Database Users

SD card disappeared *POOF*

Hi all,
Had my XDAIIi for a month or so now... beside the odd lockup it's been more or less trouble-free.
However, I put the phone in the cradle today and got a strange message from WMP about sync settings... upon further investigation I found that my storage card is no longer recognised by my phone. It a Viking 512mb card.
I can't see it on File Explorer or via exploring on Active Sync. It's as if no card is plugged in... I tried another old 8mb card that I had and it works fine.
What should I do. Try to return the card, or is there a way I can reformat it? Any advice would be helpful...

Hi
I got the same problem, this is the second SD, I got the same weird msg.
Did you find a way to fix it?
The SD is not recognize neither in digitals cameras (tried only one) or other pocket pcs (other XDAlli and an HP).
I've heard form some friend that lot of people are getting this problem...

maybe vikings are troublesome..
http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=25433&highlight=viking
http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=24546&highlight=viking
http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=17636&highlight=viking

Yep my new XDAlli killed a dane-lec 512mb card after a couple of weeks.. Couldn't use it in anything. Got another 512mb card this time branded as PRT?? card has been OK for the last 4 weeks but I do get the "storage card detected - search for audio & video files" message every now and then.. I also find the XDA can't see the card sometimes but a quick removal & replacement fixes the issue. I have also notice xbackup now takes around 10 mins..It was taking over an hour with the dane-lec...
I'm sure there is a compatibility issue with somecards..

AMAZING
I just read this post out of interest, casually browsing through the forum waiting for 5 o'clock :roll:, went to my XDA 2 and guess what.... no storage card!!!
Forunately, a soft reset was all it needed but how spooky :shock:

odd my xda2 like all others take a few sec's to reinit the sd card when it wakes up
and if it's needing some batt it dont
i've used sandisk slow version 128MB
and now kingston ultra something something 512MB
never had any issues apart from the sandisk being superslow

So once it's toast, is it really toast or can I somehow reformat it?
I guess I'll try to return it...
Can anyone recommend a card that hasn't reported any issues?

I am having the same problem... I am using PNY cards and am now on my fourth card. I am going to try a new branded card when i get the chance. People seem satisfied with ScanDisk cards so am going to try them.

MMCdata not seen
My XDA II recognize my MMC but file explorer does not show all of the data. Even my card reader does not show the data in MMC. But memory shows that Card is in use and all of the data is there as shown by the memory used... Please help!

Storage Card Freezes Device On Resume?

hey guys, just wondering if this is a known bug on universals or just several roms or if i have a dodgy universal or sd card in general:
It seems when i bring the device out of standby mode after a long period of inactivity, i enter my password and the device just freezes, locks up - Dead.
When I take the storage card out and repeat, the device is fine which lead me to believe the card was duffly formatted, so i stuck it in my card reader and formatted it into FAT32 and then put all my data back on... same problem!
So i then flashed my device from the QTEK rom to the o2 rom in corp mode to see if i still had the issue... was fine for a short while then earlier today i turned it back out of standby and same problem!
So i've narrowed it not to be the storage cards fault, since the card works fine in my xda 2s, and card reader and it seems to either be a subsequent issue in the o2 and qtek roms, or maybe ive got a duff universal with dodgy card slot?
Is this lockup issue a known bug?
Sometimes when i get lucky the device doesnt lock up but instead the card disappears from the system view, and only removing the battery and then rebooting solves it.
If anyone can shed any light i'd appreciate it!

had similar problem
On my compact and PRO (univsersal) I had 1 1gb SD card that always gave a message improperly removed when the device came out of standby.
Used the card that came with my PRO , a 512mb SANDISK no problem.
Put the 1gb in my panasonic camera its fine. the 16MB that came with my camera but branded panasonic works fine in my PRO, left the 512 in my compact for as MP3 with bluetooth headphones.
I think the compact had less problems after a recent T-mobile ROM update.
I think the Compact and PRO are both fussy what cards they use. My 1gb SD card is a generiic 66x. Also I think that there are some bugs to be ironed out with power management.
BTW should it be flashed in FAT or FAT32, some devices can only read FAT I believe.

