Database Users

Defrag Storage Card, Don't Do It.

This is just a quick heads up. It was new to me and I had never came across the issue before on here, so I am posting my results.
I was doing some routine maintenance on my PC and I had accidentally left one of my external USB Stick drives in the machine. I noticed that in the Defrag options, it now gave me an option to Defrag the external drive. I thought to myself, thats kinda cool, I bet my 6gb Micro SD card on my phone could benift from a good defrag. I quickly popped my Micro SD card from my phone, plunked it into a USB Key Reader and told Diskeeper to Defrag the Micro Card. I was thinking, this should be great, I have thousands of files on my Micro Card, a good Defrag should be a cool thing. A few mins later it said it was done so I pulled it out and put it in back in my phone.
The next day I went to launch TomTom and it took 5 mins just to launch the app. I thought it had froze or something. I was fighting with it, driving me nuts. I re-installed TomTom, still taking 5-8mins now to load the app. When I tried to get directions it would take up to a min just to plot a route. (should only take a few seconds) I re-flashed the phone with a new ROM, then reinstalled TomTom and it did not help at all. Everything on the storage card was taking forever to load. Even the music apps were bogging down really badly.
Today, I yanked the Micro Card out of the phone, placed it in a USB key and copied the contents to a temp Dir on my desktop, formated the card, then wrote some data to the card and formated again.
Finally I put all my data from the temp Dir back onto the card and put the card back in my phone. Launched TomTom and took about 5 seconds rather than 5 mins to load. Everything is back to perfect.
I was hoping to Increase speeds with the Defrag of the Micro SD card and in fact it killed it horribly.

Lol, good to know. I would have thought the same thing!

a little common sense would have told you that would be a bad idea.
defragging is designed to 'defragment' files and put the most used files all together at the start of the drive. meaning a hdd head doesn't have to do a lot of skipping about for one file. then yet more skipping to find the next file, and a whole load more skipping to find different pieces of that file, etc etc.
the fact that solid state media doesn't have a drive head renders defragmenting unnecessary, plus as SSDs also have a limited number of write cycles the excessive writing required to move files around the card reduces its lifespan.
hope this helps

It depends
After owning several Pocket PCs with various expansion types, defragging has it's benefits and it's pitfalls.
(The following comments are based on percieved experience. I've not done any benchmarking.)
I've found using cheap card readers can definitely cause problems with cards, particularly when defragging. It can result in various errors in the files and sometimes even render the card unreadable/unwritable. Even reformatting has no effect. To solve the problem I've often had to use a digital camera to reformat the card before it can be read/written by a PC via card reader.
Multi-media files seem to be the type of file that benefits most from a contiguous file that needs to be read/written by the Windows Mobile device. Particularly video. Why this is so, I do not know. But when watching video or listening to audio skipping and stuttering seem to be much less aparent when the file is contiguous. Also, I've been able to resurrect some .jpg files unreadableby my WM device by doing a defrag. Again, no idea why.
Almost any file that needs to be constantly read seems to benefit from a contiguous file, e.g. GPS maps.
Safest way to make files contiguous is to copy the contents of the card to a hard disk, reformat the card, then rewrite to the card.
Just my 2 cents.
Would be interested in anyone else's observations, particularly with media files.

Defragging files on flashcards is pointless - skipping from sector to sector in a row takes as much time as to skip into random sectors...
Frequent writes on cards descrease their lifetime... So that - defragging anything else than hard disks is harmful for media.

maybe unrelated, but is the option "encrypt files in the storage" (or something sounds like that) from within the windows mobile's settings pose any danger? i.e. conflicting with PIM backup files etc.
thanks

Please read
Just found this article

dave852 said:
a little common sense would have told you that would be a bad idea.
defragging is designed to 'defragment' files and put the most used files all together at the start of the drive. meaning a hdd head doesn't have to do a lot of skipping about for one file. then yet more skipping to find the next file, and a whole load more skipping to find different pieces of that file, etc etc.
the fact that solid state media doesn't have a drive head renders defragmenting unnecessary, plus as SSDs also have a limited number of write cycles the excessive writing required to move files around the card reduces its lifespan.
hope this helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well said, SD cards and USB drives are flash drives and as so they don't need defragmentation and also as it was mentioned in the quote, it reduces it's lifespan.
Cheers

With Sandisk offering a 5-year limited warranty for their ordinary microSDHC and a 10-year limited warranty on their Ultra microSDHC cards and an expected minimum life of 15 years and maximum of 75 years (according to a Sandisk forum moderator) does it really matter what you do?
With storage memory sizes and formats moving so fast, who expects to keep using these things bought today on a daily basis on 5 or even 10 years' time?

corrupt SDCard wont format.

ok.
my SDCard is ****ed, basically. i thought a good old format would do the trick but i was sadly mistaken.
it can read and display pictures, but cannot display thumbnails.
it shows mp3 files in file managers but wont play them in any music player.
will sometimes let me copy files from the card to the computer but not the other way round.
files cannot be deleted from the card at all.
and now the strangest one, it seems to be unaffected by a complete format.
the format finishes, i can then open up the card (which now shows as empty) from the computer and move files to it, so i eject it and remount it and low and behold everything's there again except for the files i put on after the format.
i don't know what to do as i can't really do much without an SD card =/
anyone got any ideas?

same. mine's been corrupt for a while now with reformat only making it work for a few hours/days.
i'm not sure if this is the crappy card that came with it or the g1's fault...has there been many cases of this?
i'm just buying an 8gb microsd from microcenter for $20 in the next week...i'll deal with my current one until then.

