Database Users

Wp7 and sdcards.....be careful!!!!!

Well its my own fault but I thought maybe I can save some others the heartbreak of a damaged sdcard. We all know that wp7 reformats the sdcard when installing the first time. Also if you switch sdcards while phone is off or anything and then boot into wp7 you will fry your card.
I flashed wp7 just to see what it was all about blah blah. Decided it was time to return to android. Blah blah i stuck my android sdcard with all my backups, pics, work stuff back into the phone and rebooted to flash android back through nand . Somehow i let it boot back to wp7 instead of nand and it killed my card. Lesson learned. Keep your sdcard 10ft. away from Wp7 at all times. Don't switch out your wp7 sdcard till you are actually back in android just to be safe. Oh and backup your sdcard!!!!!!!!
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

Though the information is greatly appreciated, why did you post this here? This is a test forum created to see how the site would react to adding sub-forums when the new forum layout project is started on Saturday.
Thread closed but not deleted.

Thread moved to the correct forum and reopened.
Mark.

If for any reason your sd card becomes corrupt just use this program: http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/HP-USB-Disk-Storage-Format-Tool.shtml

lol, hard lesson but it was obviously worth it as you wont be stupid enough to do something like that again, especially when it clearly states in read-me that card is partitioned etc.

Thank you for this post, I was not aware that something like this can happen, and now I'll take precautions so it wont happen to me.

TheATHEiST said:
lol, hard lesson but it was obviously worth it as you wont be stupid enough to do something like that again, especially when it clearly states in read-me that card is partitioned etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you actually read the second paragraph????? Yes I read the read-me. That's how I knew to use a spare sdcard. Plus the read me states that the card will be reformatted upon first boot and if removed the phone will lose all userdata. Had nothing to do with stupidity. Has to do with a pregnant wife needing my attention and me letting go of the power button to soon. Stuff happens.
Now to be more helpful than negative......unlike the athiest with his stellar "I don't believe in God, but I sure think I am a God of android" bad attitude.
The sdcard wasn't reformatted. It was showing as being damaged. I was able to find a simple, free data recovery program that was able to recover most of the card.
I see this may happen often because after using wp7 you may be in a haste to flash back to android (wp7 is just sad IMO). Just wait till you are booted into android just to be safe. Also while fixing my mess up yesterday I stumbled on another problem.
Recently read a post about partitioning the sdcard for optimum use when ram builds came out. System -ext. for data and another for cache. I picked up this sdcard off the desk after finding my main card had been damaged. Then did a task 29, flashed magdlr, and Mdj's gingerbread. Inserted the sdcard and did first boot. To my surprise I had all of my apps pre loaded and I hadn't logged into Google yet so I knew it wasn't Google data backup that loaded my apps. So I went into root explorer and saw the ext. and then realized which sdcard I had slid in. There for a second I thought "WOW me and mdj have the exact same apps". Blah blah reformatted card and reflashed gingerbread. Done.
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

Thank you....srry for the mix up.
mskip said:
Thread moved to the correct forum and reopened.
Mark.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

Myself, and a few others, have manged to reformat the SD card in a single button press by puttinf it into a digital camera and using the format option. It shows the card as 200mb but after the lighting quick format reads the correct size...voila.

Thanks...good to know. I will try it today. It took 8 hrs. for that application to fix my sdcard so that the computer could read it. Though my phone still wont read it. Out of 3700 pics I recovered 98% of them, all of my work files and android apps. Got real lucky. Took another hour after that for the computer to copy them to another 16gb card. Made for a long night. Now when I get home I can reformat the bad card and use as backup.
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

