Help Samsung Galaxy S3 KILLS SD CARDS!!!!!!

[CrimsonPride]

I had a 16gb card in since release date, changed it a few weeks ago for a 32gb sandisk ultra. no problems. and my 16 gb sandisk was a few years old

 

[Noxian]

I am running a 32GB Class 10 PNY card, going on 2 months not a single problem.

I only store my music on it though and the odd thing here and there.

I wonder if people are running apps from their SD cards?

 

[ljbad4life]

I've had my SG3 for about 2 months and all i do is read and write to my external sd card. All my music is stored on it (i listen to music constantly), I have movies and tv shows on it (which I swap out frequently) and anything the SG3 camera does (video and picture) goes right to the sd card. Never a hiccup or anything.

I think it would really help this convo if people start adding in if they are rooted, if they are using a custom rom, or forcing apps to the sd card.

I'm unrooted and stock everything. no customization apps.

 

[Noxian]

I've had my SG3 for about 2 months and all i do is read and write to my external sd card. All my music is stored on it (i listen to music constantly), I have movies and tv shows on it (which I swap out frequently) and anything the SG3 camera does (video and picture) goes right to the sd card. Never a hiccup or anything.

I think it would really help this convo if people start adding in if they are rooted, if they are using a custom rom, or forcing apps to the sd card.

I'm unrooted and stock everything. no customization apps.

I was rooted up until yetersay, no problems with SD cards failing.

 

[rcsrich]

FWIW (and it may be worth nothing), I'd never use the SD card for apps on the GS3- just photos/music. With the large internal memory, I'd use that for apps simply because of the amount of reading/writing that will be going on constantly. It seems like if anything will kill an SD card more quickly, that would.

There's also the speed factor- why would you want to slow down your phone by forcing it to do constant reads/writes to slower media?

I do understand that some of you probably have tons of game which eat up internal memory fast, so I can see why you might want to use it for app space too.

And always have a backup of those photos & music- forget the SD card issue- who knows when your phone is going to just completely crap out!

 

[mrhomiec]

usually when i see posts like this, it's always a rant on SanDisk cards. i haven't used a SanDisk card in years after one failed on my DS flash card =P

after that time, i was strictly sticking with Kingston and Patriot. until Samsung released their own micro SD cards plus the benefit of the whole "water-proof and shock-proof" guarantee on them.

been using a Samsung 32 GB since then, no issues.

to add on. i've been using the Samsung card since the phone's release. it's the class 10 version.

was unrooted for about 2 months, storing and playing music on it. saving the pictures and videos to it.

once rooted- tried several ROMs, but still storing and playing music on it, although depending on the ROM- didn't save pictures and videos to it. (TouchWiz ROMs allow you to choose save location, whereas AOSP ROMs only save to internal)

 

[rcsrich]

Maybe their mission is to kill any non-Samsung card- brilliant and evil all at the same time!

 

[ken_kurien]

Guys, I bought a SIII in July 2012 and my 16GB MicroSD died on me in October 2012... And on 30th Nov 2012, my phone died!! It was working fine till 3PM, then nothing............ It won't turn on! Tried everything. The battery is working fine.

I should have listened to my friends...

I have given the phone for warranty repairs, lets hope they figure out the problem and it never happens again!

 

[WAWood8]

...
It is only about what you do with the card, how you take it out, connect the phone to PC and disconnect it and what files you have on there.

While these are certain to have an affect, in the case of my wife's phone, apart from sticking a brand new SD card in her phone and formatting it, it was never disconnected from the phone.

As to claiming it's the kind of files -- really??? Her card had music (mp3), pictures and video (taken with the phone). If you can't store these on an SD card, then what is the point of having one?

The OP might just as well have had a virus that killed the cards.

Oh, give me a break -- this is an Android phone, not a Windows PC. And as I said, my wife's card had NOTHING on it when it was inserted into her phone.

One way or another, S3 has no widespread problem with cards as the title might suggest.

What is "widespread" depends on your definition, but my wife and I had had several smart phones, I know quite a few folks with smart phones (including iPhones) and the ONLY instances I've personally run across in all these YEARS of phone corrupting SD cards -- is with THIS phone -- BOTH of our SG3s. That's "widespread" enough for me!

 

[WAWood8]

... I have given the phone for warranty repairs, lets hope they figure out the problem and it never happens again!

I seriously doubt they will ...

Even if a few THOUSAND folks reported this problem, that still is a very SMALL proportion of the tens of MILLIONS of SG3 that Samsung has sold. Unless they see a flood of folks ditching Samsung for something else, they are not going to invest any real time or effort in this.

The problem is, if you're one of the few that have experienced this, being part of a small number is no help and no consolation. I once had a new car that died on the way home from work every Friday night within the same few minute time period. The fact that mine was apparently the ONLY one that did that did not help me when I stood there waiting for a tow truck, week after week after week (I sold the car -- dealer was never able to fix it).

As for me, I'm looking to replace this with a non-Samsung product when new phones come out. I had two HTCs and they were great. I also know folks with Razrs -- and they are great as well.

