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[Q] SD card problem. Please help

Hi guys I registered just for help with this annoying problem. So I bought my Xperia Play on ebay and the guy said it was brand new. Anyway so I open it up pop my sim card in then I slide it open to try out some games. So I click on Bruce Lee then it tells me insert SD card so then I think to myself "did the guy take the SD card" so I end up opening the back cover and looking for the SD card slot and to my surprise it had an SD card in it.
An 8GB card so I didn't know what the problem is. So I went over to storage and tried to mount it, it then tells me "SD card is blank or has unsupported filesystem" so then I click on that to format it and it does nothing just brings a little loading thing then the same notification that it is blank.
I finally got my brother's phone and popped it in and formatted it through the pc through his phone and then popped it into mine and the same problem again. I'm at the end of my rope, I've contacted the seller but I'd really would like to be able to fix it myself and keep the phone.
Thanks for any help and sorry for the essay lol.
Since then I've tried using my brother's micro SD I've tried formating and everything I can think of. This is my last resort before looking for a place that might be able to fix it.

Not an expert here, but if you have tried multiple cards and they don't work, you could try a factory reset on the phone. If that does not work, sounds like a hardware issue, though someone else might know better.
Sent from my brain on channel 64!

That's what I'm thinking but I wanna see if someone has a fix or a trick before taking it in to be checked.

Do you have another card to try?
Mine was cracked and quit working. I got a new 16GB card anyway because 8 isn't enough for a gaming system. 16 isn't even enough but that was the biggest I could find under $100.
I didn’t want to spend just as much on a card as I did on the phone. Although I did spend $900+ for a 32GB iphone 3GS.

ncaissie said:
Do you have another card to try?
Mine was cracked and quit working. I got a new 16GB card anyway because 8 isn't enough for a gaming system. 16 isn't even enough but that was the biggest I could find under $100.
I didn’t want to spend just as much on a card as I did on the phone. Although I did spend $900+ for a 32GB iphone 3GS.
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Click to collapse
I tried like 3 cards. One that came with it, then I went out then bought a 4GB Sony card and then I resorted to trying out my brother's card that works in his samsung phone.

Then it is probably a hardware problem. See if you can get it fixed under warranty.
How long ago did you buy it? You have 20 days to file a claim through Paypal.

Try multiple microSD cards if you have any available to you. If the phone isn't mounting it properly, try formatting the SD card on your computer. Be sure to use defalt file system and the default allocation size.
One thing I noticed is that the SD card will not mount properly if the back cover is not put on securely. There are two small buttons that are depressed when the back cover is replaced, which tells the Play to keep the SD card mounted.
When I was hot swapping SD cards with the back cover off, the SD card did not remain mounted.
Good luck!

Surround boot problem (white screen & HTC)

I just got this thing and it just sits there with white screen and "HTC" logo. Does this thing take a long time to fire up?
I did the button hard reset but it didn't do anything. Is there anything else i can try to get it to work?

Blah, finally found something:
Swapped out the 16GB card for a 4GB SD Card and now the phone works...HTC pisses me off with their quirks sometimes!!!!
So what is teh deal? Crappy SD cards or do they just get corrupt?

I had a similar problem and had to perform hard reset which reformatted the SD card and all was well - for a while. After it happened again a few months later, I swapped out the original card for a new 32 GB SanDisk Class 4 card and it hasn't missed a beat since.

Dunno. My Surround is going on 15 months old and I actively use it at least 4-6 hours per day (1 to 1.5 full charges per day) and no problem with the stock SD card. Have about 7GB free space available.
Had a couple spontaneous soft resets prior to Mango, and a few times a battery pull were required to wake the phone up. But aside from that, no problems whatsoever.

Hey, I jus bought a "new" HTC surround from amazon, and I'm having an issue, the phone isn't going past the HTC logo, it just goes to the HTC Logo, vibrates, then shuts down, when i plug it in, it does the same thing, in a loop, can someone plz plz plz help me, since I have no warranty.

You will probably have to replace the SD Card. Make sure to use a Windows Phone compatible card, or at least stick with name brand like Sandisk.

Is it normal for "new" htc surround phones to come with a defective SD card ?

gdiduajajshdndn265 said:
Is it normal for "new" htc surround phones to come with a defective SD card ?
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Click to collapse
It shouldn't be normal for new devices, but it is a common problem with this particular phone.
I would try to get it exchanged.
If you can't do that then I would try swapping in a different SD Card. It's actually pretty easy to get it apart, here is a guide video about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BiZzfdWDR4

k thanks, ill try swapping the SD card

any ideas on the brand of SD card i should replace it with ?

gdiduajajshdndn265 said:
any ideas on the brand of SD card i should replace it with ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, forgot about this. I'd stick with SanDisk.

