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

[ljbad4life]

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

Sorry, totally didn't mean to quote you in the reply!

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...

I know I am not blindly defending the SGS3, but just because it happened to you and a small percentage of owners doesn't mean it's some epic problem some are making it out to be.

I know that there is something going on but there are waaaayyyy to many variables to start screaming this will happen to you nonsense. Various apps, transfer data methods, type of card, the os could be the culprit.

I travel a ton, I have a long train commute each day (3 hours each way, it's temporary :smokingsomb Every 2 to 3 days I'm deleting and adding 16gb or more of movies and tv shows to the sd card keep in mind I have a 32 gb adata micro sd card. adata is the bottom rung of flash memory. If I haven't trashed this card yet, it's definitely not hardware. I doubt anyone moves as much data as I do with as much frequency, so it has to be something else.

 

[furryfootstool]

just killed my second sd card in my galaxy s3. they were both both brand new at the att store. both were 32gb sandisk

 

[nytmare]

Sorry, totally didn't mean to quote you in the reply!

It's all good. But, while there may be a small percentage of us S3 owners that are having SD card issues... we are in fact having issues. I like the phone a lot, but mostly for the non-phone features. As a phone, it's not the greatest when you live in the boonies or are heading that direction. Had never given radios much of a thought 'til I bought my S3. When I'm done with this phone, I hope Motorola has something on the cutting edge.

 

[ljbad4life]

It's all good. But, while there may be a small percentage of us S3 owners that are having SD card issues... we are in fact having issues. I like the phone a lot, but mostly for the non-phone features. As a phone, it's not the greatest when you live in the boonies or are heading that direction. Had never given radios much of a thought 'til I bought my S3. When I'm done with this phone, I hope Motorola has something on the cutting edge.

I know people are having problems, but it seems like it's software because it was hardware a lot more people would be having the problem. If was software that every single SGS3 had then a lot more people would be having the problem, so that leaves software that either is installed by certain carriers or a slightly popular 3rd party.

I should have encountered the problem with my extreme usage, but I am 100% stock and the only apps I have installed are ones from reputable companies.

That's funny that you are looking to go to moto when I just came from moto. I wouldn't trade this SGS3 in for anything motorola.

 

[Felipe999]

I bought a Samsung Galaxy S3 and a Sandisk 64 gig class 10 micro sd card in July. Four months later I started getting strange random messages like "sd card unexpectedly removed" etc. Finally the card completely died. I couldn't even format it on my pc. Sent the micro sd card back to Sandisk for a replacement and put in my tried and true Kingston 16 gig micro sd card from my HTC Incredible. Now two weeks later, my phone is slowing up and I'm getting the "sd card unexpectedly removed" message again. My 64 gig replacement should be here any day but I'm afraid to put it in my phone.

 

[Prepaidguy9081]

I know of an issue another user on anoer forum was having with his micro sd card. Malware was eating constant read write cycles burning out the card.

 

[gregg1100]

3 times this week I have had a notification at top of screen saying that my SD Card was unexpectantly removed, and then Preparing SD card.
Is this a signed of an SD card about to fail ?? All data is backed up anyway.

 

[dracozny]

SD cards do have a limited lifespan they generally can only take so many writes until errors occur. that being said I am still using a 16Gb card from my old Eris. which is only a class 4 card if I recall. most of my use is just pictures and nand backups and titanium backups. its been running since I got the phone in early July from my preorder. the card itself has been in use for almost 4 years.

 

[814 htc evo]

Off topic question so execuse me but I just upgraded from an evo 4g lte yesterday to the SIII on sprint basically im wondering why apps to sd is no longer supported? Is that a gsIII thing or jelly bean? Thanks everyone.

 

[nytmare]

Off topic question so execuse me but I just upgraded from an evo 4g lte yesterday to the SIII on sprint basically im wondering why apps to sd is no longer supported? Is that a gsIII thing or jelly bean? Thanks everyone.

You might consider searching the forum. There are plenty of threads that discuss this issue, but this thread is not one of them.

 

[Targit]

Hi, another s3 card killer here. Yesterday my s3 battery was down to 5% after only 6 hours standby use and today the card is dead, this is the second time this has happened , both times I have lost all my data and the card becomes unrecognized by any other device. I don't remember the battery being discharged like this the last time.
Phone is stock and only 5 months old, I don't know if I could get a warranty replacement out of Vodafone, but will write to them anyway.

 

[Veritas4420]

Had this problem on my S3 with a SanDisk 32gb card, replaced it with a 16gb and it was fine. Now I'm having the problem again with my note 2 and the 32gb SD card I ordered on black Friday. Got the "SD card unexpectedly removed" and then finally woke up to a dead card. Getting it replaced with a 64gb and I pray that gives me no trouble.

 

[WAWood8]

Going to stick my neck out here and say -- it's the implications that it's somehow MY fault that SG3s keep destroying SD cards that really bugs me!

