Blank SD Card !

Gunnar · April 2nd, 2010, 05:51 PM

Hi Folks,

My Desire has suddenly stopped recognizing my 4GB SD Card today. Just says it's blank and needs formatting !
When I try to access the card via my PC it just wants to format it...but when I bring up the format window the PC only sees 30MB and a format of FAT. The Properties show it formatted as RAW.
The Error Notification I get is:
Blank SD Card - SD Card blank or has unsupported filesystem.
Is my card fried or is there a way out of this ?

Cheers,
Pete.

Karolis · April 2nd, 2010, 06:33 PM

So are you concerned about its contents at this point or do you want to just sort out the card? If you don't care about the data, just go ahead and format it. If it doesn't show the full size, then you might want to go into windows disk manager and delete any partitions / unallocated space.

memorito · April 3rd, 2010, 04:12 AM

Same thing just happened on my G1. I was messing with
Mobile Defense Beta. I don't really think it is related though.
I would definitely like advice on how to save the data. Thanks.

Gunnar · April 3rd, 2010, 04:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karolis

So are you concerned about its contents at this point or do you want to just sort out the card? If you don't care about the data, just go ahead and format it. If it doesn't show the full size, then you might want to go into windows disk manager and delete any partitions / unallocated space.

Hi, I just tried to re-format using Disk Management and also HP Disk Tools...No joy. The SD Card shows as 31MB and no format type. Unable to re-format. Looks like the card is fried 'already' !

Is there anything else I should check before reporting it to T-Mobile ?

Cheers,
Pete.

Karolis · April 3rd, 2010, 05:11 AM

Well, I'm using linux, so I'd try to DD it (wipe the card on a very low level), but I'm not sure how to do that on Windows.

If you think T-Mobile can replace it - you should definitely just get in touch with them.

Regarding data restoration, PhotoRec (not only for photos) is a great piece of software. But it doesn't preserve folder structure or file names, which might be a problem in most cases (unless you only need to pull photos/videos).

Ten10 · April 3rd, 2010, 07:20 AM

Trying out the solutions on this forum here: Format RAW to FAT SD card - Flash-Media - Storage

Most notable solution is this one:

Quote:

Hi! I had the same problem with my SD card. I formatted my SD card from RAW to FAT with "SD Memory Card Formatting Software Ver.2.0" from Panasonic. Here is the download link: http://panasonic.jp/support/global [...] atter.html Download button is on the bottom of the page. It works perfectly!

Gunnar · April 3rd, 2010, 09:12 AM

Thanks Guys.
I've tried those to no avail...The Panasonic s/w says the car is write protected. Sounds like it's had it.
I''ve bought a 2GB card and it has been recognised without issues, so hopefully it's just a duff card. I have a 16GB card already winging it's way to me, and will use that one once I'm sure.
Cheers,
Pete.

Lukehluke · April 4th, 2010, 02:28 AM

It happened to me and I removed it and put it back in and it worked fine.

memorito · April 4th, 2010, 02:46 AM

I was able to format it. But before I did, I used PhotoRec. It is a pain to go through the 30,000 files it generates to try and salvage stuff, but I wasn't about to pay 100-150 bucks for something that might or might not preserve filenames and structure. I needed to clean out my phone anyway. :P I wish there was something out there that could repair the partitions that disappeared. PhotoRec pulled the fiels off, but TestDisk coudn't find the partitions. I thought that was weird.

byron_hinson · April 4th, 2010, 07:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lukehluke

It happened to me and I removed it and put it back in and it worked fine.

I unmounted mine then rebooted the desire - worked fine after. Didn't even realise it wasn't working properly until the backup came up and said so!

memorito · April 4th, 2010, 01:57 PM

It sometimes loses the path somehow, or just needs to be reseated. Then other times the card is corrupted and needs some elbow grease to get past it.

serenity · April 6th, 2010, 07:31 AM

Hi
Mine has just done the exact same thing apart from the fact that my pc doesnt even recognise it and the phone wont format it.. any ideas

Gunnar · April 7th, 2010, 05:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by serenity

Hi
Mine has just done the exact same thing apart from the fact that my pc doesnt even recognise it and the phone wont format it.. any ideas

Hi, I tried all the suggested ideas and no luck for me. I can't even low level format it because it says it's write protected ! I'm wondering if there was a dodgy batch of 4GB cards.
Anyway, I got myself a cheapy 2GB card from Tesco, but will be putting in a 16GB card once I'm happy it's not the phone doing the corrupting.

memorito · April 7th, 2010, 05:25 AM

Well if the card isn't working at all. Try and do a file recover with TestDisk/PhotoRec or something like that. It's free. I couldn't find anything affordable that had more functionality. It is a command line type interface, so don't freak out. Beyond saving your files, if your phone won't format it, I would avoid trying to rescue the card any further. And a not to EVERYONE, in my experience, DO NOT put your memory card into a reader and connect that to your computer. Use only the "Mount USB" function available from the phone. In this and other phones, as well as cameras, I have always had troubles after trying to use the cards on a reader directly. Hope that all helps and makes sense...