I have had success with SanDisk Class 4. I currently have a 32 GB one in my Surround and it runs very well.

SD Card is Damaged. Try Reformatting it.

Anyone else getting this with their S4? I bought my S4 two weeks ago and a Sandisk 64gb card to go with it and started seeing this error about twice a day. I returned it for a Samsung SD and didn't see the error for almost a week until today.
The card actually appears to be fine, all I have to do is remount it after seeing the message and all is good, it's just worrisome cause I store all my photos on there. I'm wondering if it could be the phone itself? I have one day left to exchange it, but it's rooted.

SD Errors are because the card is physically moving when its being written to. This cause bad sectors on the card. Try putting a piece of thin scotch tape and cut to shape of the face of the SD Card. See if it fits more snug....
Are you jogging with the S4 or something? Samsung SD's are class 10 which I think write faster. Maybe that is less likely to cause damage because its written so fast? Not sure....
Try the tape trick and see if it reduces the problem. Else its a physical problem with the slot.

i also have a class 10 64gb, some guy on the forum posted this problem too, he said that by formating the card with a PC and then formating it with the format utility in the phone settings has solved his problem. If not, might be a slot problem like slider mentionned

I had this problem too with my 32 gig class 10. When I put my shock absorbant case on it my problem went away
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337

I had never had an issue with a Sandisk card until my S3 ate a 32GB. I then started readibg how the S3 ate non- Samsung cards. I have been using a Samsung card with no issues

hope you make regular sdcard backups and copy to pc
polish_pat is correct, reformat your card with sdformatter, use Full Erase On and Size Adjustment On
Of course backup first
you shouldn't have to reformat again in phone--
if the card is good this should solve your issue

I had tried 3 different San disk 64GBP class 10 cards and had this problem, the fourth one works so far...doing some searching I found lots of complaints from lots of different device forums about this card. Only fix I found was running chkdsk repair on the card in Windows but this only worked for a few people ( couldn't save my first three cards)
anyway, imo exchange the card or better yet buy a different brand
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using xda premium

Posting here as doing a search revealed this is the closest to the problem that I'm having. I've had my AT&T Samsung Galaxy S4 for approximately 1 month now. I purchased a Sandisk 32GB SD Card for the phone. Two days ago I began experiencing issues where when unlocking the phone I would notice the card would unmount then remount (this was in the notification bar). Later that night, the card unmounted and there wasn't any way to get it recognized again. I posted in some other forums and someone said there were some good posts here.
I've contacted Sandisk regarding the card and they refused any involvement stating it's a problem with the phone, not the card. They determined this because once I was able to get the phone to recognize the card and plugged the phone into the PC, the card was able to be read. As long as it's readable, it's fine. After dealing with this I eventually found my MicroSD to SD reader and plugged it into my media reader in my printer. I had quite a few issues from time to time reading the card, however I can't 100% for sure say whether this is the card or the printer.
Anywho, I grabbed copies of what I needed. Formatted the card on the PC, then formatted it on the phone. I began to copy my entries however at one point instead of saying I had 29.* GB Available, it said something like 2.0 EV of 3.0 PE or something like that... these weren't the typical numbers I've seen nor the units of storage space. I apologize that I can't recall that information. I reformatted again and it worked. Left the card in the phone empty over night then tried to copy files later today. This worked.
Now, approximately 48 hours after the problems began, I noticed more issues. SD card stated that it had been damaged and that I should reformat it. While this message stayed in notifications, I confirmed I was still able to read files on the SD card. When googling that error hoping I'd find more resources, the card again unmounted.
One of the resources I found had me do a CHKDSK /F /X on the card. I did this and found no issues. I've replaced it back into the phone and it seems to be working for the moment.
1) Are there any confirmations if this is a bad card, or if perhaps any applications are causing the card to do this? I do have QuickPic and have enabled some of the hidden file features if that helps.
2) Do we know if there are any logs that can be pulled to help verify this?
3) Is it a specific card? (I've heard SanDisk 32gb, but also have heard non-Samsung SD will fail)
Looking to get this resolved ASAP. This card was purchased directly from AT&T when the phone was purchased. I am just looking for some confirmation that if I have to buy another card, I'm not going to gamble if that's going to have the problem as well.
Thanks! If I forgot anything please ask!
Edit: Per the thread, this is a Class 4 card. Also the phone was not moving when it was writing data. I've been couch-ridden all day and unlocked it. I don't believe the phone was in deep-sleep mode as I had received a text not long before I began noticing these messages.

