Just to suggest possible fix that worked for me and I had a hard time to find anything clearly connected with this issue.
Applies to: 32GB micro SD cards, possibly other rather huge capacities.
- LG GT540 (Optimus), seen reported similar problems on various devices but with unclear solution
Primary symptoms:
(Observed on Android 2.1 Eclair)
- SD Card preparation sometimes taking notably long time.
- SD Card is unexpectedly removed (couple times a day)
- SD Card is corrupted (solved by manual phone reboot)
- System randomly restarts (once or twice a day)
(Observed on Android 2.3.7 Gingerbread)
- System restarts during every SD Card preparation process,
after restart SD Card is working (ie. accessible by explorer) but no media files are accessible through standard applications (ie. gallery, music, player, etc.)
Suggested solution:
Format your SD Card with selected allocation unit size equal 8192 bytes (8KB)!
Drawbacks:
As far as I know using that small allocation unit may cause speed performance to suffer.
Full story:
My problems started right away I bought my 32GB micro SD to my new phone GT540. While I was using the SD only as a data storage it worked quite good. From time to time it needs to remount the SD or better reboot completely. After I tried hack App2SD, it was clear that it had been completely unstable. Shortly after I installed all application I wanted, system rebooted and every single user application was gone. So I moved to Link2SD which is more user-friendly way to have applications on SD on Eclair. It worked similar to App2SD but when system rebooted then just another reboot made apps work again. But by the time the whole problem only getting worse with restarts more than couple times a day, mostly when you needed the phone the most.
I believed that the issues were related mainly to non-standard application moving to SD so I decided to move to Gingerbread but there the issue went so bad. No media was cataloged so entire SD data was practically useless. Moreover system restarts on every SD card preparation. So I played around hard and after some time found a solution that's working for me rock solid. (3 days and counting...)
Desperate, I was trying formating any where possible. The really frustrating thing really is that the phone system itself formats the card wrong way! So it was hard to believe that there might be an issue. I tried only formating with 8kb allocation unit, not any other. It's perfectly solved my problems. I think that the original cluster size was 16kb. I've seen on forum suggestions to use 32kb unit as it should have the best performance over the size but I don't know yet if it's also working without issues. I may try it if any one post their experience I'll update this post to collect as much useful information about this as possible.
me too, will try this out
Got the same symptoms on a SGA (5830) running PAC ROM 20.1.0. A brand new SanDisk microSD 32GB (have verified the card is okay, using h2testw.exe). Will give this a go and update with outcome in a few days. Thankyou
Related
Hi,
I recently got an atrix [Bell Canada] and have been a happy user. However couple of days ago, I encountered a very strange problem. My phone has lots of free internal storage and a small 1GB memory card. Few days back, when I was taking pictures from the camera [default storage: internal], I noticed that the camera wasn't saving the pictures at all. It would take the picture, I'd hear the shutter sound thingy but the picture wasn't saved [there was no error message]. Upon further inspection, I noticed that all my previous pictures as well as all the songs were gone. I was travelling at that time and just switched the storage location to memory card and camera started saving pictures.
Today when I got home, I connected the phone to pc and my internal storage area is almost empty [just 71MB used by some applications]. I've lost all my pictures and songs from the storage and apparently there's no trace of them. I'm definite that I was listening to music and viewing pictures at least one day before I noticed this problem, and in between I didn't see anything strange on the phone.
Has anyone any clue what might be the cause and if there's a way to recover the old stuff? Searching the forums/google didn't yield anything. Here's the version num etc.
System Version: Blur_version.0.37.23.MB860.BellMobility.en.CA
Android Version: 2.2.2
Baseband version: N_01.77.15P
Kernel Version: 2.6.32.9
Build Number: OLYLA_U4_0.37.23
It is a stock froyo with yet locked bootloader and no root.
I've had the problem where the internal sdcard periodically gets wiped.
