I guess as these devices age we should begin to expect minor issues to crop up. Mine was that the Class 2 (I think it is the original) card would unmount when I tried to copy "too many" megabytes to it. Sometimes too many was 15 and sometimes it was 50MB, but it never failed to unmount.
I use Itunes Agent to load up the card with about 200MB a day of podcasts. First the program deletes some of the old ones and that worked fine, then it copies in new ones and that is where it would bomb. Maybe one or two podcasts would copy in fine, then I would lose contact with the card. The yellow droid would go to green and that was it. Only unplugging and replugging and mounting would work and often after that, the program would complete the file copying with no more troubles. I changed the USB cord, made sure I was using the latest drivers, etc. but nothing improved. So I tried Samba.
Connecting to the card over the network was slow and unreliable. And, once again, I could copy some MB, bit not "too many" else it disconnected.
I poked around the 'net and came to the conclusion that maybe the card was going bad. Didn't seem right to me because all the apps that were on the card worked fine. A little slow to start up after a boot, but nothing outrageous.
Before I bought a new card, though, I decided to try an old trick. I removed the card and used a a microfiber cloth on the contacts. Back in the olden days, I used to use a pencil eraser on ISA, PCI and RAM card contacts, but I haven't needed to use that trick in a long time.
It worked, but I am saving my pennies for a new SD card anyway. It's been my experience that often this "fix" is only temporary.
Last edited by vey; November 22nd, 2011 at 04:31 PM.
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I've also found that my card, when it started having 'issues' worked 100% better after I removed it from the phone, formatted it in the computer (took 3 attempts to get a full format performed as it failed the first two times - full, not quick) and then copied all my data back and reinserted into my phone.
If you've had your device for a long time, I recommend doing this as well.
Thanks for the idea to clean the contact points, though - another good way to check the card.
I forgot to mention this: When I first got this phone about a month ago, I formatted the card FAT 32. When I started having trouble, I checked it for errors using the long method. That was part of the etc.
Worked about a dozen times and the trouble has started again. I'm going to use my Windows machine to copy all the files (~8GB) off, format the sd card, and copy them all back. I dunno how well this will work since copying files seems to be problematic.
update . . .
I formatted the card, plus I tested the card using a program called h2testw which wrote about 15 files to the card, then verified the data. It saw nothing wrong, so I put the card in the phone and copied all the files back to the card with no trouble. I'll keep an eye on things and comment again here if things change.
Last edited by vey; November 23rd, 2011 at 12:19 PM.
Seems as though it is a software issue. If I reboot, I can use Itunes Agent without any trouble, but if I don't then it trips once, but a USB disconnect and reconnect makes the files transfer without trouble.
The Motorola Droid - the first ever Verizon Android Phone - exploded onto the mobile market with an incredibly successful ad campaign that brough Android to the masses. With a huge and vibrant touchscreen, solid metal body, full QWERTY keyboard, 5M... Read More
Mysterious SD card unmounting trouble solved
