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!

Help! Storage Card suddenly not showing - dead?

Help! Storage Card suddenly not showing - dead?
Has anyone had problems with the Storage Card completely dying? I cannot read my 1GB miniSD card on my Wizard device at all any more. It started being weird yesterday but after a reset I was able to access the data, but today it is totally gone.
A 16MB one works fine. :? These cards don't generally die that easily do they?
Could this be a driver issue or something else so I can get my data back? I have tried many resets both with and without the card in place.

I've the same problem (I guess) with my card. I'm not able to read my card on the vario. When i inserted my SD card in a PC he cant read the card. When i start my PC with the card insered system hangs on loading windows.
When I restart my phone with the SD card inserted WIFI wont go on, do you have th same problem CJSnet ?
This looks like the SD disk is something like an (unreadable?) bootdisk ?

I had the same problem with a SanDisk 1GB card recently. I sent it back to the supplier and they replaced it.
Before my "Mini S" I had a "2i" and it was well known that it would "eat" cards. On that forum they compiled a list of "never eaten" cards and recommended staying away from anything not on the list.
I suspect the Wizard may have a similar problem.

i've also got a problem with my miniSD, sometimes it doesn't recognise the card. But when i remove it and re-insert a few times it does work again.
A common problem with the SD-cards is that their contacts are dirty, cleaning sometimes helps.

Thanks mmm_ok, can you provide a link to that list of 'never eaten' :lol: cards please?
Mine is an unbranded type from Viking, so that could be the reason.
zawoot, I had no problems with WiFi and the card inserted.
Have now solved it. When I loaded the card on a PC and ran chkdsk, some of the files were corrupt (plus the boot partition I expect). I copied the salvagable files to the PC, formatted the miniSD which took about an hour (!), and now the PPC can read it again. Now I just copy back the files from the PC, and the lost ones from a recent backup.
What a pain in the backside. HTC not fixing the 'eating cards' bug has cost me 3 hours of my life. What price technology!

SD card problem
I'm facing the same problem. The last thing I tried was format the SD Card
using Pocket Mechanic "Logical Format" - "do not use quick format", format it
two times and just that. Also, as a test, I'm not using the full SD Card
capacity, my SD has 1 G and at this time I'm using 700M and since 10 days ago
everythiong is fine. As an additional test I leaved the battery goes to a
very low level and reseted the device to see it it corrupt the data .. but
is still ok.

My 2GB Adata myflash card has done this. I'm so mad, it has to go all the way back to china for repair.
This is really wierd behaviour for a phone. HTC in all its shoddy glory.

CJSnet said:
Have now solved it. When I loaded the card on a PC and ran chkdsk, some of the files were corrupt (plus the boot partition I expect). I copied the salvagable files to the PC, formatted the miniSD which took about an hour (!), and now the PPC can read it again. Now I just copy back the files from the PC, and the lost ones from a recent backup.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
SO is there any other issues after you did the format?
I have an ATP 1Gb MiniSD and sometimes my MDA just said that it can't execute an application (that's installed to the miniSD card) because it was "usigned". When I run Resco Explorer, I noticed that the card is NO LONGER shown (???). So I took out the card, re-inserted it and it's now shown in Resco Explorer as "Storage Card2" ! So of course none of the program works since the links (in registry especially), pointed to "Storage Card", not the one that ends with 2. So my solution (for now) is to just shutdown the device, wait for a few minutes, then turn it on again.

I have had 2 cards from mobymemory 1gb and now 2gb - not one problem run well. Can highly recommend mobymemory the use single density cards or something that many of the other manufactures don't use. my advice stay away from cheap cards.

I used a backup utility my card died, and windows could not open it, I reformatted on my digital cam and it works again. It's the software loaded on it.

My MiniSD card popped out of its slot spontaneously last night. Ever since my Qtek 9100 would not recognise it any longer. It still worked on my card-reader attached to my PC. In the end I decided to format the card (not quick format) and now my Wizard recognises the storage card again. Losing all my downloaded attachments during the process. FYI It is a SanDisk 1GB MiniSD card.

sandisk 1g card is almost 2-yrs old and was first for typhoon and now serves faraday and wizard and just started acting wierd on wizard. every so often device does not read card upon waking. pulling it out and reinserting fixes it but i've moved programs to device. poo!!!

Storage Card seemed dead
I had a simuliar problem with my original qtek 1.6 rom until I upgraded to the latest imate 2.17.
Having worked 5-10 minutes with wi-fi, the storage card became invisible and unaccessible. To make it visible once again it was necessary to soft reset the device.
This and some other problems disappeared once I upgraded to 2.17.
Hope this help

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...

mini SD card not recognised and tired of WM crashes

Hello All,
My Vario is behaving weird. The mini SD card is not being recognised at all. I have tried:
Soft reset- nothing
Making a 20KB backup on the inserted card: works
Checking if anything else is on the card: no, card only lists the small backup file
thousends and thousands of times: inserting and removing the ^%%*&^$&^%#&-card- nothing
Hard reset (I saw no other solution)- to my horror: nothing (sys info states: no card is inserted)
After the hard reset, my options are very limited. I do not have a card reader to get to my backup file....
Anyone here has an idea on how to get my card being recognised again?
Anyone else also very tired of this WM **** crashing all the time or is it just me? (and my usage?

had the same problem on my hermes guys from a different forum gave me a solution is not the best but it works for me cut a little corner of a business card and insert it under your sd card to make a tighter fit and keep it making contact if everything was erased of your sd card you might have to reformat and reload your data this is a pretty common issue i guess i had to get a new sd card because the last one says I have a 4GB file in it but its only a 2 GB sd card crazy ****.

holy mozes!
edwincito0_1 said:
had the same problem on my hermes guys from a different forum gave me a solution is not the best but it works for me cut a little corner of a business card and insert it under your sd card to make a tighter fit and keep it making contact if everything was erased of your sd card you might have to reformat and reload your data this is a pretty common issue i guess i had to get a new sd card because the last one says I have a 4GB file in it but its only a 2 GB sd card crazy ****.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks mate! That was quick! tried it and unfortunately it does not work. Even tried a different card: same deal. My card in someone else's device: whooohoo! my data (and backups) are still there!
So I checked with my provider just a minute ago and they told me it is still under warranty!!!
I guess I can close this post now...??? ...good, now where's that dutchie...

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.