...anyone want to invite me to go snorkeling? I might say yes...

stepheny · April 7th, 2010, 09:11 AM

SD card Damaged

Im getting the same and have posted my experiences in the above - two SD cards now have the same issue - even after formatting on the PC and a full phone reset.

ninjahamster · April 12th, 2010, 03:17 PM

I got my Desire a couple of weeks ago and have just had the same problem.

My 4Gb card that I got with it, spontaniously stopped being recognised by my phone, it gives me the option to format it, but when I click nothing happens.

I presume it's screwed as the unmount option is greyed out.

Sounds like there's a dodgy batch of SD cards out there.

I'll be popping back to CPW tomorrow to see if I can get a replacement.

luckily I didn't have much saved on there, just a couple of pics.

nx1977 · April 12th, 2010, 03:21 PM

See what HTC have to say.

PygmyArr · May 6th, 2010, 07:41 PM

i've just had this problem occcur, phoned virgin moblie CS up, they said to take it into shop where i bought it as it was still under 28day warrantee.

lady in the shop said she hasnt got spare replacements in, but as soon as she gets a sd card of 4gb or bigger, she'll call to let me know and i can collect it.

kinda hoping it is th eduff SD card batch and not something wrong with the handset (ie over volting memcard when phones on charge and card is being accessed).

kave2 · May 6th, 2010, 08:31 PM

Happend to me today. I was using my old 8 GB card from HTC Touch HD. So i put back 4GB card which came with phone. I hope it's not phone related problem.

NZtechfreak · May 6th, 2010, 10:48 PM

I've had on a couple of occasions instances where the phone suddenly doesn't seem to be able to detect my microSD card. Removing the card, reinserting, rebooting fixed it.

Since then I've had this solution - install SDmount Widget, when the error happens unmount the card in settings, click SDmount Widget, all fixed.

kozjegyzo · May 11th, 2010, 04:04 AM

Hey,

I've had my Desire for a few weeks now and this same problem came up twice now. A simple reboot fixed the issue, but it's still annoying that this happens at all. I have a 4GB card in my phone that came in the box. I really hope this is a card issue...

brad-short · May 12th, 2010, 03:10 AM

Dont think it is an SD card issue. I've used two cards now, one supplied and one bought, and i get the same issues. It could well be a piece of software or OS. . .we just dont know.

brad-short · May 13th, 2010, 02:42 AM

Well my card became corrput again lat night. Unmounting and mounting had no effect. This was a 16gb card which was formatted fat32. I had recently transferred some mp4 vids to it. Came to watch them later and boom, corrput. Lost everything.

Have put in the 4gb card that came with the phone to see what happens with this one.

Annoying issue this . .

bedrock · May 13th, 2010, 10:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gunnar

Hi Folks,

My Desire has suddenly stopped recognizing my 4GB SD Card today. Just says it's blank and needs formatting !
When I try to access the card via my PC it just wants to format it...but when I bring up the format window the PC only sees 30MB and a format of FAT. The Properties show it formatted as RAW.
The Error Notification I get is:
Blank SD Card - SD Card blank or has unsupported filesystem.
Is my card fried or is there a way out of this ?

Cheers,
Pete.

I have just had exactly the same happen to me

Did you find any resolution, or does the sdcard need to go inthe bin? I'm going to try calling T-Mobile and see what they have to say.

brad-short · May 13th, 2010, 03:56 PM

look around guys, deffo summat up here. SD cards being unrecognised and in some cases corrupted. Usually its connected with connecting to a pc or something or transferring of files. . .

BTW, further to my earlier post, my 4gb has been in 24 hrs and has not failed and that includes me moving files to it from the pc.

