Database Users

Storage Card Memory Loss--Fault of Card or MDA?

I have the T-Mobile (USA) MDA, an HTC Wizard. In it I have a Sandisk 2GB miniSD card.
For the second time now, suddenly and inexplicably, most of the data on the card is missing. There was no operation I executed that could have deleted the data, it was suddenly gone, for no apparent reason. This happened once before?
Has this happened to others? Is it a bug in the MDA, that it sometimes deletes data from the storage card, for no reason? Are those miniSD cards inherently unstable, sometimes suddenly losing their data? Or might I have a defective card?
If the card is defective, I think I could call Sandisk, and get a new card under warranty. (If the MDA is defective, nothing I can do about it, no longer under warranty.) So, I'd like to have some idea--bad card or bad MDA?
Also, I have a USB card reader that can read miniSD cards, and have used that before to transfer data to the card from the computer. That seems to no longer work. I wonder if that is also an indication of a bad card. (Although it could also be the a failure of the card reader, or of my Windows XP installation.) Now I can only transfer data back to the card via ActiveSync.
Is there a utility, that either from the computer, or directly on the PPC, can check the disk surface of an SD card for errors, and fix them (similar to chkdsk)?
Any insight into this problem would be appreciated. Thank you.

I assume you checked the SD on a computer to verify the files were actually gone, and not just "hidden" from the MDA?
Do you have another chip you can test run? Maybe in a camera or something?

Myrddin Wyllt said:
I assume you checked the SD on a computer to verify the files were actually gone, and not just "hidden" from the MDA?
Do you have another chip you can test run? Maybe in a camera or something?
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Click to collapse
"Hidden from the MDA" in what way? (Even when files are deleted they are not "actually gone", and can sometimes be recovered.) Do you mean turned into "hidden files"? No, that's not the case, as I have Resco Explorer set to view all hidden and system files, not to hide any files, and it didn't see the files, nor did any app. Nor did ActiveSync, when connected to the computer, Explore.
As I mentioned, my USB miniSD card reader doesn't seem to be functioning either, so I cannot look at the card directly on the computer.
I'm not sure what you mean by "test run another chip"? I do have another miniSD card, a 1GB card I had purchased first. I don't see what point would be served by "testing" that. It is not that this card is constantly deleting files. You could test this card, and it would seem to be OK. But it has happened twice already, that most (not all) of the data on the card was suddenly missing. So, there is definitely a problem, either on the card, the MDA hardware, or an app or the OS (WM5) on the MDA. But you cannot test it out by putting in another card, as one wouldn't necessarily see the same problem right away, as one also might not with this (problem) card.
Something strange happened since the original post though. Fortunately, I had a lot of the data from the storage card backed up to my PC. Via Activesync, I copied some of that back to the MDA Storage Card. After doing so, suddenly it looks like all the missing data has been restored, including a lot of data that I had not yet copied back.
What could have happened? Still wondering whether to call Sandisk and report a defective card.

undelete tools for normal harddisks work just fine on sd cards in sdcard readers

Rudegar said:
undelete tools for normal harddisks work just fine on sd cards in sdcard readers
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Click to collapse
That isn't the question. I didn't ask how to undelete the files. And, as I said, my card reader isn't working either.
Also, as I said, I had the data backed up to HD, so really don't need to undelete.
So----what's the problem then? Obviously something's wrong if a memory card suddenly and inexplicably loses its data, now for the second time.
So I was asking--what could be causing this to happen? Has it happened to others? Is it likely a defective card? Or defective PPC?

me said:
Is it likely a defective card? Or defective PPC?
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Click to collapse
Yes, but without an alternate means of testing either, it's a waste of time to speculate. Hence my admonishment to go find a card reader. You can run a complete format and look for bad sectors on the suspect SD chip that way...something you cannot do from the PPC to the best of my knowledge. Chances are, the boot sector (where the location of files in memory is written) on your SD chip is failing (if the chip is old, that is VERY likely, as flash memory has a limited number of rewrites that usually hits around the 2 year mark for heavy users, and if you're moving music on-and-off a lot, that's you....).
So, no, there's no way to be SURE, without getting your hands on a reader (and c'mon, they're like, $10).