same problem
i have the same problem and guess what ?
the phone is acting like the ***** it stays ok for 3 weeks while that time i download to many stuff to my ext card 32g Elixir Memory after that it crach and give me notification that sd card is damaged and i have to reformat it sucks
by the ****in way this's the fifth time it crash i changed the memory to sony and same and changed to Kodak and the same
so abso****inlotley its the S3 for me soon its going to trash

polish_pat said:
i also have a class 10 64gb, some guy on the forum posted this problem too, he said that by formating the card with a PC and then formating it with the format utility in the phone settings has solved his problem. If not, might be a slot problem like slider mentionned
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This works! It fixed the issue I was having with my SanDisk 64GB.

SD Card Issue in S5

Hello All,
Im Hoping Someone Would Be Able to Help me with an issue....
ive got the samsung galaxy s5 SM-G900I with telstra here in Australia, on the 26th of last month i went to my fathers wedding, i was taking photos on my phone with the camera it spent most of its time on the camera app (once closed itself down prob due to inactivity) anyways after a while it stopped taking pictures.... the capture button on screen was grayed out but i could still see through the camera.... i though ok weird and closed the app down and opened it with the same result... then a popup came up that said "Camera Failed" when i pressed ok the camera app closed.... tried to bring it up again and it was a no go so i decided to reboot my phone..... it shut down properly but never turned back on so i though ok maybe it turned itself off so i tried to turn it back on and got nothing..... i pulled the battery out and put it back in and the phone turned on and the camera was working perfectly fine again so i though oh ok glitch but all good.... anyways i went back to taking and i found that all the pics i had taken that day were gone from the SD card...
it took me a minute to relize that all the photos on my card were gone.... i went to investigate and say that the card wasnt mounted under storage and i though all good again and hit mount and nothing happened.... then i saw a notification saying either an unformatted card or an unsupported file system... i checked in another phone with it and got the same issue and it seemed the card had gone bad, anyway i got home that night and plugged the card into my computer and found that the card was reading up as a raw file system.... so i went stright to data recovery but before the data recovery could finish scanning the card all of a sudden there was my sd card reading up perfect in my laptop... which was weird to me as i havnt seen that happen before, so i backed up everything on my card to my computer and plugged the card back into my phone and it came up with a different error i think it said something about the card maybe being corrupt.... so i put it back into my computer and ran a chkdsk on it and it showed that everything on the card was corrupted..... so i decided to wipe the card and start again and i transfered everything back onto it and everything was working perfectly fine as if nothing had happened...anyway fast foward to monday this week and i went to take some photos and recorded a video on my phone (went stright to the SD card) and i checked it afew hours later because i got busy and i had found that everything i had done that day had corrupted and photos that i had taken about 4 or 5 days ago were also corrupted... images that i had seen to be working fine.... so i backed up my SD card again and though ok im gunna have to buy a new sd card and i redirected the save location for photos back to internal storage.... anyway today my SD card was still in my phone... all of my music is on it still and i was listening to music while i was heading out to the shops.... and i noticed that afew of my songs were playing for a second or 2 then skipping to the next or just pausing and throwing an error about the song being corrupt...
so i put the SD Card into my Samsung Galaxy Tab S and the songs that were "Corrupt" on the SD Card were working fine on the tablet..... so i am wondering.... is it the SD Card or the Phone?
thanks Help would be amazing!