Someone said that if it were a real hardware problem, it would be a LOT more prevalent. Not so. I spent a few years working hardware quality assurance testing, and one of the first things you learn is that there will ALWAYS be SOME failures -- period. Second thing you learn is that reducing the failure percentage costs increasingly greater amounts, the closer to zero percent you try to get. Third thing is -- that's what warranties are for, to catch the failures that get out.

Saying that because folks live together, that both of their phone failing is more than coincidence is implying that, once again, the failures are somehow THEIR fault! Tell that to the thousands of Toyota drivers who had their vehicles recalled. Tell the couple who BOTH drive Toyotas that the failure of BOTH of their cars was somehow THEIR fault!

Look -- even if a thousand GS3s fry SD cards, that's a very small percentage of the total number in circulation. So, in product quality terms, that failure rate is actually very good! And, to remove that very small percentage of failures might very well have driven the manufacturing cost of the GS3 so high that no one could have afforded one.

So OK, overall, it's a very high quality product -- I'll give you that.

But ... don't go telling folks that ARE unfortunate enough to be part of that 1000 that the failure is somehow THEIR fault -- that is being arrogant and insulting!

 

[nehcney]

Add me to the list of S3 owners who had their phone kill their SD card. 16gb SDHC from my old Motorola Droid X, never had a problem on the Droid, killed just a week after plugging into my S3.

 

[clh42]

I haven't had my SD card die entirely yet, but I've had random issues with it since day 1. Got an S III on the Sprint black friday deal, and got a SanDisk Ultra 64 Gb SD card off of Amazon.com.

I never see the "unexpectedly removed" message, but I see 3 issues regarding my SD card. So I either have a faulty SD card, or the phone has issues. But if I put the micro SD card in a regular SD adapter and plug it into a card reader on my computer it looks and works just fine. So I DON'T think it's the card.

1. After powering off the phone and back on, it will, probably about 75% of the time (but not always), tell me that that there's an issue with the SD card and want to reformat it. I skip the reformat and instead I go into Storage Settings and mount the card. It always mounts, but then sometimes I see what I'll mention in # 2 below (it's mounted but no files present) and I have to unmount and mount the card again.

2. Even though the card technically stays "mounted" it will suddenly act as if it's empty. I usually find this because I will go to access music or pictures on the card and it can't find them. then I go into My Files and it shows "No Files" on the entire card, like it's blank. I unount and remount the card, some times I have to do this 2 or 3 times though, and it comes back and shows the files.

3. With the card validly mounted and properly showing files ON THE PHONE itself (per # 2 above), if I connect the phone to my computer via USB and try to browse the card using Windows Explorer on the computer, I can see SOME files, but not other files that I KNOW I copied to the card previously. I had copied some music, pictures, ringtones, and notifications sounds to the SD card previously, but now when I attach the phone to the computer via USB and try to browse it on the computer, the ringtones and notification files don't show up (I see the directories on the card but when I go into the directory it appears empty). But on the phone I can still see them in the My Files browser on the phone, and I can select the ringtones or notifications I had copied to the SD card in the phone Settings, so the phone itself knows they're there.

I have tried twice reformatting the card in the phone and recopying my files to the card, but these problems always return. I read somewhere to try formatting it on a PC (by using a card reader on the PC to use the card directly instead of through the phone) so I tried that. Same issue. I read somewhere to try formatting it using FAT32 instead of the exFAT that the phone uses (I think it's exFAT64 that the phone uses if you format it in the phone, or something like that) and that didn't help either. So now I'm back to having formatted with the phone a 3rd time and still see the issues.

 

[ScornedNexus]

This is driving me crazy too

 

[gregg1100]

I have been wondering if Samsung cards would work better, or if the speed of a card would cause issues?. Or if the S3 has a dislike for SanDisk and prefers Kingston?.
I haven't a clue, just trying to come up with something that the far more experienced Android users may be able to home in on an idea.
Perhaps everyone putting in a claim for cost of dead micro sd cards may (not holding breath) get Samsung get their finger out and find a fix.

 

[barney_rebel]

Just bought a 16GB Patriot LX Class 10 card. It won't write to it... formatted from the phone a couple times, no luck. Trying to format now in Windows.

My old 8GB no-name card worked perfect :/

And my fault, didn't read the reviews before buying. Luckily it was dirt cheap and i can still use it:

Amazon.ca: Customer Reviews: Patriot LX 32 GB Class 10 MicroSDHC Flash Memory Card PSF32GMCSDHC10

 

[Mittens]

I haven't had my SD card die entirely yet, but I've had random issues with it since day 1. Got an S III on the Sprint black friday deal, and got a SanDisk Ultra 64 Gb SD card off of Amazon.com.

I never see the "unexpectedly removed" message, but I see 3 issues regarding my SD card. So I either have a faulty SD card, or the phone has issues. But if I put the micro SD card in a regular SD adapter and plug it into a card reader on my computer it looks and works just fine. So I DON'T think it's the card.