PygmyArr · May 14th, 2010, 03:14 AM

i've emailed htc asking about this problem, and they've replied

Quote:

Dear Glen McNeill,

The HTC Customer Service Representative that has been handling your message would like to know if your question has been successfully answered. You can reply to or close your question by visiting:

HTC Global ContactUs System - MainLogin

If you do not respond to or close your question within 15 days, it will be closed automatically.

Sincerely,

HTC

We are unable to receive replies to this email account. Please visit us at HTC - Mobile Phones, Smartphones, Cell Phones, PDAs if you have any questions or need further assistance.

New Response
Dear Glen Thank you for contacting us in regards to your SD card, I can help you with that. Please provide your serial number and postal address so I can put a new one in the post for you. Thank you for contacting HTC. Best regards, Mike B HTC

so if you're SD card dies, pop an email off to them (i used HTC websites ticket support system) and they appear to be replacing them, free of charge, which suggests they're getting a few complaints about it and are probably investigating it further.

brad-short · May 14th, 2010, 10:12 AM

Good that HTC are on the case, but my gut feeling is that it is not the SD cards that are the issue. But we will see.

OFI · May 18th, 2010, 03:04 PM

Well mine has just done this 'SD card damaged'

Tried rebooting and reseating and it still won't work.

Card reads fine in my laptop..

formatted it. Appeared to work at first until I unmounted it then it didn't see it at all.

Ended up formatting in my laptop and refitting it.

Seems to work so far..

Hope this isn't a common occurrence

suicida · May 18th, 2010, 04:03 PM

I had the same problem with a card that had been in my G1 for 18 months with no problems. I think it might be related to the backup settings in Privacy>Backup my data and settings. After it ran a backup my card became corrupt. I reformatted, turned off the backup, and haven't had a problem since (fingers crossed...)

OFI · May 19th, 2010, 12:18 PM

Funny you say that..

The backup thing gave an error earlier and a few minutes ago I just tried to take some photos and it said it didn't have write permissions on my card.

Rebooted and it's working again for now hmm

I too have been using this card for probably 2 years in another phone. I'm sure it's not the card at fault.

itsallsp · July 29th, 2010, 09:52 AM

I'm having exactly the same issue: 4gb microSD stopped working after 3 months on T-Mobile UK. Won't mount on any device, won't reformat.

HTC tech support said
#1 Return your phone to us. I asked why?
#2 Strike that. Ask T-Mobile to swap out the SD card

I'm now waiting on T-Mobile for a response...

Update: a nice but incomprehensible lady at T-Mobile is posting a new card out.

Moods · August 1st, 2010, 05:48 PM

All,
I've had the phone for 2 weeks now, and I got snatch by this SD failure yesterday. I'm betting that this SD problem has nothing to do with the SD cards, as this problem seems to be building up all over the world for different sizes of cards (ref reading different forums in different countries).I spent last week taking pics and video of the family on vacation and lost everything yesterday. The phone has greyed out the dismount option and the format option. No response, what so ever. I have used the SD card in my previous HTC, without any problems (had it for over two years).
Need to get a card reader and see what the PC says (hoping to restore the media files), and will contact shop where I bought the phone here in Norway to see what they say. Will keep you all posted.

PS I really feel HTC is not coming clean on what the actual problem is. Has anyone heard anything?

michaelwaite · August 2nd, 2010, 03:44 PM

I am getting fed up with this problem. I am on my third SD card now using HTC Hero 1.6.

At first card lasted about a month before I sent it back. The new card I just bough from Tesco has not worked long enough for me to reinstall the apps (like TTS and Dictionary) that use it.
But my brother has had a Hero for a year and never had a problem.

Frustrating. I am waiting to see if the problem remains following upgrade to 2.1 before complaining to 3uk.

matluz · August 2nd, 2010, 04:54 PM

Hi just got desire and found that my 4gb sd card shows an error. It says to format it but does it contain any useful data as supplies?
I put in a 8gb one kingston and it works fine?

Thanks
Mat

michaelwaite · August 9th, 2010, 04:23 AM

Here is a copy of my entry in the Hero forum on this issue:-

I have made some progress on this issue.

I needed to factory reset my phone (to fix a broken wifi) and so made list of all my fav apps. Then reinstalled them.

As soon as I started installing the text-to-speech engines (google extended and also the pico extra voices) the SD card would fail or become faulty very soon.

So I carried out another factory reset and did not install any of the text-to-speech apps.

The phone has since been stable for quite a few days with only about three occasions when the SD card was no longer recognised. One while installing a collings french-english dictionary, the second while installing a number of books and the third while uploading a few MB of podcasts into Carcast.

