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

IzelTokatl · Dec 31, 2012

I've got a 64gb class 10 card. Been using it for several months with out issue.

clh42 · Dec 31, 2012

firenemesis7 said:
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.

SD Card Damaged or No SD card error in Android device

microSDHC cards fail to format

read this and related answers towards the bottom

Neither of these apply to my situation. My card has not failed completely yet to where I can't format it on the phone. I just have stability issues with it failing to be recognized sometimes (either fails to mount initially saying it has an "failure" of some sort, but then I can mount it manually, or it mounts but the phone sees no files on it, but again I can unmount and remount the card once or twice and the files show up again).

And it the case of that first article, I already have tried that, formatting on my PC using an SD card adapter and card reader, and then in the phone, and it didn't help.

kurpaige · Dec 31, 2012

1 freakin month. Just 1. I thought all of this was bs but nope, my s iii just killed my sd card. 32 gig sandisk. Took a lot of pics in Atlantic city of the family and get to the room, card removed error. Took the card out put it In my laptop, no go. Loved the phone but for 2 years I never lost a picture on my iPhone so I'm turning it back on. Nice chatting in these forms. Nice informative people here. Now just have to sell my s iii, great phone so it shouldn't be a problem.

Gmash · Dec 31, 2012

Hmm, this has me nervous about putting my sd card from my old phone in here now.

nimoxp · Dec 31, 2012

, wow that sucks.

I have not had any issues with my SD card yet. In fact it's the same 16 GB from my last 2 phones. I wonder if matters that yours is 32GB compared to a smaller one.

Edit: Then again maybe I have an issue. I use my phone to film while i drive and twice it has stopped and switched to phone memory when I appear to still have room on my Card. Hmm, I'll have to look more into that.

MicroNix · Dec 31, 2012

nimoxp said:
, wow that sucks.

I have not had any issues with my SD card yet. In fact it's the same 16 GB from my last 2 phones. I wonder if matters that yours is 32GB compared to a smaller one.

Edit: Then again maybe I have an issue. I use my phone to film while i drive and twice it has stopped and switched to phone memory when I appear to still have room on my Card. Hmm, I'll have to look more into that.

Its not the size that matters because I've had a 32GB class 10 SanDisk SD card that I had in my last phone in my GS3 now and haven't had any issues with it at all. No problems with pictures, videos, music, etc. No card removed errors either.

Stoney62 · Jan 1, 2013

Adlebo said:
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!

Add me to the list. My 16gb card I've had in 3 phones without a problem suddenly started having those are messages show up.after removing and replacing it several times to no avail, I went and got a 32gb card that so far is fine. Thankfully, when I put it in an adapter, I was able to recover all my pics and music. Yes many of us have ripped our cds.

s3user · Jan 2, 2013

I have a 32gb sandisk and I had no issues until I recorded a big video. After recording this semi long video (4mins), my card was not usable any more after this.

My settings was to save all camera stuff onto the external sd. I think recording a long video might have stressed it out.

I don't know if you guys want to try it, but try recording a long video and tell me if this breaks your sd cards.

Luckily for me, everything is backed up into my dropbox. I just lost that stupid long video.

davidmin · Jan 2, 2013

It happened to me too. :mad:

I activated a brand new S3 on Monday, inserted the SAMSUNG 8gb class 2 SD card from my old EVO (formatted FAT32 on card reader first), and loaded some music files, which I was able to verify completed OK. Later the same day, the SD card disappeared and is no longer visible even to my card reader.

rtadams1 · Jan 2, 2013

Count me in as well. My card is shot: 16gb Sandisk originally used in my Droid X. I backed up most of my files recently but some of the more recent pics and apps are gone.

As a side note, it may be coincidence but after months (July) of no issues, this occurred shortly after the news OS update.

javamann · Jan 3, 2013

I guess I'm one of the lucky ones: transferred the original card that came with the Dx and have never had a problem.

JM

Putty · Jan 3, 2013

Count me in on this. I started buying cheap SD cards from local superstore. My S3 wouldn't even read them. I then bought a Sandisk. Was working great. On the 24th of last month, I woke up to a message on my phone saying something about the SD card. Phone wasn't reading it at all. I pulled it and put in an adapter and put in my PC. First it told me I needed to format it. I didn't do this cause I didn't want to lose data. After switching back and forth, PC wouldnt even give format option anymore. I had to go buy a new Sandisk. Since then I have all phone being backup up.

Photo solution: Create a dropbox acct. Use the setting to backup all photos from camera roll and ongoing photos immediately. So basically as soon as I take a pic or video, it instantly uploads to Dropbox.
The additional albums I have, well I just copied those to my PC, since I no longer add to them.

If this happens to me again, I can restore roll from DB and then drag albums from PC. Music and such...well that's just one.

Gmash · Jan 3, 2013

I think enough people are having this problem to consider it a legitimate issue. Hopefully Samsung is paying attention and will fix it.

Szadzik · Jan 4, 2013

Gmash said:
I think enough people are having this problem to consider it a legitimate issue. Hopefully Samsung is paying attention and will fix it.

Samsung sold 18 million S3 units in Q3 2012. We have 88 posts in this thread and if we assume 80% of them are from single users with issues, that gives us a number of 66 users with this problem.