paul118 said:
Hello All,
Im Hoping Someone Would Be Able to Help me with an issue....
ive got the samsung galaxy s5 SM-G900I with telstra here in Australia, on the 26th of last month i went to my fathers wedding, i was taking photos on my phone with the camera it spent most of its time on the camera app (once closed itself down prob due to inactivity) anyways after a while it stopped taking pictures.... the capture button on screen was grayed out but i could still see through the camera.... i though ok weird and closed the app down and opened it with the same result... then a popup came up that said "Camera Failed" when i pressed ok the camera app closed.... tried to bring it up again and it was a no go so i decided to reboot my phone..... it shut down properly but never turned back on so i though ok maybe it turned itself off so i tried to turn it back on and got nothing..... i pulled the battery out and put it back in and the phone turned on and the camera was working perfectly fine again so i though oh ok glitch but all good.... anyways i went back to taking and i found that all the pics i had taken that day were gone from the SD card... it took me a minute to relize that all the photos on my card were gone.... i went to investigate and say that the card wasnt mounted under storage and i though all good again and hit mount and nothing happened.... then i saw a notification saying either an unformatted card or an unsupported file system... i checked in another phone with it and got the same issue and it seemed the card had gone bad, anyway i got home that night and plugged the card into my computer and found that the card was reading up as a raw file system.... so i went stright to data recovery but before the data recovery could finish scanning the card all of a sudden there was my sd card reading up perfect in my laptop... which was weird to me as i havnt seen that happen before, so i backed up everything on my card to my computer and plugged the card back into my phone and it came up with a different error i think it said something about the card maybe being corrupt.... so i put it back into my computer and ran a chkdsk on it and it showed that everything on the card was corrupted..... so i decided to wipe the card and start again and i transfered everything back onto it and everything was working perfectly fine as if nothing had happened...anyway fast foward to monday this week and i went to take some photos and recorded a video on my phone (went stright to the SD card) and i checked it afew hours later because i got busy and i had found that everything i had done that day had corrupted and photos that i had taken about 4 or 5 days ago were also corrupted... images that i had seen to be working fine.... so i backed up my SD card again and though ok im gunna have to buy a new sd card and i redirected the save location for photos back to internal storage.... anyway today my SD card was still in my phone... all of my music is on it still and i was listening to music while i was heading out to the shops.... and i noticed that afew of my songs were playing for a second or 2 then skipping to the next or just pausing and throwing an error about the song being corrupt... so i put the SD Card into my Samsung Galaxy Tab S and the songs that were "Corrupt" on the SD Card were working fine on the tablet..... so i am wondering.... is it the SD Card or the Phone?
thanks Help would be amazing!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Whoa. That would be painful to read. Can you break that into paragraphs?
.

fffft said:
Whoa. That would be painful to read. Can you break that into paragraphs?
.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sorry about that.... not the best when it comes to that lol, i just edited it i hope it makes it easier to read

I'm not trying to give you a hard time, but that is still hard to read. If I got the gist of your post, you had a camera failed message and apparently SD card corruption.
There isn't enough information (or maybe it's in the middle of those paragraphs) to tell what happened. Probably just a temporary glitch, but you could have anything from an actual camera failure to a physical SD card defect.
Try clearing your system cache. I wouldn't worry about the failed camera message if it doesn't recur. If it does, search for the camera failed threads, Samsung was providing warranty replacements for some early production camera failures.
If you are searching for photos, see if your phone put them on the internal sdcard (since the external SD wasn't accessible). Otherwise you could consider a data recovery app to see if photos can be recovered from your external SD card.
Is your external SD card bad? We don't have enough information to know yet? Do a search for an app to test the card integrity or you can probably use the fsck command to test the card and correct (if possible) filesystem errors, followed by reformatting and remounting the card. The fact that the card was readable on another device doesn't differentiate between an marginal or unstable card and a sound card. You'll have to test and reformat the card to really tell.
.

fffft said:
I'm not trying to give you a hard time, but that is still hard to read. If I got the gist of your post, you had a camera failed message and apparently SD card corruption.
There isn't enough information (or maybe it's in the middle of those paragraphs) to tell what happened. Probably just a temporary glitch, but you could have anything from an actual camera failure to a physical SD card defect.
Try clearing your system cache. I wouldn't worry about the failed camera message if it doesn't recur. If it does, search for the camera failed threads, Samsung was providing warranty replacements for some early production camera failures.
If you are searching for photos, see if your phone put them on the internal sdcard (since the external SD wasn't accessible). Otherwise you could consider a data recovery app to see if photos can be recovered from your external SD card.
Is your external SD card bad? We don't have enough information to know yet? Do a search for an app to test the card integrity or you can probably use the fsck command to test the card and correct (if possible) filesystem errors, followed by reformatting and remounting the card. The fact that the card was readable on another device doesn't differentiate between an marginal or unstable card and a sound card. You'll have to test and reformat the card to really tell.
.
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Click to collapse
thats ok i know your not trying to give me a hard time on it im sorry that its so dificult to read, ill see if i can try this alittle better
on the 26th of last month i was taking photos for my fathers wedding when the camera stopped working, it wouldnt let me take photos so i closed the camera app and opened it again thats when i got the camera failed message
i tried to reboot my phone but it froze during the reboot and didnt start up again so i pulled the battery out and put it back in, when the phone started up again the camera was working perfectly fine but the SD card was coming up as unreconized file system or unformatted,
i got the SD card to my Laptop and the File System Read up RAW i started data recovery and while it was scanning the card everything started working again and i got all my photos back without the need for using data recovery
put the SD card back into my phone and it read corrupt so i reformatted it and restored everything back into it and the card worked fine,
Fast Foward to Monday This Week and i recorded a 10 minute video at 1GB size and took some photos.... and they corrupted.... no issues with the camera or anything like that.
Today i Was Listening to Music that was stored on my SD Card (64GB Class 10 Transcend) and it skipped a song about 2 seconds into it and another song it tried to play and failed coming up with an error about it being corrupt, ive taken the SD Card out of my phone and put it into my Samsung Galaxy Tab S and the songs that were "Corrupt" worked perfectly fine on my tablet
so im wondering if it could be the SD Card or the Card Reader in the Phone? the System Cache in the phone has been cleared.
Thanks i hope thats helped you able to understand it better and again i am sorry for my poor writeing skills