Each of these occasions required a significant amount of SD card access.

So either there is something deeply wrong with some Android card access code or a hardware fault.
But I note that this issue is reported in the Desire forum as well. I assume the desire has completely different hardware from the Hero.

What to do next? I will wait for the 3UK 2.1 update and then take stock.

Michael

Morat · September 25th, 2010, 01:51 PM

My phone just ate my card

I'm still running 2.1 (damn Orange) and I switched my phone off completely to see if a reboot would trigger me getting a notification for the 2.2 update. Yes I was clutching at straws......

Anyway, when the phone came back up - I got the damaged SD card error message. I haven't ever connected this phone to a PC. I tried rebooting again, and reseating the card but no go. The card was an 8gb one I bought separately from the phone.

ChristianX10 · January 25th, 2011, 07:29 PM

I lost all my pictures and had to recover them with the photorecover application. I tried to format the SD using android's format option and nothing, I also used SDFormatter and nothing.
I was about to purchase a new SD Card, but I first wanted to fix a configuration in Roadsync because it was crashing my Xperia, making it unusable.
Roadsync was using the SD Card as the location for email storage, so I changed that location to the internal memory. After that I gave another try to the android's format option, and.. voila, it displayed a different message, it prepared the SD card!!

The SD Card is working perfectly now!!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gunnar

Hi Folks,

My Desire has suddenly stopped recognizing my 4GB SD Card today. Just says it's blank and needs formatting !
When I try to access the card via my PC it just wants to format it...but when I bring up the format window the PC only sees 30MB and a format of FAT. The Properties show it formatted as RAW.
The Error Notification I get is:
Blank SD Card - SD Card blank or has unsupported filesystem.
Is my card fried or is there a way out of this ?

Cheers,
Pete.

Waldoug · January 31st, 2011, 09:40 PM

Hello Peeps, My 4Gb card got wiped out after Flashing windows 7 on my HD2 the Rom was installed successfully but my card was wiped out in the process, when I Plug it to the computer it wont show any physical memory but it is recognized I know because it makes a sound when I insert it, Clicked on properties tab and it shows 200Mb of free space with 0 being used WTF. does anyone here knows how to fix that
issue because Format on windows FAT 32 puts me back with 199Mb, i'm not trying to recover any files just want my 4Gb of space back so I can reuse card

SUroot · February 1st, 2011, 01:01 AM

Try gparted live cd

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

Stompie · February 3rd, 2011, 02:22 AM

Hi everyone, i just registered to tell you something you may find interesting.....SD CARD FORMATTER!! The newest version on this moment is v3 and IT WILL WORK for you when you have any sd card that doesn't show its true size. Just google sd card formatter. I hope i helped and i know i helped. Have a nice day everyone!!!
Stompie OUT

Waldoug · February 7th, 2011, 11:39 PM

Hey Stompie, Youre awesome bro! I just format My Micro SD with SD Card Formatter and got my sd card Like New condition thanks a bunch.

Stompie · February 7th, 2011, 11:58 PM

I'm glad i helped the first person and glad to help many others. Stompie OUT

feelgoodmiller · June 29th, 2011, 04:42 PM

I have a 4 gb sd card and the same thing is happening to me i think that there just wack

piyush_dave85 · August 29th, 2011, 04:06 PM

sir one week ago my mobile sleep down form my hand and after that day memory card is not shwos in my mobile . i have show in computer but not shows in comouter so how to back up my data which is important pls help me

alacemessi02 · January 14th, 2012, 06:21 AM

Hey do not use your card further as it may reduce the chances of recovery. If the situation demands for the formatting of the memory card then do it followed by any data recovery solution for pictures. Photo recovery for Mac is an ultimate tool that easily recovers photos from memory card even it is formatted. Do not wory about the SD card you are with because it is compatible with almost all type of SD card.

togger161 · January 14th, 2012, 08:12 AM

My SD card died last night and no matter what software I used I could not bring it back to life. Had to go buy another this morning. Ah well.

sonyalowery3 · February 9th, 2012, 08:31 AM

All I had to do was erase sd card data, reboot and problem was fixed.

ToXcRebel · February 9th, 2012, 08:52 PM

i factory reset my phone but i took out the sd card before doing it (unmounted it) then when it is started back up (from reset) non of the that i had on my sd card were on my phone?

Lgaddis · June 10th, 2012, 08:49 AM

My Samsung Sharp is saying blank sd card. i am unable to access my camera or gallery.......... How can i fix this?