If you use standby/suspend and you have media files (music/books/etc) on the SD card and the app in main memory you'll have problems when you re-start. I get this problem with MS Reader and eBooks all the time. Looks like another bug in WM5 to me.

jah said:
If you use standby/suspend and you have media files (music/books/etc) on the SD card and the app in main memory you'll have problems when you re-start. I get this problem with MS Reader and eBooks all the time. Looks like another bug in WM5 to me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Funny, I have all of my apps on the Main Memory, and my .prc's, .avi's, and .ogg's on the storage card, and I've never had this problem?
(I'm using a 1 Gig Jessops card that originally came with my camera, no idea what it "really" is though)

@sun69,
the problem only occurs if you use powersave/suspend and you leave a media file open, eg when reading an ebook.

this also happens when you have a 2577 folder on the sd card and do not have a start.exe in it. It will let the device hang.

Ive found the problem to be with the SD card itself, if i use the 128mb Sandisk from my Xda II s it's fine,but within ten minutes of sticking the 512 Lexitar card in, the whole device is ten feet under...
Looks like ill need another

MurphmanL
I reformatted my 2GB SD card and one problem I had with WM5 reporting a shortage or RAM went away. Not really sure why the Exec seems to be so sensitive about SD cards.

Actually this reminds me... I used a 1GB KINGMAX SD card in my XDA II Mini and it hangs randomly... Now I'm using a 1GB Sandisk SD Plus USB in my XDA Exec and it hangs randomly too...
I am reverting back to me Panasonic 128mb SD card to see if that helps... Although it's weird that on my Xda Exec it only SOMETIMES hangs when I receive an SMS... don't know whether this is two issues or one.

I have a 4GB Transcend SD Card. I can install and run any application on it but, the camera application can't seem to read or store any pictures on it. It states: "not enough memory"
I tried reformatting it using Pocket Mechanic on my Exec and still the same result. I tried reformatting it on my computer but it can't read the 4GB SD card from Transcend.

funny I have a 1Gb Sandisk card and even if I have no media files open sometimes it just hangs on resume. The only way to get around this problem is to leave the XDA switched on all the time and swithc only the backlight.
However, this way the battery life is shorter. I think this problem should be addressed to someone who is technical (not like me) maybe we get a plausable explanation of what shall we do.
It is very annoying since when the system hangs up the mobile does not have any coverage and in sales it means loosing potential customers!!!!
XDA EXEC

Same problem Here.
I had a 1 Gig card and I often had to take it out to solve the problem.
Now I have a 2 Gig card (Sandisk Ultra II) and the problem is solved.
I'm not that technical, but wasn't there an issue with dual voltage sd card's?

I too have a memory card problem. I have loaded some pictures and videos on the card but as soon as I try to open them in File Explorer the XD Exec freezes and will only work again if I remove the memory card or reset the Exec. Then it freezes again when I try and read the memory card again. I've tried loading stuff on using Active Sync and using a memory card reader and still the same. I've even formatted the card again. It is a cheap SD memory card will I need a new memory card or is it a software problem?

@jah, my wife has this same problem on her Wizard (vario), she got a 128Mb miniSD with her Vario. If she leaves the card in and allows the device to suspend then wakes it up she gets a white blank screen and has to soft reset to recover. With the card removed the problem goes away. She had her vario replaced because of this fault (tech support thought it was the vario at fault). It was only when the problem occured with the new vario that I had a play and found with the card removed the fault went away. We haven't taken the card back yet, but I am 99% sure it is a card fault.
I might try her card with the adaptor in my Exec and see if I get the same problems as you are getting?
Regards, Simon

It seems like Dopod900/Univeral is sharing the same problem, too sensitive toward particular SD brand/model. My Dopod900 also having a huge problem recognizing the Kingston 2G SD 133x but works fine with Transcent 2G SD 150x.

SD card unreadable

The data from my SD card became partly unreadable, some prgms could not be started and when looking at the root folder of my card I found some items named like ç!é”è((é§éç. Putting the card out and back in didn’t help, only a soft reset did the job. All data was still intact. This thing happened twice untill now. I use a Sandisk 1GB card.
Has anyone had this problem before? I remember reading about the same problem on a forum but couldn't find the posting.