paul118 said:
Today i Was Listening to Music that was stored on my SD Card (64GB Class 10 Transcend) and it skipped a song about 2 seconds into it and another song it tried to play and failed coming up with an error about it being corrupt, ive taken the SD Card out of my phone and put it into my Samsung Galaxy Tab S and the songs that were "Corrupt" worked perfectly fine on my tablet
so im wondering if it could be the SD Card or the Card Reader in the Phone? the System Cache in the phone has been cleared.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for going through that again.
The basic question or mystery that we are trying to solve is why does the external SD card only appear to have problems in your phone and not the tablet? And how can we tell if it is a card issue or something other aspect of your phone?
While it could be some problem with your phone e.g. bent or damaged SD card slot, corrupt driver or other causes.. it would be hard to track down without further hints. i.e. there are so many possible causes that we need to narrow it down.
So it's easier to tackle this by elimination. Lets test the hell out of the card because that is easier to do.. and despite the fact that it appears to work in your tablet, it's still more likely to be a card problem. Why would it only affect your phone and not the tablet if it is a card problem? There are lots of reasons, but just to give one example.. it could be a problem on just one area of the card.. and that happens to be where your phone is preferentially storing files.
If that makes sense so far.. then the plan is to see if we can identify a card defect. So.. grab an app that will check for file system errors (chkdsk, fsck, etc), check partition structure and do extended read /write tests on the card. At a glance perhaps one of these apps: Lewy or Dewy.
Most likely you have some bad clusters which fsck or chkdsk could repair. But it's best to run an extended card test.. that may take a few hours but it's still a lot quicker than trying to search for all the possible causes of phone problems. If your card passes with no issues.. I'd be inclined to back up your phone and then install a brand new, 100% fresh and stock firmware temporarily. That should in one swoop tell you if it is a hardware or software issue. Again, we are looking for expedient ways to narrow down the possible causes.
.

i will give u a hint ... try to make your topics, in your case, a loooooot less than your post so a lot more people would help you.

fffft said:
Thank you for going through that again.
The basic question or mystery that we are trying to solve is why does the external SD card only appear to have problems in your phone and not the tablet? And how can we tell if it is a card issue or something other aspect of your phone?
While it could be some problem with your phone e.g. bent or damaged SD card slot, corrupt driver or other causes.. it would be hard to track down without further hints. i.e. there are so many possible causes that we need to narrow it down.
So it's easier to tackle this by elimination. Lets test the hell out of the card because that is easier to do.. and despite the fact that it appears to work in your tablet, it's still more likely to be a card problem. Why would it only affect your phone and not the tablet if it is a card problem? There are lots of reasons, but just to give one example.. it could be a problem on just one area of the card.. and that happens to be where your phone is preferentially storing files.
If that makes sense so far.. then the plan is to see if we can identify a card defect. So.. grab an app that will check for file system errors (chkdsk, fsck, etc), check partition structure and do extended read /write tests on the card. At a glance perhaps one of these apps: Lewy or Dewy.
Most likely you have some bad clusters which fsck or chkdsk could repair. But it's best to run an extended card test.. that may take a few hours but it's still a lot quicker than trying to search for all the possible causes of phone problems. If your card passes with no issues.. I'd be inclined to back up your phone and then install a brand new, 100% fresh and stock firmware temporarily. That should in one swoop tell you if it is a hardware or software issue. Again, we are looking for expedient ways to narrow down the possible causes.
.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Im Sorry it took so long to reply to you, The 2 apps u suggested did not work they wouldnt detect the SD Card, i put it into my laptop and backed up my data and i ran a chkdsk on it and it came back clean said nothing was wrong with it, i have hard disk sentinel installed on my laptop and ive run a surface scan on it that is doing read write read test selection on 2 passes and has been running all day.... the first pass came back clean on it but the second pass has picked up 4 bad blocks near the end of it... its come up "7/08/2014 9:43:09 PM ! Verify error, Sector: 99480300" afew times with different sectors on it, im wondering if the camera issue i experenced could have caused my card to screw up like this? or even the phone not booting back up without taking the battery out first after the camera issue happened? would you consider Transcend a good brand for SD Cards? mine was a Transcend Premium 300X Class 10 Micro SD Card 64GB, im thinking of getting a 64gb Samsung Pro Micro Sd Card now... are those good?

