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Help Preparing SD Card: Checking for errors

silentwitness

Android Expert
Aug 19, 2012
1,098
320
Bombay India
Hey i have a 64gb micro sd sandisk ultra class 10 card and every time i start my phone i get "Preparing SD Card: Checking for errors" which hardly takes 15 to 20 seconds to finish on my friends s3 with a 64gb class ten card also. On my phone it takes close to 2 mins and i can not access the memory card till it finishes. Any ideas why it takes so long? Does anyone else here have a similar issue?
 

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youre a man after my own heart mate :)

yeah mine only takes a few seconds too. maybe yours has more pics etc OP n its filling the gallery?


That's my thought - Android has to refresh the file structure and search for new media every time you restart. It's a good idea, actually, since files can be moved, deleted, etc. Both the OP and his friend could have 10GB of data on their cards, but if the OP has 1000 mp3 files in 100+ folders, whereas his friend only has 50 mp3 files in 1 folder, but has a couple of large movies or something, the OP's SD card scan will take longer.

Also, OP, since you are both rooted, can you both check to see what your SD card read ahead rate is? I've found, from flashing many of the ROMs out there, that sometimes the kernel installed will set my rate to 128. Bump that to 2048 and my SD card read rate will fly.
 
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Also, OP, since you are both rooted, can you both check to see what your SD card read ahead rate is? I've found, from flashing many of the ROMs out there, that sometimes the kernel installed will set my rate to 128. Bump that to 2048 and my SD card read rate will fly.

This is interesting. How do you check this and set the rate? Do you use a third party app or is it in Settings somewhere?
 
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i was checking i am running siyah kernel and my friend is running the stock kernel. I have all my mp3's in a single folder. Easiest way would be to try putting his mmc into my phone and see how quickly it reads. I had seen an app that reads the speeds of the card. I tried the sandisk memory zone app speed test it shows at 11.6MB/sec. How would i go about changing the rate?
 
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This is interesting. How do you check this and set the rate? Do you use a third party app or is it in Settings somewhere?

Look up the Trixster (spelling might be wrong) app in the Play Store. They just incorporated the ability to read S3 kernels into their app. I'm sure other apps also have that ability.

I've not seen it in Settings, and you have to have root access for it to work. Haven't seen any ROMs that have that built-in ability, but haven't tried them all, either.

i was checking i am running siyah kernel and my friend is running the stock kernel. I have all my mp3's in a single folder. Easiest way would be to try putting his mmc into my phone and see how quickly it reads. I had seen an app that reads the speeds of the card. I tried the sandisk memory zone app speed test it shows at 11.6MB/sec. How would i go about changing the rate?

Yup, try the SD card swap first. Also, speed of the card isn't the same as the read ahead rate. Look up the Trixster app (see above.)
 
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ya could be its a brand new card just got it a few days ago. Still going to try it in the friends phone just to make sure, maybe something to do with the formatting(xfat for 64gb) otherwise its not such a big issue i dont really turn my phone off much anyhow. Been rebooting quite a bit of late trying out 2 different roms so every time it boots into second rom i have to wait 2 mins before i can do anything.
 
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ok i tried the mmc in my friends phone and it took over 2 mins to read and his mmc in my phone took abt 10 seconds. So it seems to be some issue with either my mmc or some data on my mmc. Going to try formatting the mmc now and see how long it takes to read then will try copying data back 1 folder at a time and see when the issue arises.
 
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ok i tried the mmc in my friends phone and it took over 2 mins to read and his mmc in my phone took abt 10 seconds. So it seems to be some issue with either my mmc or some data on my mmc. Going to try formatting the mmc now and see how long it takes to read then will try copying data back 1 folder at a time and see when the issue arises.

Yup, told ya. Could be the multiple backups, maybe?
 
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