I also experienced the same problem
I had this problem before. When I pulled my Sandisk 1 GB Micro SD and pushed it back in, the System did not recognize my Memory Card. I did it several times and suddenly it came back again.
The trick I used was pushing the Memory upward (against the back of the phone) until the memory was not completely inserted. Roughly about 1/10 of the memory sticks out of the memory slot
I believe this is a major hardware problem with the Memory Slot.

I have had this problem with my 2GB miniSD on my MDA Compact- the first time i had no choice but to re-format the card and start over but second time, re-inserting the card solved the problem.
May be something to do with the card not getting proper contact.

It doesn't work at all anymore!
I've had the same problem with my 1gb SD card since I bought it 2 years ago. It's crap, because copying a movie for instance through the phone (MDA compact) takes forever.
Now I reformatted it, and copied some stuff to it through my card reader. But after putting it back into my phone, the card now is not even seen at all by my phone, and putting it back in my PC doesn't work either... now it's not recognised anywhere anymore...
Anyone, now how to get this fixed?!
Thx!

Re: It doesn't work at all anymore!
The Fittest said:
I've had the same problem with my 1gb SD card since I bought it 2 years ago. It's crap, because copying a movie for instance through the phone (MDA compact) takes forever.
Now I reformatted it, and copied some stuff to it through my card reader. But after putting it back into my phone, the card now is not even seen at all by my phone, and putting it back in my PC doesn't work either... now it's not recognised anywhere anymore...
Anyone, now how to get this fixed?!
Thx!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try using this utility (or similar) to format your card from a card reader:
http://www.sdcard.org/Downloads.aspx I've used it many times on various cards and seems to do the trick.

Re: It doesn't work at all anymore!
sh500 said:
Try using this utility (or similar) to format your card from a card reader:
http://www.sdcard.org/Downloads.aspx I've used it many times on various cards and seems to do the trick.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmmm, thx for hint, but that didn't work either. Since the drive isn't recognised, so does this tool... weird enough the adminstrative tools in windows (drive managament) does see a 1gb drive, but assigning a new drive letter causes an error.... damn... looks like I'll be buying a new SD card.
Does anyone know which brands/types (I now have a 1gb Kinston) have less problems with this, so I can copy files to and from my card though my card reader instead of my phone, without srewing my card up?
Edit: Ha! I formatted my SD card with my digital camera! Leaving just the problem of not being able to copy files to my card through my cardreader...

storage card disappearing

Anyone have trouble with their storage card disappearing and reappearing? I hae a 1GB Sandisk. If WMP is active it will randomly detect the card is inserted and ask to scan it for media.
I saw another thread that listed several apps that might cause this (magic button, resco, ???). I don't have any of the ones listed but I do have 100 other apps/games installed either in ram or on the card.

I have had this problem before as well. I have the same card that you have and when I took out my miniSD card and re-inserted it, the card would not show up. I tried several soft resets with the card in and out of the device after the boot but no dice. I had to hard reset to fix the problem quickly.

I had this with a few months ago. My nightly backup would fail cause the SD card had gone AWOL. Sometimes if you took it out and put it back it would come back but this wasn't reliable. Since I upgraded to Faria's 3.2 I haven't had the problem so I know its not a faulty SD card.

HD2 destroyed my SD card?

Hello.
After trying the android booting, for 5-6'th time (all working), now the phone can't see the SD card. I thought it was only on the phone, but when i insert the card, in adapter and connect to pc, then NOTHING happens. Like if the card wasn't there.. Hmm, any clue? Usually I just formatted. But now, I can't format a SD card which "isn't there."
Please.

any one??? :S

mooooooa said:
Hello.
After trying the android booting, for 5-6'th time (all working), now the phone can't see the SD card. I thought it was only on the phone, but when i insert the card, in adapter and connect to pc, then NOTHING happens. Like if the card wasn't there.. Hmm, any clue? Usually I just formatted. But now, I can't format a SD card which "isn't there."
Please.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sounds like your sd card maybe corrupt, they can die for no apparent reason, its happen to me twice in about 4yrs, tho i always buy from CEX they offer a 1yr warranty & just replace it if its within that time.
There's been a few threads about this;
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=712281
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=646731

