shot finding anyone who will be able to help. I looked at dozens of sites and forum threads and all sorts of other stuff from goggle searches and couldn't find a solution to get it to mount in either the phone or on my PC to recover the data from it and find out for sure if it is a bad card or not. It might still be under warranty. If it's not I'll be ticked considering how much it cost and how little time I've had it.
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Are you still having the problem? I had the same problem, and I found a solution to it.

chromeplaya said:
Are you still having the problem? I had the same problem, and I found a solution to it.
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Wow I somehow never got notified of this post seeing as I'm just now noticing a reply from months ago. Yes I still can't mount the SD card. I took it out and returned to the stock one that came with my phone. I still have the card as I need to recover the data from it and if not possible wipe it somehow so that I can warranty exchange it. Please do let me know what your solution is so that I can try it and see if it works.

Refresh my memory on what the problem was. This was a while ago lol.

chromeplaya said:
Refresh my memory on what the problem was. This was a while ago lol.
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The SD card won't mount in my samsung epic and my windows PCs. This was a sudden without warning signs and with no apparent cause. One moment it was fine and the next moment poof. I was looking for a solution to gain access to the files on it to recover whatever I can and if possible repair the card so that it works again. Assuming that it's not a failure of the card itself. It is within the warranty and well within the life expectancy of it. So I suspect it is not a failure of the card itself. I have the option of using ubuntu or other USB stick bootable options for tools as needed.

most of app won't read SDCard

Hi...
This is my first post here.
I have a problem with my SD Card.
My SDCard: 32GB microSDHC, some application like music player and gallery sometimes can't read file on my ext sd card (but my file manager can do it flawlessly)
Furthermore, sometimes it shows PREPARING SD CARD on top of the screen, although I don't even do anything. I tried to re-mount it again. But the problem still sometime occurs.
This problem started happening when I changed my stock rom to Ressurection Remix, I thought this problem occurred because of the ROM. so I change it to AOSP. But still... the problem still existed. So then, I changed it back to my stock ROM (with restore option in CWM)
But yeah... Nothing happen.
Any idea?
P.S.: Sorry for my bad english.

extSdCard/sdcard 1 issues
I have a Note II N1907 (ATT) running Liquid Smooth with a SanDisk microSD ultra 32gb. I have been trying to figure this issue out since I bought this phone 2 months ago. I screwed up the original card that I transferred from my old phone some how by trying different things to make the phone recognize it. It worked fine in my HTC Vivid. I have root and am able to use root options to try to access this card of installation, but the best I have been able to do is use it for storage. And I have to manually move things to the card, because most apps do not acknowledge that it is there (can't see it). TWRP recovery can see it after I did my first ROM Flash, but I have to use internal memory for my first ROM Flash, because recovery mode was unable to mount extSdCard.
Is there a kernel I can flash to remedy this. I am no developer, but I think the problem is that the internal memory is also SD in type. I have noticed that internal memory shows up as SDcard0 (zero) and the after market sd card is sdcard1. Maybe the phone automatically defaults to the first sdcard and ignores the other (because it is only designed to have one sd card).
I am sure others have hard this problem with this phone. Thank you for any help you can offer..

floykoe said:
I have a Note II N1907 (ATT) running Liquid Smooth with a SanDisk microSD ultra 32gb. I have been trying to figure this issue out since I bought this phone 2 months ago. I screwed up the original card that I transferred from my old phone some how by trying different things to make the phone recognize it. It worked fine in my HTC Vivid. I have root and am able to use root options to try to access this card of installation, but the best I have been able to do is use it for storage. And I have to manually move things to the card, because most apps do not acknowledge that it is there (can't see it). TWRP recovery can see it after I did my first ROM Flash, but I have to use internal memory for my first ROM Flash, because recovery mode was unable to mount extSdCard.
Is there a kernel I can flash to remedy this. I am no developer, but I think the problem is that the internal memory is also SD in type. I have noticed that internal memory shows up as SDcard0 (zero) and the after market sd card is sdcard1. Maybe the phone automatically defaults to the first sdcard and ignores the other (because it is only designed to have one sd card).
I am sure others have hard this problem with this phone. Thank you for any help you can offer..
Click to expand...
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As soon as I saw your reply I scanned for the words "Sandisk Ultra" and then I knew this was your issue.
I had a lot of SD card corruption with this brand and searching a lot on the web I found many stories of people having the same issues as I did.
My 32Gb Sandisk Ultra was the cause of many of my problems. 2 months on with a Lexar 32Gb, no problems (touch wood)