 

[Szadzik]

While these are certain to have an affect, in the case of my wife's phone, apart from sticking a brand new SD card in her phone and formatting it, it was never disconnected from the phone.

As to claiming it's the kind of files -- really??? Her card had music (mp3), pictures and video (taken with the phone). If you can't store these on an SD card, then what is the point of having one?



Oh, give me a break -- this is an Android phone, not a Windows PC. And as I said, my wife's card had NOTHING on it when it was inserted into her phone.



What is "widespread" depends on your definition, but my wife and I had had several smart phones, I know quite a few folks with smart phones (including iPhones) and the ONLY instances I've personally run across in all these YEARS of phone corrupting SD cards -- is with THIS phone -- BOTH of our SG3s. That's "widespread" enough for me!

If both you and your wife experienced that, it just means you connect the phones to a PC that breaks the cards or has virus or something like that.

 

[nytmare]

If both you and your wife experienced that, it just means you connect the phones to a PC that breaks the cards or has virus or something like that.

Disagree. Both of my cards were fried by two different S3s and neither phone had ever been connected to a PC. Next...

 

[ljbad4life]

Disagree. Both of my cards were fried by two different S3s and neither phone had ever been connected to a PC. Next...

I'm going to have to call you out on this; how exactly does your wife have music on her external sd card? Google music ONLY loads to your internal storage when you have it set for offline play. If you have loaded music from google play onto the external card you have done so with a third party app and that could easily be the culprit. Even if you moved the music via wifi (airdroid, kies etc) you are still taking something from your computer to your sgs3 it could still corrupt it just the same as if it was connected via usb.

mini-rant you have been forewarned:: IMHO i have a feeling like it's an app that is not playing well with the SGS3. I run across a couple of apps that have made my SGS3 act funky, most recently was XMBC (it's beta I know), after installing it, every time I unlocked my phone the calender would launch. uninstalled it and the problem is gone. Android is good, but the market is full of sloppily written apps that are bug ridden and too many people just download whatever to their phones without thinking about where it came from, who made it, why is it free, why does a game need permissions to access call records etc..

Case in point: the app Light flow, it's a simple app that lets you have more control over the led indicator and change it's color. On the SGS3, if causes a host of issues like a non functioning keyboard and talk back issues (there are other issues too).

 

[Szadzik]

Disagree. Both of my cards were fried by two different S3s and neither phone had ever been connected to a PC. Next...

You say so, I say that it cannot be coincidence that two people living together have their cards broken in the same phone model.

 

[MetroPOS]

This is a pretty disturbing thread to read. I just got a 32GB Sandisk class 10 on a Black Friday/Cyber Monday special last week. I've never had an SD card die on me ever. If this changes with the S3, I will not let this go quietly. I'll come back to this thread in a month or two to update on how it's going.

 

[Szadzik]

This is a pretty disturbing thread to read. I just got a 32GB Sandisk class 10 on a Black Friday/Cyber Monday special last week. I've never had an SD card die on me ever. If this changes with the S3, I will not let this go quietly. I'll come back to this thread in a month or two to update on how it's going.

All this is just a thread with a few people reporting issues. I am going to repeat:

Samsung sold MILLIONS of S3s and you really think only a few people have this problem when all the phones are defective? I call this BS campaign.

 

[Adlebo]

I agree with the OP. I have the s3 since its release and used an original sandisk 32gb card with no problems. However, yesterday for some reason I started getting error messages that my sd card was unmounted, or unsupported, blank, etc. After googling this problem I see many many people all over the place are having problems with the s3 and sd cards. Google it yourself and see.
I even tried putting the card in the pc to reformat it but it didn't recognize it. So after putting it back in the phone after three hours the s3 decided to recognize the card and so far its not giving me error messages yet. But people the s3 definitely has issues with sd cards and its only a matter of time till you see so yourselves!

 

[rcsrich]

A Google search for "phone killed SD card" turns up links discussing Samsung, HTC & Windows phones, not just the S3. I'm not saying it doesn't have some sort of issue, but it certainly isn't the only one.

I think to make a real call on it, you'd have to somehow get stats for many different phones showing SD card failure rates. A few of the links even suggest it is an ICS problem, so it will be interesting to see if the reports of the issue on the S3 die down as more folks move to JB...

 

[Adlebo]

A Google search for "phone killed SD card" turns up links discussing Samsung, HTC & Windows phones, not just the S3. I'm not saying it doesn't have some sort of issue, but it certainly isn't the only one.

I think to make a real call on it, you'd have to somehow get stats for many different phones showing SD card failure rates. A few of the links even suggest it is an ICS problem, so it will be interesting to see if the reports of the issue on the S3 die down as more folks move to JB...

First of all I am on Jelly Bean and never had a problem with ICS, so I would not say its an ICS issue. Second of all search "galaxy s3 sd card unexpectedly removed" and you will see what I mean. Actually it is such a popular google search, that when you start typing " galaxy sd card" google will provide you "unexpectedly removed" as the third most popular search term!!