Hey mate! finally i have someone who has the same issue as me! this happened to me last week. i was going through my photos and they looked to be all corrupted. i didnt take much notice as i didnt really need them. i was at the gym and my music was all gone. it was all saved to my samsung 32gb SD card. i got home and there was a message saying SD card is damaged. i lost everything. i did a format and nothing happened. it still said SD card failed.
i went and bought a new Samsung Evo 32gb SD card and it is doing the same thing. i plug it into my laptop it works fine. when i chuck it back into my s5 it says its corrupt. i have no idea whats going on. SD card reader in the phone maybe damaged somehow? i dont i have ever dropped my s5. its driving me mad.

My wife's 64GB card is now doing the same. Formatted and working twice. Images all saved to cloud but a pain waiting for it to happen again.
Ordered a new 64GB card today. Hoping that sorts the issue. If not its return to store time. Happy knox is intact.
Sent from my Galaxy S5 running NeatRom 0X1

my galaxy S5 does not read SD card also..
i think most likely is the software issue.

Just wanted to chime in here. I have a hardware failure with my s5 SD reader, and it was my fault. I had to replace my digitizer, hence putting My Straight talk sim into a temp phone for a fee days.
I cut my sim down to nano size for the temp phone, then stuck the now nano sim back in the s5 after repair, I didn't have a sim converter, and ended up bending pins. Thankfully the sim still works but I toasted my SD slot. Not only will it not read any SD card, it breaks any working one i put in it. I'm a hardware guy, so I'm going to give a go at fixing it, but I'm pretty sure the whole assembly is soldered to the board, no replacing this assembly. At least I don't believe so.

SIM card and MicroSD card died on my X Force :(

I got a Sandisk 64GB MicroSD card in the mail today. Inserted it. Used it as internal storage (should have set it to portable now I think about it). It was working for a while. I was recording some dash cam video in the car with it. I tried to copy the video files off over USB in MTP mode and the first file played fine. Then I tried another and it complained. Eventually it said it was corrupted. I tried to erase the card in the phone and it said it was corrupted. I took the MicroSD card out and tried it in a card reader in Windows but it was not readable and would not let me format or test it for errors. I have now put it in my laptops card reader and it initially had the same errors but I have chosen to do a full format and right now it is coming up to half way through a full format. Hopefully that will fix it. However!
Now my SIM card will not read! I have tried re-seating it. Cleaning the contacts etc. No dice!
EDIT: Factory reset did not help. Back to the shop in the morning but I bet they don't have any stock to replace it with.
The next step is a reset of the phone but I don't hold out much hope
EDIT: Tried a factory reset and it's still not seeing it. Back to the shop in the morning and I bet they don't have any in stock to replace it with.

Probably silly question, did you put SIM in the right place? Try to reset phone from recovery or fastboot, maybe even reflash firmware.

SIM card died from being taken out and put back in too many times I think. I am waiting for the replacement MicroSD. Which means going through the motions again. I had to wait all day for my replacement SIM to become activated too because my networks systems were down which was a right pain. I am going to torture test the MicroSD outside the phone this time before using it (and to test if it's genuine). I've ordered a compatible card reader as well since my old card reader does not support MicroSDXC.

So SIM slot in the phone is still fine? That's good. New MM feature to make sd card as part of internal memory is... well, good idea but taken from years ago when devs made it for first Nexus. But back then solution was unstable and looks like still is.

I've got the new card. Seems to run OK. Initially was slow writing in NTFS mode but after a quick erase in the phone it's better although still quite slow on writes for a UHS-1 card. I am using it in portable mode and will keep an eye on it. I ran H2testW on it on the PC and it passed fine. Basically I think I overpaid for a card that does not really need to be superfast. A bog standard 64Gb card would probably have sufficed.