[Q] External SD Card Read-Only Problem

I tried researching this but wasn't successful finding same exact problem or solution. I'm on 4.4.2 Baseband N900TUVUCNB4 rooted with stock rom and ext sd fix. Everything was working fine until recently. My external SD card has inexplicably become read-only, both on the phone and on my desktop. I first noticed this last week when the phone camera began having problems writing to external SD card, and now I can't sync music to card. I've tried formatting on the phone and desktop, both quick and full but no dice. On the phone, I am able to delete individual files or folders but they reappear. On the PC, I can view but get write protect message when trying to format. Anyone else come across this or have suggestions?

ronman71 said:
I tried researching this but wasn't successful finding same exact problem or solution. I'm on 4.4.2 Baseband N900TUVUCNB4 rooted with stock rom and ext sd fix. Everything was working fine until recently. My external SD card has inexplicably become read-only, both on the phone and on my desktop. I first noticed this last week when the phone camera began having problems writing to external SD card, and now I can't sync music to card. I've tried formatting on the phone and desktop, both quick and full but no dice. On the phone, I am able to delete individual files or folders but they reappear. On the PC, I can view but get write protect message when trying to format. Anyone else come across this or have suggestions?
Click to expand...
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Happened with me once with a different phone/OS. Weird thing is that it was only for a particular SD card. I put a different card and it worked.
It turned out to be a problem with the card (dunno how thats possible though).

What's the brand of your SD card?

I have the exact same problem with my SGNote 2 and SanDisk 64gb micro SD card. First I lost some pics I have taken that day. I searched through with a file rescue tool but they were nowhere to be found. Deleted files reappear, and the ones I copied from internal SD dissappear.
Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk

ronman71 said:
I tried researching this but wasn't successful finding same exact problem or solution. I'm on 4.4.2 Baseband N900TUVUCNB4 rooted with stock rom and ext sd fix. Everything was working fine until recently. My external SD card has inexplicably become read-only, both on the phone and on my desktop. I first noticed this last week when the phone camera began having problems writing to external SD card, and now I can't sync music to card. I've tried formatting on the phone and desktop, both quick and full but no dice. On the phone, I am able to delete individual files or folders but they reappear. On the PC, I can view but get write protect message when trying to format. Anyone else come across this or have suggestions?
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I had same problem. But I fixed this problem by formatting my SD card via PC. It is very bad to me Because I lost my some valuable Docs:crying:

Try file recovery softwares, you might recover it.

Lorettaa said:
Try file recovery softwares, you might recover it.
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Thanks. I tried formatting through PC using windows and also tried using SDFormatter v4.0 but get write protect error. Thanks for the suggestions

Lorettaa said:
What's the brand of your SD card?
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It's a SanDisk 64gb class 10.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one. Maybe we can share the solution when we find one. I'm using internal memory in the meantime for new media files, but frustrated that I am not able to use the rest of the memory available on my card.

SanDisk works fine for me, maybe your sd card is a faulty one, let's wait for a while here and maybe someone could answer your question and hopefully solve your problem

Lorettaa said:
SanDisk works fine for me, maybe your sd card is a faulty one, let's wait for a while here and maybe someone could answer your question and hopefully solve your problem
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Thanks, Lorettaa. It seems like that's the only option right now, since I can't find any other info about it on XDA. I know Kit Kat has that design "flaw" where apps can't write to an SD card, but I can't even write to it, modify it or reformat it on a PC. I have full read access to every file, just can't do anything else

ronman71 said:
Thanks, Lorettaa. It seems like that's the only option right now, since I can't find any other info about it on XDA. I know Kit Kat has that design "flaw" where apps can't write to an SD card, but I can't even write to it, modify it or reformat it on a PC. I have full read access to every file, just can't do anything else
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I have the exact same problem, i tried many options , used some softwares in windows to format , wipe, fix, modify. nothing works.
One possible reason for this problem is file system errors , which can be rectified using the 'error checking' option in windows and 'fixing the file system errors'
But that doesnt solve my problem, even after formatting using advanced softwares, the sd card is the same - no files deleted, no files added...
The fat as well as ext4 parition is not formattable now in anyway.so the possible conclusion is 'sd card is going to fail'.. Take a backup before you loose the read capability.

Recuva is a good, free tool (from the people that make CCleaner) to deleted recover photos.

jayOOMjay said:
One possible reason for this problem is file system errors....
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And one possible reason for a false error condition is a corrupt system. This is normally an unlikely possibility but it is very likely on devices that have had partition images written to (i.e. a flashed ROM). If you have done all you can to the SD card and if the errors are not only on one SD card then wipe everything and load a backup. If you still get errors then wipe everything and revert to stock to see if they still occur.
Frank