 

[rcsrich]

First of all I am on Jelly Bean and never had a problem with ICS, so I would not say its an ICS issue. Second of all search "galaxy s3 sd card unexpectedly removed" and you will see what I mean. Actually it is such a popular google search, that when you start typing " galaxy sd card" google will provide you "unexpectedly removed" as the third most popular search term!!

You're going about your search in the wrong way if you want to compare the S3 to other phones- try "sd card unexpectedly removed" and you'll see that many different phones come up. Of course your results are all regarding the S3 when you put "galaxy s3" as part of the search string!

 

[Deleted User]

When I was reviewing SD cards for the S3, I did see a lot of ppl complaining about losing data on their cards which is probably why I choose to by the Samsung brand SD card even though it was more $$$. Lessen the chance of losing my data.

No problems after having it for 3-4 months so far

*knock* *knock
-------wood--------

 

[jtw1216]

Had my S3 for a month with no problems. Have a 16 card I previously used on a ZTE, & an LG. Had the card for 2 years. Been formatted several times, & still holds everything I put on it.

 

[eelton]

I'm not sure if it's the phone, but I've gone through three 64GB SanDisk Ultra microSD cards.

The first didn't work at all, and I exchanged it. The second worked in its "native" format (exFAT) in my stock GS3, but I then installed Cyanogenmod 10 (which doesn't support exFAT). I tried to reformat the card as FAT32, but it became unreadable. The third successfully formatted to FAT32 and allowed me to transfer *some* files (in Windows), but then started to give error messages, both in Windows and in the phone. It then became unreadable and unformattable (in the phone, in Windows, and in Linux).

I've given up and ordered a 32GB card, which I hope works better.

 

[MetroPOS]

All this is just a thread with a few people reporting issues. I am going to repeat:

Samsung sold MILLIONS of S3s and you really think only a few people have this problem when all the phones are defective? I call this BS campaign.

The phone has been available for 6 months now and with the higher models having 32gb internal memory, it's possible that many S3 owners hadn't even used external storage yet. It's too early to tell if this is a major scale problem but I hope it's only affecting a limited number of people, cause I've done some searching and it's starting to occur more often lately. Someone on another forum suggested to try blowing into the SD card slot to remedy the problem...but that wouldn't explain why your card can no longer be read by your PC.

And by the way, blindly defending Samsung/the S3 reminds me of Apple fanboy type behavior. Let's be objective here and open to the possibility that your phone or my phone could be next...


Samsung's galaxy s3 sd card issues - YouTube

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=s3%20sd%20card&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&sqi=2&ved=0CEIQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.androidcentral.com%2Fsamsung-galaxy-s-iii%2F215600-t-galaxy-s3-sd-card-issues.html&ei=ZeC_UPGWDZSw8ASelYDYAg&usg=AFQjCNHrkAFcjaNDmtQpQShgXM4KHBl3LA

"Hmm... This seems to be happening a lot. And I'm about to upgrade my card. I wonder if its a phone issue or a card issue. Is the brand, capacity, and speed of the micro SD card that "fried" the same as the one that works? "


http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...lYDYAg&usg=AFQjCNEeGWwqSkXmsyfwZBpK_r5MkTaqyQ

"My galaxy s3 has fried two sd cards of mine. In the first week or so I purchased it in July, my old samsung sd card died. I bought a sandisk from amazon, and 3 months later it died too, repeatedly shows "blank sd card" error.

I tend to think this is a S3 issue now. "

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1906058&page=8

"Just found this thread today...

My first 64GB SanDisk died after about 4 weeks of usage. I noticed something was going wrong as CWM would not find files that I previously copied to the card. After a while I was only able to view the content of the SD but not copy files back to my PC. A short time later I couldn't access the card at all.

SanDisk replaced the card under warranty though. "

"Another victim here

32GB card died. More than money it's about the buttload of inconvenience. It seems to have happened across ROMs, across memory mfg brands and across classes. Pretty sure it's a h/w fault now.

Totally not cool. "

"Well I've got to add my name to the list of fried SD card owners.

I was using a Sandisk 32gb SDHC since about mid September when I first had the phone and it was faultless up until the weekend. Suddenly and without any warning, overnight the phone desides that the SD card needs formatting and nothing I could do would bring it back. Computer doesn't recognise it whatsoever and no solution I've found online seems to have any effect.

To add insult to injury, I got hold of a 64gb version of the Sandisk and within 24 hours that one was toast as well. The only difference being that this one is detectable by the computer. Unfortunately, no formatting program seems to cure the card. My desktop, laptop and netbook all fail to make the card work again. I'm obviously going to have to get in touch with Amazon/Sandisk to see about replacements or refunds but I've lost confidence in this phone/card combination on a massive scale. "

 

[nytmare]

I'm going to have to call you out on this...

You say so, I say that it cannot be coincidence that two people living together have their cards broken in the same phone model.

You guys have me confused with another poster. My wife doesn't have an S3 and I never mentioned anything about music.