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

[MetroPOS]

Two weeks is nothing. Takes at least a month - two months before you see symptoms.

Oh and I wanted to mention that my phone seemed to be reading my card again for a few days out of nowhere, and then when I was in the middle of recording a video to the card two days ago, and it stopped being able to read the card again in the middle of recording the video. Hasn't been able to read the card for the past two days now

 

[AxlMyk]

This isn't an issue with the Galaxy S3s. Sounds like you may have a faulty phone.

It isn't an issue? Are you living under a rock? There are hundreds of threads about the problem.
I suggest a SDXC card. The GS3 Seems to be happy with them. My 64g card has been working fine.
Do not format the card, and never remove it from the phone.

Samsung GS3 using Forum Runner

 

[valorian]

It isn't an issue? Are you living under a rock? There are hundreds of threads about the problem.
I suggest a SDXC card. The GS3 Seems to be happy with them. My 64g card has been working fine.
Do not format the card, and never remove it from the phone.

Samsung GS3 using Forum Runner

And if you would read the other posts you will see that after I posted this my card too finally failed. So yes, At first I did not think this was an issue. I was wrong about that.

 

[jake111]

I had bought a 32gig from Lexmark, had it for a year and it crapped out on me. But it was still under warranty so they replaced it. Two months later that one crapped out on me,and they replaced that one. Now they were in my HTC Evo 4G, then I put it in my GS3 back in Dec. and haven't had any problems since. Hope I didn't jinx myself.

 

[Camelot023]

My wife and I both have S3's. Mine killed the SD card about a month ago, recovered most of my data then exchanged the card, been good since. Tonight my wifes phone started the "SD card dance of death". First it said card unexpectedly removed, then it came back. Then card unmounted. I have been backing up all my wifes pictures and video since mine crashed and I read all the issues everyone is having.
Mark down two more S3's killing SD cards.

 

[Toonz]

My SD died 2 days ago..

:Another one bites the dust:

 

[burnt0range]

i have an answer!!!

spent an hr on the phone with Verizon & Samsung

I've gone through 4 sd cards... n ..this morning my 32gb sandisk Ultra card failed too..

The process was long... the fix was simple ..... DON'T FORMAT!!!!

GO TO SETTINGS
- DEVELOPER OPTIONS
- CLICK PROTECT SD CARD BOX

done ... all info was restored to my sd card.. no formatting needed!!

 

[TadeoNYC]

i have an answer!!!

spent an hr on the phone with Verizon & Samsung

I've gone through 4 sd cards... n ..this morning my 32gb sandisk Ultra card failed too..

The process was long... the fix was simple ..... DON'T FORMAT!!!!

GO TO SETTINGS
- DEVELOPER OPTIONS
- CLICK PROTECT SD CARD BOX

done ... all info was restored to my sd card.. no formatting needed!!

Can you better spell out exactly what was wrong with your card and how this fixed it?

Are you supposed to leave it checked now? If so, how does it effect using the phone? Do you have to permit access every time you run the app that accesses it?

Who told you to do this, a Verizon or Samsung tech? I'm not in any hurry to enable an option like that with out knowing exactly how it works.

 

[jedbeetle]

i have an answer!!!

GO TO SETTINGS
- DEVELOPER OPTIONS
- CLICK PROTECT SD CARD BOX

done ... all info was restored to my sd card.. no formatting needed!!

This solution doesn't seem to address the complete and utter failure of an SD card, which I have just experienced for the first time on a Galaxy S3. After reading this thread, I'm a afraid to put another card in there.
As for this problem not being too widely reported (a mere several hundred from this thread) - this is the kind of issue that could easily be ignored by most users, since the phone still chugs along just fine and with ample memory after card failure. How many people bother to upgrade their sd card in an s3 anyways?

 

[burnt0range]

Samsung tech ..gave me the info.. after a few other tries..
this was my 4th or 5th Sd card..

all of my cards ..I had believed to be garbage..


Just try it... if it works fine... if NOT o well.. best of luck to you.