I´ve repaired a lot Sd cards, usb-sticks.... making a low-level format with this tool:
http://hddguru.com/software/2006.04.12-HDD-Low-Level-Format-Tool/
The only care you have to have is not to format your hd

madu2 said:
I´ve repaired a lot Sd cards, usb-sticks.... making a low-level format with this tool:
http://hddguru.com/software/2006.04.12-HDD-Low-Level-Format-Tool/
The only care you have to have is not to format your hd
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have any suggestions for a good data recovery application. The one I used was free and easy to use but cost me about 4 he's of sleep. I know a lot of ppl experience sdcard corruption frequently maybe we can get it into a sticky that ppl will find before they reformat. I did not know till last night that it was possible to recover drives this way. I almost erased all of my families Christmas pics. PREGNANT wives don't like that kind of news. OF COURSE THE BEST WAY IS TO BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

Where is the wp7 Rom
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App

Its on the table by the remote control!!!
demon187 said:
Where is the wp7 Rom
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

okay, i've tried using minitools partition to try and delete the 200mb partition and then recreate the entire 16gb that is my microsd as well as sdformatter with full (erase as well as overwrite) with size adjustment on but the problem is that i can only see one partition, the 200mb partition, i can't even see the the second partition or whatever that wp7 created. I even tried doing the low-level-format but it's still stuck at 200mb!
anyone have any other solutions?
edit:
figured it out
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=10719128&postcount=6

vinbomb said:
okay, i've tried using minitools partition to try and delete the 200mb partition and then recreate the entire 16gb that is my microsd as well as sdformatter with full (erase as well as overwrite) with size adjustment on but the problem is that i can only see one partition, the 200mb partition, i can't even see the the second partition or whatever that wp7 created. I even tried doing the low-level-format but it's still stuck at 200mb!
anyone have any other solutions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just download and install SD Formatter 3 on your pc, run the program and in the options change FORMAT SIZE ADJUSTMENT to ON and leave it at QUICK FORMAT. Dont worry that it only shows the 200MB partition it will reformat your card and bring back its full size. It worked everytime for me.
Mark.

i tried that through android usb storage mode but it would keep on going back to 200mb. the only way that using sdformatter proved to be successful was to connect the microsd through magldr and not through android
thanks for the tip though!

google samsung sd formatter. Format as FAT32 with overwrite enabled. It fixed my bad card when i returned to android
By the way, you have to mount the card via MAGLDR as it wont mount in android (it is detected in windows this way)

vinbomb said:
i tried that through android usb storage mode but it would keep on going back to 200mb. the only way that using sdformatter proved to be successful was to connect the microsd through magldr and not through android
thanks for the tip though!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
have you bought the sd card from ebay? it might be fake. It happened to me too, bought a 32gb microsd, for about 20 euro, knew it was fake, but i just tried my luck. When the package arrived it got myself some brand new earrings, probably worth 2 bucks.

[Q] External sd problems

Hi guys
I'm having some extremely irritating problems with my A500. It doesn't detect any external sd card I've tried so far. It says external sd is unavailable under storage in settings and the external_sd folder is empty in root/mnt. I've tried 3 different cards so far with no success. Anyone have a any advice for me on how to mount the card? I think the problem might be that it doesn't get mounted when I insert it. I can't root because the GingerBreak mod that's been posted needs an external card to work. So maybe some advice on how to root some other way? Then I can try restore a stock image and see what happens.

I had to insert mine and then reboot the tablet for mine to show inside of a file manager.
Sent from my A500 using XDA Premium App

lawmangrant said:
I had to insert mine and then reboot the tablet for mine to show inside of a file manager.
Sent from my A500 using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey, thanks for the tip. I forgot to add it to my original post. I've tried rebooting with all 3 of the cards I have. I'm starting to think it's a hardware problem...

Have the cards you're testing been formatted NTFS or FAT32? If NTFS they probably won't work without some help.
The stock device only deals with FAT32 mSD cards; I haven't tried the NTFSMount app from the Dev forum on an NTFS-formatted card yet, only USB devices.

