[Q] Media Storage acting up abnormally on stock ROM - Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

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

Related

[Q] Items deleted from internal phone storage

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.

[Q] Lost apps after moving to sd card with App2SD

On my Samsung Galaxy S2 on Sprint I used Apps2SD by Sam Lu to move many of my apps over to my new 32 gig SD Card. After a bit I realized that I had moved many of the apps over that should have stayed on the main internal storage, mainly because of widgets. So I moved many of them back.
Shortly after doing that I was at a retreat with my phone on airplane mode to preserve battery life. I took some pictures and videos, read my Kindle app and Bible and then plugged it in to charge. The next day several of the pictures and videos I took showed up as a black icon and were not accessible. Then I noticed that all the apps that I had moved to the SD card were "greyed out" and even some of the apps that I had moved back to the internal storage. The phone then told me the SD card needed to be formatted.
Since then I have tried to use file recovery software to recover missing files on the SD card and it finds hundreds of photos and several videos, but nothing else. So the big question is, where are my apps? Does anyone have an idea of how to recover my missing apps? They show up on my phone with "greyed out" icons so the phone thinks they're installed but obviously they're not. Any ideas?
Thanks,
Nathan
The same with me...
NathanCCI said:
On my Samsung Galaxy S2 on Sprint I used Apps2SD by Sam Lu to move many of my apps over to my new 32 gig SD Card. After a bit I realized that I had moved many of the apps over that should have stayed on the main internal storage, mainly because of widgets. So I moved many of them back.
Shortly after doing that I was at a retreat with my phone on airplane mode to preserve battery life. I took some pictures and videos, read my Kindle app and Bible and then plugged it in to charge. The next day several of the pictures and videos I took showed up as a black icon and were not accessible. Then I noticed that all the apps that I had moved to the SD card were "greyed out" and even some of the apps that I had moved back to the internal storage. The phone then told me the SD card needed to be formatted.
Since then I have tried to use file recovery software to recover missing files on the SD card and it finds hundreds of photos and several videos, but nothing else. So the big question is, where are my apps? Does anyone have an idea of how to recover my missing apps? They show up on my phone with "greyed out" icons so the phone thinks they're installed but obviously they're not. Any ideas?
Thanks,
Nathan
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had the same problem my apps that I had transferred on my SD Card had a grayed icon. This happened when I had plug my USB to store some files on my internal SD Card in my I9000. When I plug my phone and pressed the "Connect USB storage" button it seems that the app had freezed so I unplugged my phone and did it again for several times. When Im fed up I tried to browse my phone and there the icons of the apps I had transferred on my internal SD card had turned gray. I tried to unmount and mount my internal sd card but still no luck. I tried to restart the phone and even remove the battery still no luck. I guess the best solution is to reinstall the apps. Sad to say if i try to plug the phone again as an external drive I can see the files on my phone including the OBB files of the games
glennox said:
I had the same problem my apps that I had transferred on my SD Card had a grayed icon. This happened when I had plug my USB to store some files on my internal SD Card in my I9000. When I plug my phone and pressed the "Connect USB storage" button it seems that the app had freezed so I unplugged my phone and did it again for several times. When Im fed up I tried to browse my phone and there the icons of the apps I had transferred on my internal SD card had turned gray. I tried to unmount and mount my internal sd card but still no luck. I tried to restart the phone and even remove the battery still no luck. I guess the best solution is to reinstall the apps. Sad to say if i try to plug the phone again as an external drive I can see the files on my phone including the OBB files of the games
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
in theory, if you re-install the app without clearing the cache, then all your files and settings should be there.
divvy96 said:
in theory, if you re-install the app without clearing the cache, then all your files and settings should be there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did reinstall my apps and most of them retained their settings. I later had the SD Card begin reporting as needing to be formatted again so I removed it out of fear I may have gotten a bad SD Card. I don't know if the phone has issues with loosing SD Cards or if I bought a bad card. Haven't had time to trouble-shoot so I'm just going without a card for now.

Samsung Note Storage Issue

Hello all, I had recently upgraded to a SanDisk Class 4 32GB microSD card and within a few days after I had merged all of my phone's data and my old sd's data, my pictures come up as broken files, and my music shows about 5-8 duplicates of each song but only a select few will play and the others will act like they're playing but no audio plays and the seconds of the song stays at zero. I even restart my phone with the sd out and the media scanner doesn't show that it's running, and I'm pretty sure it's not because when I go back to the music player I still see all of the songs that are on my sd and the pictures still show that they're broken...idk how the files still show in there without the sd card being in there, but I'm afraid I might have done something wrong when I had cut and pasted all of the files from the phone itself onto the sd. I have no real knowledge of android programming or rooting or anything like that so I figure it would help to mention my phone is stock but officially upgraded to 4.0.1.
Any help would be greatly appreciated and could possibly help more users out there!
I think you have to go to settings-apps-all tab-media storage- clear data. I think I remember right. Maybe try it without your card in. Replace SD card and turn on phone and I think it will scan correctly.
Or something like that. Hope it helps
Yeah I've tried all of the available functions from the phone and also mounting & unmounting it. I'm assuming from being a windows user that I might have transferred over some sort of "playlist" that remembers all of the file extensions for each file, and since they're not located in their original place it cant find the file...idk but it really takes a toll on my drive to work!

Weird Issue - Internal Memory and SD Card Formatted!!