my DREAMY G1 can't ROOT!! weak SD & usb, bluetooth etc*&$^%$

Thanks for Looking, really desperate.
I can’t root this ^#%@ G1. Basically I can not get nesscarry rooting files flashed on my G1. I guess the short question is why does my G1 not accept files from my win7 box. Not through the preferred SD card method but, not through wifi, Bluetooth, ADB. Droid explorer, etc, etc. I’ve tried everything , every method …nill.
BUT, otherwise the phone works fine. Internet, phone, G1 crapware, etc. You can assume I’ve tried every thing I can find on the web. But if you want to read details go please do
BACKROUND:
After many, many attempts with every recipe and every set of ROMs around, I ‘ve narrowed it down to it not liking the taste of my SD cards…most of the time, For some reason I can do the initial rc29 downgrade but not much more.
1) Connecting with USB cable to PC. android shows up in “devices and printers” and so does its “removable disk (after mounted from phone). However, double clicking, rt click trying to for mat it just gives errors
2) Putting in SD card while up and running returns “unrecognizable media”
3) Now, I can format SD (yes fat 32) on the PC card reader, add files, whatever, put card in phone and turn it on , at least I don’t get an error, but I get no better acces to card.
I was just about to physically take the phone apart and see if there was some flotsam, corrosion, a piese of bacon making the sd connection physically corrupting the physical conectoion. THAN I remembered blue toothe behaves the same way and WI FII won’t connect at all. Seem that indicates something systremic…Radio??
Help Please?!?!
PK
BTW:
ATEMPS AT REMIDIATION:
5 different New SD cards three, 4 gig, one 6 gig, one 2 gig different meg cards
SD reformats both quick and full adnaseum
4 different USB cords including brand new top of the line.
Re set to RC29 time and time again (remarkably it is apparently reading the flash drive

For those with phone freeze issues...

I've been watching, reading, and doing my own research on the subject.
Here is my conclusion. Curious to see if you run into the same:
1) There were a bad batch of 16gb class 2 micro sdhc cards that were replaced by T-Mobile.
2) The micro sdhc cards were CLASS 2.
3) On the original stock ROM had \storage card\application data\htc data stored on the card. As of the new ROM, that data is officially stored on the phone memory. I know this because I sync my sdhc card to my home PC using ViceVersa and haven't had a single file in that directory change since the ROM upgrade.
4) I've never had any freeze issues, but that's because I have a 16gb CLASS 6 sdhc card that moved everything to and don't have the speed/reliability issues that others may have experienced because of #1 and #2.
I have no idea what the data is that was being pushed to the card in the old ROM, but I believe that T-Mobile recognized issues with pushing data to a card where it may not get mounted quick enough on boot, has speed issues (class 2), as well as having a possible bad shipment of cards.
I also believe that depending on the above scenario, T-Mobile may have been blindly replacing "bad" cards as a fix when in reality, it was more of an issue with the speed of the card and/or possibly the card not getting mounted quick enough on system boot causing stability issues.
I would challenge anybody with the original ROM to pull their SD cards for 24-48 hours and I bet your freeze issues go away, unless you actually do have a bad SD card.
On that same note, that would explain why a custom ROM would fix the problem, because chef's weren't configuring their ROM's to cache any data to an SD card.
Bottom line, it wouldn't matter if you installed anything to the card or not. Because the original ROM was configured to write to the SD card if it found one, you would "potentially" have freeze issues with a bad or slow card, no matter what.
Sorry if this is redundant, but I've seen everybody making conclusions on bits and pieces of the information, but not with the entire picture I painted. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong. You decide.
=)

Update:
After finally deleting the \storage card\application data folder, the files did come back. Does anybody know what these are? I'd like to get those to point back to the phone memory personally. I don't like anything on the external card, other then what I say should be there.

Storage Card Problems(this is a long one)

Hey Guys,
I've been having a TON of problems with my storage card lately. I was using doubletwist to sync music when the problems first happened. Basically the storage card flipped out, it wouldnt allow any access either through the computer or on the phone. So i turned off the phone popped the Storage Card out and then back in. When I plugged my HD2 back into the computer i discovered that all my files on the storage card had been deleted.
I called t-mobile customer care and they told me to call the htc accessories line to get a new one. Did that and the lady says theres nothing they can do as all the cards are back ordered.
I'm worried that its going to happen again, and on top of all this my 16 GB Storage card is now 971 MB, i was adding my applications when it said the card was full so i checked and thats what the computers giving me.
I figured that maybe if i formatted the card it would work but i cant find that option anywhere when i right click on the card when plugged into the computer.
So basically all i have now is a 971 MB Sd card with a few applications on it instead of the 16 GB preloaded SD card that held about 200 pictures taken with the phones camera(that are now gone along with Transformers and everything else that was on the phone)
Sorry for the long rant guys but im really frustrated...
Any Help?