Vereynn said:
Have the cards you're testing been formatted NTFS or FAT32? If NTFS they probably won't work without some help.
The stock device only deals with FAT32 mSD cards; I haven't tried the NTFSMount app from the Dev forum on an NTFS-formatted card yet, only USB devices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey. I've formatted the cards multiple times, to FAT32 every time. Might try exFAT tomorrow just to see what happens.

exFAT didn't work. Not that I expected it to, lol. Maybe the GingerBreak apk can be modified to use the usb storage instead of the external sd. Any idea where I can get the source code to take a look at?

If you've tried multiple cards, all FAT32 and all work on other devices, I'd return the tablet while you can, sounds like a hardware problem indeed

Slight problem with the returning, lol. I live in South Africa and ordered my tab from the USA since my own country is so backwards. I don't really mind not having an external sd card, I just wanna root again since almost all the apps I use need root. I'm considering returning, even if it's gonna take a lot of effort, time and money...
EDIT - Another reason I can't return it (and this is a horrible thing) is that SuperUser Permissions is still installed. The recent update made me lose root. So I'm kinda stuck with this app that's proof that I voided my warranty. The only way to get rid of SuperUser is to use some apps that all need root. To get root I need the external sd to work. To get that to work I need to send it for repairs. A very messed up situation

I'm almost positive that it's a hardware issue now. Even when I try to do an update.zip from recovery mode it can't find the file even though it's on the card. Let's hope they don't see the SuperUser app when I return it...
I thought about maybe waiting for Acer to release an update that will unlock the bootloader. But since the SD card slot isn't working I won't be able to install the update. That so much depends on one little slot amazes me. If you wanna know what the single point of failure for an Android device is, look no further.

I know some android tabs came out without external SD card support. I live in the uk and have a 32GB version and the SD card worked out the box. Maybe you have to wait for an update. Just my 2c though. You won't need an external SD to receive OTA updates though.
Sent from my A500

Here's an image of what recovery mode says when I select Install Update from external source. Seems the system can't mount the card. Sigh

I like that message at the end.... "Install from sdcard complete."
You had rooted before the update, which means it had to have seen the sdcard then. So it's unlikely that the hardware just went bad. Are the sdcards your trying of different sizes, classes, and/or manufacturer?
I'd go with the same sdcard you used when you rooted before and reformat it using the HP USB Format tool. Selecting fat32, of course. And don't select quick format. See if that helps. Sorry if I missed somethiing relevent above.
Here's the link to the HP first tool. http://download.cnet.com/HP-USB-Disk-Storage-Format-Tool/3000-2094_4-10974082.html
Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk

Lol, the "fake it till you make it" strategy. Fail Google.
I've tried it with the original SD and two other ones. My guess is some app tried to mount the external SD in /mnt/sdcard and messed up some associations or dependencies or something.

I'm amazed. After everything I've tried it suddenly worked. I was busy in settings and accidentally selected storage. And there it was in all its glory... A working external sd card! I'm rooted again, backed up and ready to roll!

To anyone finding this thread hoping for answers for a similar problem: It was a hardware problem indeed. I fixed it myself by opening the tab and bending the MicroSD slot's pins back into place.

16gb Micro Sd wont delete or add Items but I can open files but cant format the sd?

So I have this Issue I found my 16gb HD2(I no longer have the hd2) that's I guess corrupted I can view the files move them to my desktop but I cant format the SD, I tried my Nexus One, digital camera, Windows 7, Macbook,ubuntu, mini partition tool and testdisk with no results. I remember this issue happen when I tried to run android through SD maybe you guys know why. thanks

Some sd cards especially ones that have been bought on ebay or overseas have a memory hack in them. What happens is the sd card shows 16gb but in reality it may only have 6-10gb. The hack provides the sd card to show more space then is actually there. You can use it just fine with no problems at all but once you go over the actual memory it really has & not just shows you then get a slew of corrupted files on your sd card leaving it almost useless. This is only 1 example, others causes could be if you take an ad card out while you transferring files to it. In the end there is little you can do and what I would of suggested you've already tried. (minitool) this has helped me fix a card that I was transferring files when my power went out. This will probably not help but have you tried different ports on your computer? What happened when it was in you nexus?
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App

htccraze said:
Some sd cards especially ones that have been bought on ebay or overseas have a memory hack in them. What happens is the sd card shows 16gb but in reality it may only have 6-10gb. The hack provides the sd card to show more space then is actually there. You can use it just fine with no problems at all but once you go over the actual memory it really has & not just shows you then get a slew of corrupted files on your sd card leaving it almost useless. This is only 1 example, others causes could be if you take an ad card out while you transferring files to it. In the end there is little you can do and what I would of suggested you've already tried. (minitool) this has helped me fix a card that I was transferring files when my power went out. This will probably not help but have you tried different ports on your computer? What happened when it was in you nexus?
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I learn this lesson on my chinese 32gb lol but on my 16gb sd was actually the one that came with the hd2 so I know for a fact is legit. everytime I put it on my N1 it tries to format it and then a message pops out saying card unmounted. I also tried my good old nokia n82 which usually Nokias are really good at formatting corrupted cards it doesn't give me the choice of formatting the card. Im wondering of their some type of lock on the sd card.

there is a really small lock on the front of a sd card but none that i know of on a micro sd. did you use the minitool partition wizard or the data recovery program? if you only used the partitioning wizard i would try the minitool data recovery program found here.

Running mini tool this is what I get it wont fix it though https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/3-oc0r_Bbv5qrYncR3IzCZaCRbbB6vENK-AyJ2O_CkI?feat=directlink

running minitool data or minitool partitioner? it looks like minitool data if i remember correctly. yeah, it says "minitool found errors on disk but will not fix them because diskcheck was run without fix parameters." i would try it again but select "check and fix detected errors" see if that helps. if it dont help then i would suggest to wait for advise from someone a little more knowledgeable about this.

htccraze said:
running minitool data or minitool partitioner? it looks like minitool data if i remember correctly. yeah, it says "minitool found errors on disk but will not fix them because diskcheck was run without fix parameters." i would try it again but select "check and fix detected errors" see if that helps. if it dont help then i would suggest to wait for advise from someone a little more knowledgeable about this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried using both none of them cant format the SD card or at least make it usable.

josemedina1983 said:
I tried using both none of them cant format the SD card or at least make it usable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what about good ol' Check Disk from Windows Explorer?

Another program is SD Formatter 3.0.
Try it and play with the options.

SD formatter is pretty good i must say. Here is another one that might be of some use. I have a corrupted flash drive around somewhere so i'll try and find that. maybe I can play around with it to see what might work and report back. I would also take a look at this link as it provides some very useful information about sd cards. you can find that here, please make sure you read the section on "Formatting is required". This will explain why you may be running into problems along with what the cause might be.

Yea the same thing happened to me with my 8 gig card, i even tried formatting it at best buy and with a camera and still wouldn't format. So i just had to buy a new one.

Clean install with apps on SD?

So I've got the froyo now and had a problem and had to start over. Before the restart I had saved quit a few apps to my SD Card... clean install don't detect them. Do I need to just format card and reinstall from market or what?

I did a clean install too. Did you use titanium back to save the apps? Thats how I restored all my apps.

pre4speed said:
I did a clean install too. Did you use titanium back to save the apps? Thats how I restored all my apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, I moved them to SD in the Settings>Applications>Manage Apps menu. Figured that would do it.

Why would you use apps2sd when link2sd exists?
It is far superior!
Sent from my MB508 using Tapatalk

rignfool said:
Why would you use apps2sd when link2sd exists?
It is far superior!
Sent from my MB508 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have to agree here. Check out my experience with apps2sd versus link2sd here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1218518

However...
Link2sd now can't keep lib files on the sdcard thru a reboot...
Sent from my MB508 using Tapatalk

rignfool said:
However...
Link2sd now can't keep lib files on the sdcard thru a reboot...
Sent from my MB508 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My lib files are still linked. but maybe thats the problem with my phone freezing 20 times a day now. IDK. Hopefully an update to the update will come soon cuz Im sick to death of it freezing.