Which brand?
mooooooa said:
Hello.
After trying the android booting, for 5-6'th time (all working), now the phone can't see the SD card. I thought it was only on the phone, but when i insert the card, in adapter and connect to pc, then NOTHING happens. Like if the card wasn't there.. Hmm, any clue? Usually I just formatted. But now, I can't format a SD card which "isn't there."
Please.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is the brand of the memory card?

hey dude,i got the same problem as yours few days ago..cant do much abt it,i just buy a new one..some says the htc that makes the sd card problem

Hi,
My 8 GB sd card lags when i`m scrolling in the file manager.
In addition, the sd card drains the HD2 battery. I loose 35% in 6 hours in flight mode, but only 4% when not in flight mode without the sd card... ( this also yields for the original sandisk 2 GB sd card that was supplied with the phone).
Anyone experienced the same issue?
Is this hardware or software related, and can i fix this myself?

Error check your microSD card using your computer then switch your phone off, put the card back in it and switch your phone back on. The phone will need to index your music/video files etc so go to the relevant tabs and let it do its stuff. See how that helps.

mooooooa said:
Hello.
After trying the android booting, for 5-6'th time (all working), now the phone can't see the SD card. I thought it was only on the phone, but when i insert the card, in adapter and connect to pc, then NOTHING happens. Like if the card wasn't there.. Hmm, any clue? Usually I just formatted. But now, I can't format a SD card which "isn't there."
Please.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i got a new HD2 and it came with a MicroSD card. I put a couple of cooked ROMs on it and everything was fine for about a week and then the card jsut stopped working. I didnot use it on any other phone or on my PC and it just died.
I own an HTC Hero as well and i put the card in it but it wouldnt recognize it. It has never happened to me before. Never has a card died on me.
I think its a problem with the way the HD2 accesses the SDcard. I wouldnt know specifics but this is the first phone that fried my SD card.

Hey guys, I had the same issue. The SD card stopped working and cannot be formatted now via computer.

My experience with Windows Mobile is that the SD/CF driver is the weakest link. The problem seems to be simultaneous accesses drive it bonkers. I've had the disappearing card problem on other PDAs but usually removing it, doing a reboot with it out, and then inserting it after the reboot is complete will fix it. If it doesn't show up immediately DON'T do anything for a while, it could be doing a CHKDSK on the card, and if you mess with it it will screw it up worse.
Once it shows up what I would recommend is hooking up via USB in CF Disk mode (not Activesync) and doing a format on the drive from Windows.
Last night I got a new 32gb Class 4 MicroSD from China (unnamed) and stuck it in, worked fine, so I backed up all my data to my 'puter off the T-Mobile Class 2 16gb and changed to the new 32gb SD. I started the copy and after a while went to bed.
This morning I got up and it had died during the copy. It was giving me an error on the new MicroSD. It had copied about 75% but was asking to continue or skip. I ended up having to cancel it because it appeared full but it was not. After a reboot I found a ton of FILEXXX.CHK files which indicated it was doing a chkdsk.
Looking at it with SoftWinter.com's Storage Tools the disk was formatted with 512 byte cluster size, way too small for such a large disk, so it was not really out of space just out of cluster nodes. If you have lots of files (I had 10,000) each takes up at least one, even if the file is only 5 bytes. So I reformatted it from the 'puter to 32k cluster size and started the copy over. Seems to be working better now.
Please note that using larger cluster size also will help performance when writing and reading large files as it has to do less directory accesses. Small cluster size is good if you have a lot of small files as it doesn't waste as much space. You lose on average 1/2 the cluster size for each file, as the last node is almost never full.