Just buy a new one, its not like they're expensive.

My brand new 8 GB Kingston MicroSD(HC) simply refused to cooperate - The G1 never saw anything I wrote to it on my computer - the computer never saw anything saved by the camera to the microSD. To boot, it even only reported as < 500 MB on the G1. Using the HP USB mem tool (http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197) I came to the point where the G1 saw 4 GB, but still no way to transfer anything to or from the computer.
Finally, I found this http://rivviepop.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/fix-your-g1-android-messed-up-sd-card/ (requires Linux) that solved the situation. Now both my computer and G1 sees all of the card, and what's on it.Phew!
/Mats

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.

Samsung Fascinate goes crazy.

Not sure what's happening. I was trying to move a 1gb file to my Sd card from my laptop. The phone goes berserk. It freezes then wont start up while the file was transferring. Then it restarts and goes to main unlock screen the restarts again. I cant seem to transfer files unless they are below 200mb. Is there something wrong with the SD card?/
Also a few times it starts off as a fast transfer but then 75% done it slows down to a point where it transfers less than 1mb/sec

Is this a persistent issue? If you are bricked, the only advice I can give is get a decent quality sd card reader (preferably bundled with a micro sd to sd card adapter). I can recommend one. Actually I have yet to try editing my sd card directly - just a best guess.
Also you might try different means of transfer. Three examples are a) mounting phone as hard drive on computer and copying (which I presume you are doing already). b) dropbox c) adb push mega.mp4 /sdcard/mega.mp4

Valid option if I get the 16GB?

So, considering that 6.0 can format the sdcard to appear as internal memory, is there any good reason for going with 32GB or more? I would like to save the money and just get the 16GB and format the card so it appears internal.
Other than being slightly slower than internal memory, would this be a valid route going 16+card as opposed to 32+card?
I have a OnePlus One right now with the 64 and usually have about 20GB left so 32 is the base I need but I figure I might be able to get away with 16 if the card appears as all internal anyway.
Thoughts?

Yes, I went with a 16GB model also for the same reason. I installed a 64gb Sandisk extreme SD card that transfers up to 90mb/s. Nandroid backups went from 30 minutes on my old SD card (some cheap crap) to less than one minute. With a proper card you'll have no issues running apps off the SD.
The internal memory isn't much faster.

I've been considering using the adoptive storage, but I went ahead and bought the 32gb. Call me old fashioned, but I like having an SD card that is considered separate from the main storage for one big reason: If I ever have to do a wipe of the phone, I know that my photos, TWRP backups, and so on, are all safe as long as they are on the SD card. I don't know if we know what'll happen if you use the adoptive storage and you have to wipe the phone. Will it keep what is on the SD card part? Will it wipe it as well? My understanding is that it'll wipe it.
So I may just keep on doing what I'm doing... change the camera settings to use the SD card for pictures and videos, make the SD card the default place to save downloads, and only use the internal storage for app installs.

I use my SD card to store all of my media and reserve internal storage purely for apps. I can manage with 16gb since I don't have a lot of big apps. Adoptive storage is a nice feature but I don't think I'll be using it, since I like taking my microsd out and popping it in my laptop to manage my music, photos and movies.

Do we know FOR SURE that there will be no way to partition the external SD so that part of it is used for the OS (non-readable outside the phone) and part for external storage?

SalTNutz said:
Do we know FOR SURE that there will be no way to partition the external SD so that part of it is used for the OS (non-readable outside the phone) and part for external storage?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't read anything that would suggest so. Everything I've read indicates that it formats the entire card to be used as internal storage. The tradeoff, it seems, for allowing adoptive storage is to make it very difficult for your to remove the card and use it in another machine.

Well thanks guys. Still up in the air which phone I'll ultimately get and if it's the Moto, what size but this does clarify things.

hbar98 said:
I haven't read anything that would suggest so. Everything I've read indicates that it formats the entire card to be used as internal storage. The tradeoff, it seems, for allowing adoptive storage is to make it very difficult for your to remove the card and use it in another machine.
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Click to collapse
why? whats the problem to pop it out,insert it into your pc and do the transfers and back to the phone? you can shut down the phone if you need

robert stig said:
why? whats the problem to pop it out,insert it into your pc and do the transfers and back to the phone? you can shut down the phone if you need
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you format the card as adoptive storage you can't just pop out the card and read it from a computer. The computer won't be able to read it.
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