I spent about 2 hours last night trying to get Link2SD to work on my flipside and could not. I followed the guide and set a main FAT32 partition and a secondary ext2 partition and the phone rejected and told me to make teh 2ndary FAT32 so i did that and then the phone rejecting it and said something else it.
Anybody care to explain how exactly they got this working? I tried searching through the main post but thats 100 pages of questions with few answers and I coudln't find anything that helped.

Mine was a hassle the first few times I tried on eclair as well. I just kept changing the size of the partition until finally it worked. I couldnt tell you the exact steps as it was long ago.

boazjuggalo said:
I spent about 2 hours last night trying to get Link2SD to work on my flipside and could not. I followed the guide and set a main FAT32 partition and a secondary ext2 partition and the phone rejected and told me to make teh 2ndary FAT32 so i did that and then the phone rejecting it and said something else it.
Anybody care to explain how exactly they got this working? I tried searching through the main post but thats 100 pages of questions with few answers and I coudln't find anything that helped.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Completely reformat your card to fat32, then using partition magic, create the second partition as FAT. Put card in phone, reformat, run Link2SD, and reboot phone.
RESTART Link2SD and go hog wild moving your programs to sd card...
If you backed up ypur card to your pc, copy over the folders to the sd card.
I know reformatting is extra (uneeded?) Steps, but it worked juat fine for my wife's phone. A restart gives her almost 58 megs free...

Gallery photos broken, apps not found - SD failing?

Dear all,
I have a N9005 (eu) with 4.4.2 stock. Never rooted.
Since a couple of weeks, I notice a strange behavior. Quite often I find broken thumbnails in the stock Gallery app, sometimes the actual photos I have take are not visible.
At the same time, it happens that I download and install an app and it won't run, giving me an error in com.appnamewhatever. After a restart, I still see the link to the app on the home, but as I click it says app not installed. After I reinstall I can often run it np.
It gives me the feeling that the internal SD Card is dying. Is that possible? Can I run some tools/fixes to prevent or check it? (with no root required)
Thanks.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using XDA Free mobile app

McBain_666 said:
Dear all,
I have a N9005 (eu) with 4.4.2 stock. Never rooted.
Since a couple of weeks, I notice a strange behavior. Quite often I find broken thumbnails in the stock Gallery app, sometimes the actual photos I have take are not visible.
At the same time, it happens that I download and install an app and it won't run, giving me an error in com.appnamewhatever. After a restart, I still see the link to the app on the home, but as I click it says app not installed. After I reinstall I can often run it np.
It gives me the feeling that the internal SD Card is dying. Is that possible? Can I run some tools/fixes to prevent or check it? (with no root required)
Thanks.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Take a look if your photos and pics are in SDCard.
2. Take a look if you have the apps installed in your SDCard too (Aplication manager -> SD Card -> App marked to move to SDCard)
3. You will have to take off the SDCard and try making photos and installing new apps (change your SDCard for other new if this go ok)
Tell me what result do you have in your tests :highfive:

Man, you are right. I had not moved any app intentionally to the external SD Card so I did not think that would be the case. But that's what happened, the failing apps were on the external SD and so are the photos. It's a SanDisk Class 10 64 Gb.
So no way out other than substituting it?
Sent from my SM-N9005 using XDA Free mobile app

McBain_666 said:
Man, you are right. I had not moved any app intentionally to the external SD Card so I did not think that would be the case. But that's what happened, the failing apps were on the external SD and so are the photos. It's a SanDisk Class 10 64 Gb.
So no way out other than substituting it?
Sent from my SM-N9005 using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Take a look for what you can recover of your SDCard and copy it to your pc.
2. Format the card in the phone for last option.
3. Try again to put photos/apps there.
4. Good luck :highfive:

The corrupted photo's on the SDcard are a problem directly related to KitKat's increased security. It affects all KitKat devices. Any photo's on the SD randomly corrupt over time. The only solution is to put them on the internal memory.
The apps are a new one though. I've had apps suddenly become semi-uninstalled because I was dumb enough to mess with the Android_secure folder, but not with the errors after install.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk 2

ShadowLea said:
The corrupted photo's on the SDcard are a problem directly related to KitKat's increased security. It affects all KitKat devices. Any photo's on the SD randomly corrupt over time. The only solution is to put them on the internal memory.
The apps are a new one though. I've had apps suddenly become semi-uninstalled because I was dumb enough to mess with the Android_secure folder, but not with the errors after install.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Jeez that's crazy. I triedo to run a chkdsk on the card from windows (in a SD reader) and it got me a gazillion errors.
So now I proceeded to salvage what I can. I will try to format it (in the phone? in windows? still not sure about it) and see what happens.
Luckily I was able to salvage 99% of the photos.
I just remembered that I did something very unortodox, more or less at the same time problems started: I removed the SD Card with the phone still on. Yes, you can barely do it without removing the battery... I though "let's see if something bad happens". Maybe it started to corrupt the FAT or similar.
Anyway, please feel fee to point me to a thread or good article on this, I find information very scattered. Is there any advantage t oformat it in FAT32, NTFS or exFAT (assuming I can even choose)?
Thanks

McBain_666 said:
I just remembered that I did something very unortodox, more or less at the same time problems started: I removed the SD Card with the phone still on. Yes, you can barely do it without removing the battery... I though "let's see if something bad happens". Maybe it started to corrupt the FAT or similar.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I find it fairly easy to do. It's also perfectly fine, as long as you unmount it first in settings.
Is there any advantage t oformat it in FAT32, NTFS or exFAT (assuming I can even choose)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Fat32 is the common format IT doesn't allow for filesizes over 3.9GB, so if you intend to use t for films, use exFAT.
NTFS can't be read without root. Don't use it.
exFAT is practically the same as FAT32, except that it allows for larger filesizes.

ShadowLea said:
I find it fairly easy to do. It's also perfectly fine, as long as you unmount it first in settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the infos. At that time I obviously did it without unmounting it first (no fun in life without some screw-ups). Regarding the formatting, I seem to be unable to do it from the phone at the moment.
It unmounts it, says checking it. But doesn't format it. Trying from windows now...

Here are some updates.
Formatting in either windows (stock function) and phone was a no-go.
However, I dowloaded and installed SD Association Formatter:
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/
and that did the trick. Now the SD Card is finally empy.
Also I strongly suggest using this tool instead of windows proprietary, because it's simply much much faster.
I will try and load it back with the stuff I had before, including pics, and see if I get the corrupted data again.
A difference is now that the chkdsk tool from windows says that no errors are found, unlike before. Let's see how it goes.

Final update to close thread:
The SD Card, a SanDisk UHS Class 10 SDXC, 64 Gb, had been declared dead.
It was possible to write data on in with seemingly no errors (from chkdsk) but all the data turned out to be simply corrupted.
Will send for replacement.
I have seen many comments on this card failing, so I would not recommend it. However, I think that this case it was not KitKat's fault.
Thanks for the inputs.

Do not blame the card yet
I am having the same issue with the same card, but it is limited to Note 3(N900).
Every now and then it becomes inaccesible, the photos appear broken, music player stops etc. It is not related to use of any particular app. When it happens, the card is still visible in Settings/Storage, just no app including mounting has access to it. What helps, is the old reboot fix
Happened on official KK, as well on LP. Device is stock unrooted N900.
The card is working without any problems in Note 1,even in Galaxy duos, and there are no issues writing/reading in windows nor linux. Something tells me that hardware is to blame.