I know two causes for this problem:
1. A defective app. The first time it started happening to me was right after I had installed Go Launcher. I saw another user posted about it, and I uninstalled it - and after that, the problem dropped almost completely.
2. If the volume itself is damaged, Android will either attempt a repair, or wipe the entire volume. This most likely will have occurred when people are in the habit of just pulling the USB cable out without properly unmounting the volumes from the PC first. The best way to deal with this is to format the volume (full format, NOT quick format) and make sure to always unmount the drives before pulling the cable. Note that when you format a volume for Android (whether it's the internal sdcard, or the external one), it's best to use a 32k allocation size.
My SD card seems intact. I did plug the phone with the PC but I didn't mount internal storage [selected None in the USB Connection notification]. Also I didn't have any launcher installed. All the apps I had looked pretty harmless [all very common and/or by well known publishers]. Anyway, it seems like the problem would remain a mystery. Everything seems normal now. Thanks for your answer.
Side question: Is it safe to format the internal storage? I assume OS, apps, and other critical data is stored on the ROM which is separate.
faisaliqbal said:
My SD card seems intact. I did plug the phone with the PC but I didn't mount internal storage [selected None in the USB Connection notification]. Also I didn't have any launcher installed. All the apps I had looked pretty harmless [all very common and/or by well known publishers]. Anyway, it seems like the problem would remain a mystery. Everything seems normal now. Thanks for your answer.
Side question: Is it safe to format the internal storage? I assume OS, apps, and other critical data is stored on the ROM which is separate.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all, how are you determining that your SD card is intact?
Second, I wasn't pointing at launchers specifically, nor did I say anything about malicious software or shady developers. Go Launcher is a very common app by a respected developer. I wasn't pointing at malware, I was pointing at applications with a bug - which can be any app whatsoever. If all this started happening after you installed something specific, it bears looking at - that's all.
As for your question, it's perfectly safe to format the internal sdcard, just make sure to look it over first, and backup anything you want to keep. Your camera may store the photos you take there, for example. Or Tasker stores the documentation it downloads there, etc... You're not going to harm the system itself in any way, but that doesn't mean there isn't something you'd miss. Just give it a look before you format.
It happened to me again, once again all the data was erased from internal memory. This time, I'm quite confident it was WinAmp app unless my phone has defective hardware (slim chance).
faisaliqbal said:
It happened to me again, once again all the data was erased from internal memory. This time, I'm quite confident it was WinAmp app unless my phone has defective hardware (slim chance).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Even if it was WinAmp, it's probably not a bad idea to reformat the internal sdcard partition. If you choose to do this, I would recommend a full (not quick) format, using a 32k allocation size.
Ok, I formatted the internal storage as you said and then also updated to Gingerbread. I hope it doesn't happen again. It's just a pain in the a$$ to recover all the deleted media.
Keep your important stuff backed up to the external sdcard.
Something weird happened yesterday... I'm assuming I hit my phone while it was in my pocket (I work a labor driven job) and I'd imagine I did it very hard if this was a cause.
But I had the notice 'SD card unexpectedly disconnected please unmount before removing' or whatever the notice is... Well any and all apps I had on my SD card show up as present on it but are not recognized; they show up as follows "com.[file name].android" or whatever its root name is I'm assuming... these file names show up in task manager and titanium backup as being on my SD card yet in storage it says my entire SD cards space is free.
Please educate me; does this mean they are on my SD card still or not?
Whats just as weird is that I started re-downloading some of the apps that (were or are) stored on my SD card and it says "This app will replace an existing application on the devise. Do you want to continue?"
Any ideas on what happened?
Here's the side question done what related: I had been experiencing lag if I went awhile with out clearing cache and/or killing apps/ clearing memory that were running in the background that had been stored on the SD card... Could these running in the background which I'm using requires constant communication with the SD card be the cause of the lag? In other words is it better to keep all apps on internal space if I want a snappier/ fluid experience?