1. After powering off the phone and back on, it will, probably about 75% of the time (but not always), tell me that that there's an issue with the SD card and want to reformat it. I skip the reformat and instead I go into Storage Settings and mount the card. It always mounts, but then sometimes I see what I'll mention in # 2 below (it's mounted but no files present) and I have to unmount and mount the card again.

2. Even though the card technically stays "mounted" it will suddenly act as if it's empty. I usually find this because I will go to access music or pictures on the card and it can't find them. then I go into My Files and it shows "No Files" on the entire card, like it's blank. I unount and remount the card, some times I have to do this 2 or 3 times though, and it comes back and shows the files.

3. With the card validly mounted and properly showing files ON THE PHONE itself (per # 2 above), if I connect the phone to my computer via USB and try to browse the card using Windows Explorer on the computer, I can see SOME files, but not other files that I KNOW I copied to the card previously. I had copied some music, pictures, ringtones, and notifications sounds to the SD card previously, but now when I attach the phone to the computer via USB and try to browse it on the computer, the ringtones and notification files don't show up (I see the directories on the card but when I go into the directory it appears empty). But on the phone I can still see them in the My Files browser on the phone, and I can select the ringtones or notifications I had copied to the SD card in the phone Settings, so the phone itself knows they're there.

I have tried twice reformatting the card in the phone and recopying my files to the card, but these problems always return. I read somewhere to try formatting it on a PC (by using a card reader on the PC to use the card directly instead of through the phone) so I tried that. Same issue. I read somewhere to try formatting it using FAT32 instead of the exFAT that the phone uses (I think it's exFAT64 that the phone uses if you format it in the phone, or something like that) and that didn't help either. So now I'm back to having formatted with the phone a 3rd time and still see the issues.

I had the almost identical things happen to me. I used a micro sd card adapter to read the files on my pc. I never tried using the USB connector.

I have been wondering if Samsung cards would work better, or if the speed of a card would cause issues?. Or if the S3 has a dislike for SanDisk and prefers Kingston?.
I haven't a clue, just trying to come up with something that the far more experienced Android users may be able to home in on an idea.
Perhaps everyone putting in a claim for cost of dead micro sd cards may (not holding breath) get Samsung get their finger out and find a fix.

My card was a Samsung (from my old galaxy s), so I don't think it matters who manufactures the card. I think it is the phone, but admit I haven't tried any ther cards. I'm actually hesitant to try.

 

[clh42]

I had the almost identical things happen to me. I used a micro sd card adapter to read the files on my pc. I never tried using the USB connector.

Yeah, the first couple times I also used an adapter and card reader to like copy my 20 Gb of music files to it and a few other things. So now I've reformatted the card a 4th time from the phone and purely used the USB cable with the phone to transfer stuff. It went about a week stable, but then last time I powered off and back on my phone, sure enough, when it powered up I got the message that my card had an issue and wanted me to reformat it again. I didn't, and just went into Settings/Storage and mounted the card. It mounted but I still couldn't see any files on it. So I unmounted and mounted it again and then I could see the files. I haven't power cycled the phone again yet since then (about 2 days ago).

 

[stephberry80]

Add me to the list of S3 owners who had their phone kill their SD card. 16gb SDHC from my old Motorola Droid X, never had a problem on the Droid, killed just a week after plugging into my S3.

The EXACT same thing happened to me. http://androidforums.com/samsung-galaxy-s3/669156-please-help.html

My phone is not rooted and it updated to JB while I was still in the store. I am hoping to at least recover my photos/videos. I had no music or apps on my card. I have very few apps installed from the Play store. I had not yet connected the phone to my computer since I had had it less than 10 days (purchased Dec 15th failed on the 23rd).

I'm just not sure if I should try to use the warranty to get a new phone.

 

[MicroNix]

Add me to the list of those unaffected with SD card issues. Have had a 32GB sandisk card in since I bought the S3 in summer and that card came used out of my old Moto Droid 3. Use it for all my music, pictures and video and it gets used well daily. No issues.

 

[firenemesis7]

My 2 cents for what its worth i personally believe it is a either a sandisk issue or something to do with the higher capacity formats of these new sd cards.

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8236/related/1

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/7879/~/microsdhc-cards-fail-to-format

read this and related answers towards the bottom

 

[WAWood8]

My 2 cents for what its worth i personally believe it is a either a sandisk issue or something to do with the higher capacity formats of these new sd cards.

While BOTH of these could certainly be true ... the problem is not strictly a SanDisk one. Neither of the cards that got fried in my two SG3 were SanDisk.

My third SG3 is using Samsung SD card -- and so far, I've not had problems with it.

So, there may be something to the claims that Samsung memory is a better choice for SD cards for this phone.

 

[gtgirl88]

My card did this yesterday.. nothing showed up on my phone music or pics. I had to download wifi file transfer to recover my files.