Samsung tech said.. card gets to hot with all my 50apps trying to access bits of info from it in the bank round.. our something like that.


I have a SanDisk 32gb ULTRA micro sd card in place - class 10

in case you wanted to know.

 

[jackiedroid]

I agree, I think some S3's do something to SD cards. I have a Sandisk class 10 64 GB microSD Card in mine, and for the last month or so, every once in awhile it will say there are no files on the sd card, and won't read it at all. I either have to un-mount and mount it again, or pop it out physically and back in again and it will usually recognize it. I originally had a 16 GB microSD card but I Had MAJOR problems with that, it would say the formatting was wrong or there was an error, so that's why i got the class 10. I think it's just the S3 having issues with them, it's very frustrating. I hope in the future, they make more phones with on board storage at a lower price point.

 

[TadeoNYC]

Could you better answer my first four questions? Your response is kind of vague.

 

[BobLobIaw628]

I joined this site just to talk about my experience with my SD card problem. So, I don't usually download many apps to my phone (I download most apps to my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1) but I was wanting some new music so I downloaded "Download Music Paradise". I found songs that I was looking for and they downloaded properly and I added them to my playlist, etc. I downloaded this app about 3 days ago. The very next day I noticed notifications popping up in my bar with a star symbol which I thought was weird and it said "viruse (spelling is correct) affecting your android" or something like that. I just cleared the notification and thought it was just an ad, but it was weird of it to pop up in my bar. I didn't download anything else from this app after the notification.

Well yesterday I was at dinner messing around with my phone and I got the "!" symbol in the notification bar saying that the SD card was unexpectedly removed. Unmount/mount SD card" then it would go away randomly on it's own. Then it would pop up again and it repeated this process throughout the night. I tried removing it and putting it back in all night at work, but I still kept getting the error message.

I started thinking about what someone said earlier on this thread about apps and how they could be the problem, how they might be carrying viruses. So I uninstalled Download Music Paradise but I still had the problem with the SD card, no more notifications though about "viruse affecting my android". I removed the SD card from my S3, put it into a reader, and into my laptop. The SD card popped up quickly and all my files were there (all that I had on my SD was music, all photos are on the internal) so I figured that the card was not the problem. I opened the SD to view files and sure enough I found all sorts of folders that were not originally put onto my SD and they all had the little "u" symbol that you see on utorrent. And those folders were the only ones that were "modified" as recently as last night. I didn't open them, I just deleted them because I know I never put them on my SD card, bc I had only loaded music files on it. I then backed up all my original music files to my laptop, reformatted the SD, put all my original files back, and put the SD back into my S3 and the card works properly now.

I just wanted to add my 2 cent hoping this might help someone and to warn about being more careful when downloading any apps to their phone in the future. Hope this helps someone! And for the record, I do have an antivirus on my S3 and it did not catch this app! So for me the issue was: the card wasn't my problem, but I think this app must've installed folders to my SD card when I downloaded some of the songs, and whatever was in those folders was causing the error message. I'm glad I figured out the problem before my SD was completely fried!

 

[Gmash]

i have an answer!!!

spent an hr on the phone with Verizon & Samsung

I've gone through 4 sd cards... n ..this morning my 32gb sandisk Ultra card failed too..

The process was long... the fix was simple ..... DON'T FORMAT!!!!

GO TO SETTINGS
- DEVELOPER OPTIONS
- CLICK PROTECT SD CARD BOX

done ... all info was restored to my sd card.. no formatting needed!!

Mine doesn't have that option.

 

[TadeoNYC]

So for me the issue was: the card wasn't my problem, but I think this app must've installed folders to my SD card when I downloaded some of the songs, and whatever was in those folders was causing the error message. I'm glad I figured out the problem before my SD was completely fried!

Let us know how your card holds up. I don't think you had a virus. I think the torrent app was putting your card to very heavy use and it was malfunctioning due to that. The "virus notification" was probably a push notification that would have downloaded a virus if you had clicked it.