So something weird just happened to me. I have HTC Sync Manager installed on a Windows XP laptop. I did not have Sync Manager running. I connected my phone to my computer and set it to media sync with USB debugging connected. My internal memory and SD card popped up. I went in and deleted files and folders I no longer wanted from both. I always do this on the computer because it's much faster. I set the phone back to charge only and then unplugged it. I went into astro to take a look, and noticed there were no files or folders in both the internal memory and the SD card. I went to the storage option in the system settings and it showed I had 100% free space on my SD card and internal memory. All my apps are there though, as the 2GB partition was unaffected. It seems my SD card and internal memory were formatted somehow.
Has anyone else had this happen to them?
rabid platypus said:
So something weird just happened to me. I have HTC Sync Manager installed on a Windows XP laptop. I did not have Sync Manager running. I connected my phone to my computer and set it to media sync with USB debugging connected. My internal memory and SD card popped up. I went in and deleted files and folders I no longer wanted from both. I always do this on the computer because it's much faster. I set the phone back to charge only and then unplugged it. I went into astro to take a look, and noticed there were no files or folders in both the internal memory and the SD card. I went to the storage option in the system settings and it showed I had 100% free space on my SD card and internal memory. All my apps are there though, as the 2GB partition was unaffected. It seems my SD card and internal memory were formatted somehow.
Has anyone else had this happen to them?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sometimes Windows can play you dirty. I would first suggest upgrading to Windows 7 because the write access to files on usb media was much improved, I've seen this issue happen to me several times with USB drives or flash drives in general. Sometimes I copy things and after unplugging the device the file I copied is not there, even though when I copied it, it told me that the operation was completed successfully.
Second of all, I would suggest that anytime you do an operation like this, never disconnect the media immediately, let it sit for a bit if you deleted large files or a large amount of files. Last but not least, it could of been human error, sometimes we just mess up and we don't even realize it.
Are you having any other problems with the phone? Are your apps working? was the total folder structure of the /sdcard and /sdcard/sd_ext erased ?
Same thing happened to me yesterday. But for me I'm pretty sure I unplugged it too quick and lost everything. At least everything was still running fine. I performed a quick titanium and nandroid backup and I was fine
Sent from my EVO using xda app-developers app
megabiteg said:
Sometimes Windows can play you dirty. I would first suggest upgrading to Windows 7 because the write access to files on usb media was much improved, I've seen this issue happen to me several times with USB drives or flash drives in general. Sometimes I copy things and after unplugging the device the file I copied is not there, even though when I copied it, it told me that the operation was completed successfully.
Second of all, I would suggest that anytime you do an operation like this, never disconnect the media immediately, let it sit for a bit if you deleted large files or a large amount of files. Last but not least, it could of been human error, sometimes we just mess up and we don't even realize it.
Are you having any other problems with the phone? Are your apps working? was the total folder structure of the /sdcard and /sdcard/sd_ext erased ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's the funny thing. I let it sit for a minute until the phone fully loaded the memory just like I have done 100 times before. All apps are working, and the phone is working 100% otherwise. I'm guessing it's just a glitch, or a small voltage change could have wiped the memory.
That computer was my work computer, that's why it still has XP.

[Q] [Solved] Weird problems with files on external sd

I am new to Samsung, coming from HTC Desire. And got into bizarre already )
A couple of days ago noticed a strange problem with photos in galery unreadable, appearing to be corrupt (all of them on external sd, internal sd photos are displayed properly). Then today happened that Music app couldn't play music files on external SD.
Read countless of similar issues on the internet, with lots of people blaming on the sd card. However, I found that it is not the case.
Put into a SD card reader and plug into PC, the files on SD card are all ok.
Put back card into phone and investigated further. First I thought maybe it's a problem with SD card reader in the phone. BUT! Noticed files are perfectly visible in ES File Explorer, and even display correctly when using Gallery App to open them from ES file explorer. But if Gallery is opened first, it cannot display files.
I'm sure somebody else happened the same, since the internet is full with such reports regarding Galaxy devices (even S1 and Note alike), but anyone identified the sorce of the problem and eventually solved it? I would be very much interested.
crisagatie said:
I am new to Samsung, coming from HTC Desire. And got into bizarre already )
A couple of days ago noticed a strange problem with photos in galery unreadable, appearing to be corrupt (all of them on external sd, internal sd photos are displayed properly). Then today happened that Music app couldn't play music files on external SD.
Read countless of similar issues on the internet, with lots of people blaming on the sd card. However, I found that it is not the case.
Put into a SD card reader and plug into PC, the files on SD card are all ok.
Put back card into phone and investigated further. First I thought maybe it's a problem with SD card reader in the phone. BUT! Noticed files are perfectly visible in ES File Explorer, and even display correctly when using Gallery App to open them from ES file explorer. But if Gallery is opened first, it cannot display files.
I'm sure somebody else happened the same, since the internet is full with such reports regarding Galaxy devices (even S1 and Note alike), but anyone identified the sorce of the problem and eventually solved it? I would be very much interested.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try to run Rescan Media app from Play store.
Maybe your media scanner service does not work properly and needs to refresh the list of media files on your sd card.
Good luck !
rescan is done automatically every reboot. doesn't help. thanx anyway.
investigated further and found out that the files are not corrupt, but the libraries of Music app and Gallery app created duplicated empty files (in fact 2 fake entries in library for every valid file on the card). Duplicate files don't exist physically on SD card, only in libraries of the two applications.
Already tried formatting cache and dalvik cache, but to no avail...
ICS 4.0.4 Orange Romania (BVLPH) stock ROM.
Later EDIT: This was an easy one. Unmounted SD Card and open Gallery app and Music app. Then re-mount SD Card, both apps will refresh libraries, wait a while for media scan in the background and voila: duplicate files disappear, everything is in god order.
I had a similar problem where both gallery and music files were duplicated, but the duplicates were unreadable.
My solution was Settings -> Applications -> All -> Media Storage -> Clear Data.
This forced a refresh and everything turned normal again.
Slightly annoying that the media scan data is stored under a separate application and not within the data of the gallery or music player applications, but once I discovered this it was an easy fix.

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