mknewman said:
My experience with Windows Mobile is that the SD/CF driver is the weakest link. The problem seems to be simultaneous accesses drive it bonkers. I've had the disappearing card problem on other PDAs but usually removing it, doing a reboot with it out, and then inserting it after the reboot is complete will fix it. If it doesn't show up immediately DON'T do anything for a while, it could be doing a CHKDSK on the card, and if you mess with it it will screw it up worse.
Once it shows up what I would recommend is hooking up via USB in CF Disk mode (not Activesync) and doing a format on the drive from Windows.
Last night I got a new 32gb Class 4 MicroSD from China (unnamed) and stuck it in, worked fine, so I backed up all my data to my 'puter off the T-Mobile Class 2 16gb and changed to the new 32gb SD. I started the copy and after a while went to bed.
This morning I got up and it had died during the copy. It was giving me an error on the new MicroSD. It had copied about 75% but was asking to continue or skip. I ended up having to cancel it because it appeared full but it was not. After a reboot I found a ton of FILEXXX.CHK files which indicated it was doing a chkdsk.
Looking at it with SoftWinter.com's Storage Tools the disk was formatted with 512 byte cluster size, way too small for such a large disk, so it was not really out of space just out of cluster nodes. If you have lots of files (I had 10,000) each takes up at least one, even if the file is only 5 bytes. So I reformatted it from the 'puter to 32k cluster size and started the copy over. Seems to be working better now.
Please note that using larger cluster size also will help performance when writing and reading large files as it has to do less directory accesses. Small cluster size is good if you have a lot of small files as it doesn't waste as much space. You lose on average 1/2 the cluster size for each file, as the last node is almost never full.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey
i hope for your sake im wrong, but as far as ive been able to find out in my own searching, only san disk has released a 32gb micro sd & its only class 2.
there has been a lot of talk of fake 32gb micro sd's from china, most are actually 4gb re-programed to read as 32gb on your phone or pc, but when you start to fill them with files more than their actual capacity they will only overwrite prev' files & become corrupt.
i actually pick up 1 (32gb) last weekend from a local store, tried to copy the contents of my 16gb, 7gb copied then an error occurred, 2nd attempt 9gb copied but files unreadable by phone or pc, fortunately i always buy from this store & they refunded (£50), straight away, still have 2 16gb cards ive had for about 9mnths with no probs.
there is another longer thread over in the Q&A section, you guys may find some useful feed back over there: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=646731

Well, the one I got says SanDisk and I have done a full format and surface analysis, it checks out, but I am having trouble writing to it. Not sure what is up with it right now. I knew it was a fake but I thought it was a real fake, not a piece of junk. I hope you are wrong.

I´ve got problems too. I have two SanDisk 16 GB microSDHC cards and both of them are giving similar problems.
I´ve got my HD2 a few days ago and initially I used my old 16 GB card I bought with the X1 (then used with my TP2 and latest the HD2). Everything was working fine initially but then the problems arose. Now I have those problems:
1. Audio Manager has problems reading my music library. iPlay can read it though. Windows Media Player takes a long time building my music library but manages to do that eventually.
2. HTC Album can read my albums sometimes - sometimes not.
3. Resco Photo Manager can read the albums but sometimes it takes a long time to do it.
4. The computer can access the card without any problems after formatting and it seems not to be any problems reading or writing files to it. Installations of cabs stored on the memory card works.
5. Total Commander can access the card without any problems but takes slightly longer time than before to show all folders.
6. Running chkdsk in Windows gives the result of a perfectly working card.
7. The phone is draining battery in an abnormal way with the card inserted.
8. Flashing ROMs from the card worked initially but not any longer. Now it shows the threecolor bootloader screen instead.
The interesting thing is the fact both of my 16 GB cards has the exactly the same symptoms. I will try them in my X1, TP2 and Vivaz later to check out their behaviour.
When I inserts my old 8 GB card (everything made by SanDisk) everything works without any problems. Flashing ROMs work normally etc.
I´m running the Omega XT 3.0 and are using HardSPL3. The 16 GB card has worked perfectly initially with this ROM and HSPL so I don´t think they are related.
The whole thing seems to indicate some kind of "incompatibility" between the phone and the 16 GB cards. It´s like it is unable to handle that size of card correctly. It seems like it "trashes" the file system. My older 16 GB card started to behave badly which caused me to buy a replacement and now that replacement has the exactly the same behaviour.
My 8 GB card is an "ultra" SanDisk card. The troublesome cards are Class 2 cards. I began to have the impression the problem is some kind of issue with Class 2 - because the cards itself seems to be working after formatting.
I have formatted them with either Panasonic SDFormatter and the Format SD application on the phone. Both options gives the same result.