 

[funkylogik]

The star thing in notification bar is definately an app pushing an ad. With Jellybean you can long press it and disable notifications from the app responsible.
With ICS you have to put up with the ads or uninstall the app you think is causing it

 

[SilverKnightCL]

My 32GB Sandisk was fried overnight. Woke up with a SD card removed notification. The card is gone. Tried it on PC and a camera that used micro SD, it's not recognized.

 

[Mikestony]

My 32GB Sandisk was fried overnight. Woke up with a SD card removed notification. The card is gone. Tried it on PC and a camera that used micro SD, it's not recognized.

Welcome to AF!!
I have had that happen twice now.
I realize everything is gone, so I used this program to reformat the card.
At least I can still use the card again:
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_3/
Keep things backed up on your computer or a cloud service so when it happens again, at least you can restore the files.

 

[xyz007]

Samsung tech ..gave me the info.. after a few other tries..
this was my 4th or 5th Sd card..

all of my cards ..I had believed to be garbage..


Just try it... if it works fine... if NOT o well.. best of luck to you.

Samsung tech said.. card gets to hot with all my 50apps trying to access bits of info from it in the bank round.. our something like that.


I have a SanDisk 32gb ULTRA micro sd card in place - class 10

in case you wanted to know.

I also wonder if there are any differences in daily usage. l use extsdcard for downloads, Camera... Anywhere possible in short

 

[clh42]

i have an answer!!!

<snip>

GO TO SETTINGS
- DEVELOPER OPTIONS
- CLICK PROTECT SD CARD BOX

Tried this after seeing the post. It didn't help. My card still regularly flakes out. (My card has never totally died, but I'll go to use it, like play music stored on it or view pictures stored on it, and it comes up empty. I go to My Files and into the external card and shows the card but shows "No Files". I go into Storage settings and unmount the card, then remount it. Sometimes I have to do this 2 or 3 times and then the files finally show up in My Files. I can use it right then, but by the next time I want to use it after that, it has flaked out again. Really frustrating. I'm about to the point where I'll be taking the phone back to a Sprint store and asking it to be fixed or replaced under warranty.

 

[davoid]

For people whose cards are completely fried and cannot be formatted either in the phone or through a PC, I have heard of a solution that is supposed to work, although I am still to try it.

I read somewhere that fried microsd cards can be formatted successfully in Nokia phones that run Symbian 9

Apparently those phones can write to a protected sector of the card that cannot be written to ordinarily by anyone other than the card manufacturer (hence stories about Sandisk being able to fix fried cards using their proprietary tools unavailable to the public)

I have a friend with a phone that I think is running the appropriate version of Symbian, so next time I see her, I will give it a try. If anyone else has an opportunity to try this and confirm, that would be awesome.

As these phones are going to be harder to find as time goes on, if this works, anyone with one could find themselves very busy...

 

[xyz007]

For people whose cards are completely fried and cannot be formatted either in the phone or through a PC, I have heard of a solution that is supposed to work, although I am still to try it.

I read somewhere that fried microsd cards can be formatted successfully in Nokia phones that run Symbian 9

Apparently those phones can write to a protected sector of the card that cannot be written to ordinarily by anyone other than the card manufacturer (hence stories about Sandisk being able to fix fried cards using their proprietary tools unavailable to the public)

I have a friend with a phone that I think is running the appropriate version of Symbian, so next time I see her, I will give it a try. If anyone else has an opportunity to try this and confirm, that would be awesome.

As these phones are going to be harder to find as time goes on, if this works, anyone with one could find themselves very busy...

Hm, don't know by heart which devices are Symbian 9, but I tried formatting mine with e52 and e63 and neither were able to save my old sandisk.

Ps. Month and a half now on Kingston sdcard, without a single problem... Hope they don't start now.

 

[THE W]

Still on my Samsung 64gb card without a hitch after about 4 months.

Go Sammy go!

 

[Mikestony]

Still on my Samsung 64gb card without a hitch after about 4 months.

Go Sammy go!

You just jinxed yourself

 

[FinancialWar]

don't scare me, I just bought a S3 and I have a 64GB Sandisk with lots of data.