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?

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.

Slow PC to Phone Transfer Speeds

Hi All,
I've searched the forums and I'm unable to find a resolution to my problem.
I'm having horribly slow transfer speeds from the computer to my Atrix internal SD card. I am transferring about 7GB of music from my 64-bit Win7 PC and status says about 4-hours. Used to only take a few minutes on my Captivate.
I've tried formatting the internal card, re-flashing back to stock, different USB ports on the PC, etc all without any luck.
Any ideas before I completely tear my hair out?
Thanks in advance.
EDIT: When the internal SD gets mounted, Windows is slow to find the drive and list its contents. The 2GB external that I have in the phone comes right up.

Wow. No idea. Iwas quite surprised at how fast toshiba emmc is. What speeds are you getting btw? Oh, i do know one thing possibly. Do you transfer files a lot? Flash memory has a limited life, though many of us never see flash die or start to die. But if you do these types large file tansfers, 7gb often, youre using up write cycles much quicker. Also, the folder youre transferring to is about 12 gigs right? Say you have 4 gigs of stuff in their already, and youre trying to put 7 gigs in, more than likely youre transfer speed will be slowed down. You need space to actually to fill stuff up, and the more space, the faster you can fill it up. I wish i could be a little more detailed. I know about this from solid state drives, and the concept is basically the same, but works a little different. I dont know if that is your problem though.
I voided my warranty.

n7slc said:
Hi All,
I've searched the forums and I'm unable to find a resolution to my problem.
I'm having horribly slow transfer speeds from the computer to my Atrix internal SD card. I am transferring about 7GB of music from my 64-bit Win7 PC and status says about 4-hours. Used to only take a few minutes on my Captivate.
I've tried formatting the internal card, re-flashing back to stock, different USB ports on the PC, etc all without any luck.
Any ideas before I completely tear my hair out?
Thanks in advance.
EDIT: When the internal SD gets mounted, Windows is slow to find the drive and list its contents. The 2GB external that I have in the phone comes right up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Take the SD card out of the phone and put in the adapter. Try measuring speeds via adapter. Your SC card might be dying.

His internal card.
I voided my warranty.

Just thought I'd throw this out there, when you format an SD card it asks you for the amount of "bits" you want to format it with. I would research which number is best suited for your particular SD card depending on how big it is. Cause the standard number it automatically inserts may not be the best.
edit: ignore post. For some reason when I read it, my eyes saw external SD card instead of internal. Derp and Derp.

Which of the four (well, three) USB modes are you using to do the transfer?

Installing Android on the X1 (Video Series)

Hello everyone,
I'm working on a little project, a YouTube series of videos going through the usage of different Android builds on the X1, covering installation, appearance, how it runs on the hardware, and what it is like to use on a daily basis.
There are plenty of videos already that go over the installation, but I'm hoping that this first video might help get new people interested in Android and in experimenting with their phone. Once I complete more videos, perhaps these videos will help people find builds they are interested in.
The first episode is maybe a bit rough, I'm still working on a consistent format. Let me know what you think, what could change, what could be added, and how you would find a video like this helpful or useful!
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA6D895A90784B6A8
Cheers,
Dan

My SD card is broken and now my computer is not detecting my SD Card at all... it's broken... just because I r=use Android in X1

The two most likely causes I can see for that are:
1) Normal wear and tear - the SD card failed from normal use. All flash memory can only be written to so many times before it stops working. MicroSD cards are cheap, don't let one failed attempt discourage you from ever trying again!
2) Partitioning might not work properly on some SD cards. Try with another brand.
If you didn't create the FAT32 partition first, or at all, Windows won't be able to see the files. However, it should still be able to see the SD card with a program like Minitool. If you can see it with Minitool, just remove the partitions you made for Android, and just make one single FAT32 partition (primary). Windows should be able to see it again.
If you can't see it in Minitool, try again using another memory card reader. If you still can't read it, then the SD card is likely bad.

ext. sd card mounting/unmounting issue

Hi Guys,
I have an (3) 32 g sandisk external SD cards that keeps mounting/unmounting and then getting message that it is blank....Have reformatted it several times put it in my computer and tried to change the read status on it....Everything I can think of....The problem is that it keeps the info on there and there doesn't seem to be any issue with the card itself just seems to be an incompatible issue with my Galaxy note. I am experiencing this actually on my note and my wife's note and my Flatmate's note also...
Yet these cards worked fine for a long time and even now for no apparent reason my flatmates card is working again...
I have seen this issue come up with a lot of peeps online but haven't seen any answers....
Cheers, jeff

Same issue here
I have a Galaxy S2 from tmo (hercules) and have been having this same issue.
I didn't have any issues with it until I tried loading large HD videos onto it (over 2GB) and then it started to poop all over itself.
I realized later that the card was fat32, even though I thought I had reformatted it to ext2 for link2sd to work...turns out that was just the small partition I created through CWMR, and even ext2 won't handle large files either, only ext4 or NTSC (as I understand it).
I would love to be able to reformat the entire card to ext4 so I can load HD movies onto it but I don't think that's an option and I may have damaged the card by messing with it so much. From what I've been able to dig up, even if I do manage to reformat the entire card to ext4, windows won't recognize that particular file system so I wouldn't be able to move anything onto the card from the computer via usb anyways.
I don't think I've answered you question, but maybe we can work together and get some devs on this for some definitive help and explanations. :laugh: