Help SD Card Not Recognized Galaxy S4

[windstrings]

Not me, I know that's tough on SD cards.

 

[Mr. Lucky]

Yeah, that's what Iwas getting at. SD cards have a robust but finite number of read/write cycles, and defragging is not only uneccessary, but will greatly shorten their lifespan.

 

[windstrings]

It worked perfectly before.
Almost like the power pathway got cut.. Instantly dead.
I decided to try SanDisk this time instead of Samsung.... Samsung is into everything, at least SanDisk "is" SD!

 

[itsallgood]

I had something to happen to my Scandisk 32 GB class 6 SD card, over the weekend. When I unlocked my phone, I got a notification that my SD card was unmounted. (Even though I didn't do it.) All the apps I had moved to the SD card wasn't anywhere to be seen on my phone. I tried removing and reinserting the SD card, doing a power down and restart. Nothing worked. Before I had a chance to trouble shot the problem, it was working again and I haven't had any problems since. Go figure.

 

[windstrings]

You may just have a loose connection to the contacts or needs cleaning.

 

[General_Oneall]

Unfortunately this is not true. I've been researching the heck out of this issue due to ongoing problems. It seems all cards are susceptible to this problem in the GS4. I'm awaiting my replacement from sandisk as we speak.

My issues: card worked for awhile. Then when unlocking phone it would give me messages about unmounting then preparing SD card. A few days after that it would say it was damaged. After a week the problems stopped for a month, then came back. Now the card is completely dead and /if/ I can get windows to recognize it, it says it needs to format it but it cant.

Other users reported similar things and a few reported same issues with Samsung cards.

I just had the same issue as Punkrulz24. This is on my S4 with a 32 GB scan disk SD card. For the last month or so it has been notifying me that the card was unmounted then remounted without me doing anything to it. Today when I finally decided to take the files off the card and put in a new one it could not be read by a windows machine at all - would not assign drive letter or anything. Inserted back into the phone and now the phone will not even recognize it either - greyed out 'Mount SD Card' under the 'Storage' heading.

Anyone know the cause or if these SD cards can be recovered. I unfortunately had some pictures on there that have not been backed up yet.

 

[windstrings]

I've got a card that died just this eve. I'm running card recovery pro and it's reading sectors and appears to be recovering files.
But after 4 hours it's only 14 percent done.... Well see.

 

[General_Oneall]

Just downloaded Card Recovery pro and it will not even recognize that my SD card is inserted. Other SD cards are recognized to rule out the card reader on the PC side, so I might be having an issue beyond corrupt files.

 

[windstrings]

Just downloaded Card Recovery pro and it will not even recognize that my SD card is inserted. Other SD cards are recognized to rule out the card reader on the PC side, so I might be having an issue beyond corrupt files.

That's what happened to my other one "Samsung".

Even device manager couldn't see it except the header that it was drive...

Do you charge with an inductance charger too?

Ive wondered about that.

 

[General_Oneall]

No, I have always used just the USB cable for charging. Not sure if this is coincidence or a possible cause, but I didn't notice the symptoms of the SD card 'mounting' and 'unmounting' in my phone until after I got my new Android update to 4.3 about 1-2 months ago.

 

[windstrings]

Humm... This is another thought!
I've "never" had a card go bad! "years"

Now me and my son in law have within 2 weeks of each other and both have the update "I think". I run the s4, he has the S3.

 

[General_Oneall]

It seems my issue might be due to the scan disk SD card and not the phone.

SanDisk cops to malfunctioning Micro SDs in Galaxy S3s

 

[windstrings]

I wonder if Samsung is using he same manufacturer?
Mine went so dead nothing would read it period... Not even recovery software.

 

[Laurap6286]

I just left Verizon due to SD card and SIM card issues. They changed my SIM card and after researching, they did find issues with Samsung not being able to recognize some Sandisk cards."They are working on the problem", is what I was told. They gave me Sandisk's number to call to see if they will replace the SD card. I think I will just buy a different brand versus trying to get a replacement from Sandisk.

it is not your scan disc. I have triad many brands and nothing works, its the phone.

 

[Hammerpgh]

I have experienced a similar problem to this over the last couple of days. I noticed a couple of days ago that my SD card unmounted unexpectedly but after restarting the phone it was fine. Then a couple of nights ago after a night out I was checking some photos and the gallery kept freezing. Overnight the SD card removed notification appeared and from that point on I could not access the card. I have tried on several PC’s and although one can recognise a card is inserted it cannot access the files and hangs until I remove it. I tried some data recovery software which eventually saw the card but again couldn’t access it.

This wasn’t a Sandisk card but one I got from Kingston (32gb) a couple of years ago and has been faultless in my SGII but now seems to have been killed in my 3 week old S4. Luckily al my photos and videos are automatically uploaded so I have them safe but there was some stuff on there that I would have liked to save. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I have ordered a new 32gb card now but this problem is a major concern reading the above, I can’t afford to buy new cards too often.

 

[JamesMcLennan]

Kind of a full-scale nuclear option and you will lose the data if you do this but I've noticed occasionally it will recognise the card but still have an issue and say it is blank or has unrecognised filetypes blah blah blah.

If you pull down your notification screen and tap this message it will let you format it in the phone. Formatting in the phone is supposed to make it work more reliably as the storage format is the one preferred by the phone. As I say this will result in you losing your data but it may be worth it if you'd rather lose data and maybe not have to buy a new card.