Have you connected the phone to the PC in 'disk drive' mode? If not, then do that to 1) be absolutely sure you can't see/recover any of the files, and then 2) to format it (it has to be connected this way for that option to be available)

I'm not an expert on here (more of a "user" than a "maker") but I have had my share of SD card problems.
If you are using the class 2 card that came with your phone, order a class 4 or class 6. The class 2's are known to cause performance problems for the HD2. When I upgraded to my class 6, I noticed the difference right away on graphics-heavy apps that use the SD card in realtime (i.e. not just to store profiles).
You need to decide if you simply want to get your SD card back or try and save data on it first. If you just want to format it and start over, try these:
Try first using the sd formatter in your HD2, in the "Tools" folder.
If you have a card reader or a card slot in your Windows PC, try inserting the card (or, as sirphunkee said, mount your HD2 as "disk drive" and not as active sync) and go to control panel > administrative tools > computer management > Disk Management and see if Windows can read your card. If it can, you should be able to right click on the drive and select "format". You could also try assigning it a new drive letter. Sometimes it seems to kick start the Drive Management services into accessing your card with a proper mount.
Download SD Formatter from Panasonic. Sometimes when windows can't do it, this program can.
If you have an uBuntu OS installed, sometimes using gParted is also effective.
I have also seen threads on here about downloading the default factory files that should already be on the card, with links...
Hope this helps. But bottom line you should definitely NOT wait for another crappy class 2 card from TMo/HTC and go get a class 6 (you can find them easily enough online for about $50).

sirphunkee said:
Have you connected the phone to the PC in 'disk drive' mode? If not, then do that to 1) be absolutely sure you can't see/recover any of the files, and then 2) to format it (it has to be connected this way for that option to be available)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So instead of using active sync to connect use disk drive mode. Got it, but once i do that if there were files to recover i would see them correct?

googlesax said:
So instead of using active sync to connect use disk drive mode. Got it, but once i do that if there were files to recover i would see them correct?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, as long as you're looking at the card's contents via file explorer on the pc, not the phone...the one one the phone won't be able to see the card at all when it's connected that way.
Basically, when you connect in disk drive mode, the pc handles the card just like a regular external USB hard drive.
You'll probably be able to format and use it again now that you're connecting it that way, but if it still acts up then go through any and all of mfrey's steps above, including just upgrading to a higher-class card if possible. The stock cards that come with the HD2 seem to be somewhat inconsistent in quality and potentially unreliable, and as he said the speed difference of a faster card can definitely be noticible in every day use.

i connected the phone via disk drive mode as suggested but i had the same results after connecting multiple times so i decided to format the card through the phone as mfrey suggested. After doing so the card still reads as a total of 971 MB both on the phone when checked under settings and on the computer.
Im going to try going to t-mobile to see what they say about my problem because i dont see how this could happen, ive been using this sd card for about three months and up til a few days ago it worked perfectly
Wish me luck guys

googlesax said:
i connected the phone via disk drive mode as suggested but i had the same results after connecting multiple times so i decided to format the card through the phone as mfrey suggested. After doing so the card still reads as a total of 971 MB both on the phone when checked under settings and on the computer.
Im going to try going to t-mobile to see what they say about my problem because i dont see how this could happen, ive been using this sd card for about three months and up til a few days ago it worked perfectly
Wish me luck guys
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Were you able to see the drive in Drive Management in Administrative Tools? If so, when you right-clicked it, was there an option to delete partition? Did you try SD Formatter (it's free)?
If it's the factory class 2 that came with your phone, it could be bricked...

Problems with USB and synching

I often have problems when I want to copy data on the phone or get it from the phone on the HDD. It works in general but often it justs hangs and then I have to restart the phone which only shows "synchronising" and doesn#t do anything anymore. Another thing not working very well is accessing data (photos or videos) directly from the sd card. I often get errors when trying to do this. Any ideas?
EDIT:
Now I got a message while copying data "device not working anymore"... What's wrong here?

You can try using a different USB cable or trying a different SD card. I think based on your post it's probably a card going bad.

Hm, it's a class 10 card, h igh quality, worked fine in my HTC desire...