Sent from my Droid Charge using Tapatalk
Take your SD out of the phone and stick it in your computer. If it shows up and everything is still on it then you know it's not the SD, but the phone. If it's not showing up on your computer, well.. then it's the SD card that's busted.
Cross your fingers that it's not the phone.
A few days ago while I was on ICS 4.0 on my SGS3 (can't remember whether 4.0.3 or 4.0.4 - international stock ROM either way), I noticed that my phone was not displaying pictures correctly. For example, I took a picture with my camera and it automatically saved it to my SD card, after which it would say the picture cannot be opened. I then transferred my photos to the internal memory as I felt my SD card was getting corrupted, however the music on it still worked fine. Then I noticed a huge increase in battery usage, mostly consumed by the 'Media Storage' application (60-70%). I then updated my phone to JB 4.1.2, and my pictures would not show up at all (music was alright). After some research I found out that there could be a faulty Media Storage app, but it only mentioned the rooted ROM version for people wanting JB earlier than the release date. I did what the instructions I found told me and cleared the data on the Media Storage app (around 4 GB). This solved the problem momentarily but the data keeps going up and using the battery. Now I'm stuck with the Media Storage disabled since I need my battery, however it's annoying to hear a full ringtone for a simple notification, not to mention I want to listen to my music.
What I want to know is, is it a problem of a faulty SD card, corrupted (music) files, or a faulty Media Storage app?
I haven't tried removing the SD card and leaving it to see if it still consumes battery but I just formatted it and am looking to see what happens.
With the Media Storage off, there have been HUGE improvements on battery life! Wow.
istetz said:
A few days ago while I was on ICS 4.0 on my SGS3 (can't remember whether 4.0.3 or 4.0.4 - international stock ROM either way), I noticed that my phone was not displaying pictures correctly. For example, I took a picture with my camera and it automatically saved it to my SD card, after which it would say the picture cannot be opened. I then transferred my photos to the internal memory as I felt my SD card was getting corrupted, however the music on it still worked fine. Then I noticed a huge increase in battery usage, mostly consumed by the 'Media Storage' application (60-70%). I then updated my phone to JB 4.1.2, and my pictures would not show up at all (music was alright). After some research I found out that there could be a faulty Media Storage app, but it only mentioned the rooted ROM version for people wanting JB earlier than the release date. I did what the instructions I found told me and cleared the data on the Media Storage app (around 4 GB). This solved the problem momentarily but the data keeps going up and using the battery. Now I'm stuck with the Media Storage disabled since I need my battery, however it's annoying to hear a full ringtone for a simple notification, not to mention I want to listen to my music.
What I want to know is, is it a problem of a faulty SD card, corrupted (music) files, or a faulty Media Storage app?
I haven't tried removing the SD card and leaving it to see if it still consumes battery but I just formatted it and am looking to see what happens.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could try formatting your SD card, if this doesn't work it may be the case that your SD card has bad sectors.
If you want to know wether that is the case, you can try this:
Click Start and then Run. Type cmd and then click OK. Type the following:
chkdsk [sd card drive letter] /r
That will scan for bad sectors on the card and repair any found.
on the PC, that is
Hi everyone,
Looking for some input and advice. Last week I bought a Samsung Galaxy Player 4.2 from Amazon.uk. I also bought a 64gb class 10 sandisk microSD after reading about so many people having success with them.
I cannot seem to make it work properly. I first format the SD to fat32 using the player, loaded 45gb of music onto it and everything seemed to work properly for 1 day. Now however everytime I turn on the player i'm greeted with a little Sdcard icon with an ! mark in it. I have to go to settings and manually mount the card everytime. Even then in Total Space and Available Space it says 'oo' If I unmount and remount it eventually shows as 59.4GB total space.
Im using poweramp but after it scans the folder I have music stored in it dumps most of the music into a folder named 'unknown artist' even though I have all artist, album, album art tags filled in perfectly.
When I try to play some music it says "Too many failed files, playing will stop now" and 30gb of music all gets renamed and dumped into the LOST.DIR folder. 4Gb of music has totally disappeared from the Sdcard. I dont know where that went?
I tried formatting the card with multiple programmes on my laptop but problems still occur. Tried checking the disk for errors....nothing. Tried different music players.
The SDcard works perfect in my laptop. I can add and remove files no problem, which really confuses me. I also tried an 8gb class 6 Sdcard in the player and it has been working flawlessly.
Is there something I'm doing wrong? Is the SD card corrupt? Is poweramp at fault? Is it the player itself? Do I return the card to Amazon for a replacement?
Really sorry for the questions and long post but this is driving me crazy. Hopefully somebody can give some advice.
Thanks.
Regarding the 59.4 Gb, that's normal. IIRC it's a mixture of the overhead of the file system and the difference between the marketing definition of Gigabyte and the technical definition of it.
Regarding your other problems, I did manage to find some other people having similar issues with different devices:
http://forums.androidcentral.com/sa...-s3-samsungs-insane-response.html#post2509743
http://forums.androidcentral.com/sprint-galaxy-s-iii/240489-sd-card-unmounting-itself.html
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=13726990
Do those sound similar to what you're experiencing?
I also have bought it from Amazon UK. The manual clearly says that 32G is the max it can accept. Have you tried partitioning the new card in two slices of 32G each?
I also would like to know if you have unmounted the old card safely and how you have recreated the filesystem structure on the new card. Thanks
In regard to your SD card mounting issue, my modification for swapping the mounting location of internal memory with your external SD card at boot may be able to fix your issue. Here is a link to my post: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2234907. I really hope this helps!
~MetaMav
This problem has got to the point of forcing me to register on XDA forums. I have a Samsung G II running android 4.1.2 (jelly-bean of course) and over the past week the memory (storage) handling has gotten really bad. It's as if the OS has given up on storing items now. Problems include-
After taking, receiving or downloading a photo (generally over whatsapp but it occurs to other apps like wallbase) The photo will be stored on my phone for the day until i turn off my phone, now after turning it back on however the photos are gone just leaving a blank space which displays "unable to load" in the gallery.
Next issues is that my apps i now install get installed in the next dimension because they don't appear to be on my phone even when i do a file search or plug in the device into my computer. But here is where it gets crazy they are on my phone and do take space up, but it's no where to be found.
The OS now presumes i have an SD card even though i don't have one plugged in. Because of this! big games and Apps now now try to use this fake SD that doesn't exist and this causes them to give me errors along the lines of "Sd is full or inaccessible". Pffft
Please someone help me, this issue is annoying me so badly and is rendering my phone useless if it can't store data.
I appologize you were forced to register here @ this great forum and though you still might find your answer here,ironic,anyway.Have you tried wiping cache,dalvik and fixing permissions,are you even rooted?I did'nt see you mention that,so i have no idea,also,you might want to back up what you want to keep and format and partition your sd card,not sure how big your sd crad is either,so you might need a bigger sd card for all your stuff.I myself use a 32GB Sandisk,class 10 and it works great,never ran out of space or had any speed issues on my OG EVO.
Diablo67 said:
I appologize you were forced to register here @ this great forum and though you still might find your answer here,ironic,anyway.Have you tried wiping cache,dalvik and fixing permissions,are you even rooted?I did'nt see you mention that,so i have no idea,also,you might want to back up what you want to keep and format and partition your sd card,not sure how big your sd crad is either,so you might need a bigger sd card for all your stuff.I myself use a 32GB Sandisk,class 10 and it works great,never ran out of space or had any speed issues on my OG EVO.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Rooted? yes. I've deleted all the caches under the sun and still no results. And i have over 4Gb of free internal storage according to my phone. I have my data backed up but i'd rather have a direction to go before starting anything. :crying:
I'm not seeing anything for your phone except this... http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2192122