What percentage of users have the problem? Ido not even want to try and calculate this, but it seems the number would be called 'negligible'

Gmash · Jan 4, 2013

No way to know if it's negligible or not. It's not like a large percentage of GS3 owners are members of this forum. I do know more people are reporting this same problem every day. Not sure why you feel the need dismiss the issue offhand, not to mention blaming and borderline ridiculing the people having the problem.

rushmore · Jan 4, 2013

I am not having the sd card issues, but if an app is beating the card to death with constant writes, it could happen. That or an odd power spike- or connection issue that eventually shorts the card out.

Seems this could be related to the motherboard issue and why some have the problem and others do not. My 64gb is filled up with tunes and game roms and has worked fine since the GS3 launched.

I have a VZW 32GB blue.

As far as files not always being seen, that is a normal problem with MTP and I run into it with all my Android devices that use it. Unplugging and replugging the device and giving it a minute to index usually fixes the issue. MTP sucks.

That all said, if it were a write issue, seems all the devices with apps2sd would have had the problem too. I do not recall a focus on the issue in the old days of small internal storage devices.

Szadzik · Jan 4, 2013

Gmash said:
No way to know if it's negligible or not. It's not like a large percentage of GS3 owners are members of this forum. I do know more people are reporting this same problem every day. Not sure why you feel the need dismiss the issue offhand, not to mention blaming and borderline ridiculing the people having the problem.

Now subtract all those with defective cards, PCs that break their cards and yo uwill have 20 users here. Let's not suddenly assume that the S3 is resposible for every single card that gets broken out there.

TadeoNYC · Jan 6, 2013

I woke up this morning to the"SD card removed" message and haven't done anything to check the card yet. I hoped reading this thread might provide some insight, but instead it was mostly a waste of time with various people continuing to attack those with SD card issues.

My phone is a vzw 32 gb blue with a 32gb SanDisk class 10. The card is used for photo and video storage and app backups.

And I do use Dropbox but I am constantly filling it, and don't always have the time to delete the unwanted photos in s timely manner.

TadeoNYC · Jan 6, 2013

Card is dead! I put it in my PC and it is unrecognized. I checked my old 8gb Samsung card from my Contiuum in the adapter and it popped right up.

So that's it. No warning, no signs of decaying performance it literally died while my phone charged overnight.

It is a major problem that a card should die after light to average use in less than six months. Hopefully they can fix this in a future update.

clh42 · Jan 6, 2013

Szadzik said:
Samsung sold 18 million S3 units in Q3 2012. We have 88 posts in this thread and if we assume 80% of them are from single users with issues, that gives us a number of 66 users with this problem.

What percentage of users have the problem? Ido not even want to try and calculate this, but it seems the number would be called 'negligible'

Szadzik said:
Now subtract all those with defective cards, PCs that break their cards and yo uwill have 20 users here. Let's not suddenly assume that the S3 is resposible for every single card that gets broken out there.

And you think this is the only thread on the entire internet about this issue? Do a Google search. There are lots of threads very similar to this one in various different Android, Galaxy SIII specific, or Carrier forums.

In the grand scheme of things, cards themselves also do not go bad all that often. Yes, they can, but not nearly to extent of what has been posted in this and other threads. And the fact that in many cases, people can put the card in a card reader after it messes up in the phone and reformat it gives me a good clue that the card itself is not going bad. Yes, some people get to the point where they can't even reformat the card with this issue, and that could be a bad card, but I see enough evidence to at least point to a possibility that it MIGHT be the phone causing the issue.

Are you a Samsung employee or something? Why are you so adamant that it CAN'T be a Samsung issue? What stake do you have in defending that it might not be a Samsung issue? Can it hurt for Samsung to at least investigate the issue?

Gmash · Jan 6, 2013

I would suggest everyone with this problem contact Samsung and complain politely but forcefully until they acknowledge the problem and offer a remedy.

s3user · Jan 7, 2013

Szadzik said:
Now subtract all those with defective cards, PCs that break their cards and yo uwill have 20 users here. Let's not suddenly assume that the S3 is resposible for every single card that gets broken out there.

you do realize that not everyone use their external sd card? Most users just use the phone as is and never install a different sd card because it is enough space for them. I'm sure we would see more problems seen if EVERYONE used their external SD.

I did not use the external SD for a while and I wasn't seeing any issues. But I ran out of space and used the external SD for the camera. That's when I messed up my card.

TadeoNYC · Jan 7, 2013

Gmash said:
I would suggest everyone with this problem contact Samsung and complain politely but forcefully until they acknowledge the problem and offer a remedy.

I made complaints on several Samsung Facebook pages and then endured a one hour chat with a CSR. During the troubleshooting with the CSR the card was briefly recognized but was corrupt and unable to be formatted.

I was actually going to go along with her and do the factory reset so that they would have record of all attempts being made to resolve the problem when the card was suddenly recognized several minutes after a soft reset. Here is the end of the session.

Visitor: I was just about to power the phone down and when the screen opened to settings the SD card has been recognized but it says it is blank or has unsupported files and needs to be formatted!
Valerina: I request you to format the SD card.
Visitor: It won't format. I tried twice and both times it shows it as blank and requiring format.
Valerina: I am sorry to know that.
Valerina: I request you to remove and re-insert SD card.
Valerina: Not to rush you, are we still connected on the chat?
Visitor: yes, i am doing it now
Valerina: Thank you.
Visitor: I have removed the card with the phone off, should I reinsert it now and power on?
Valerina: Yes, please go ahead.
Visitor: Now it is not being recognized again
Valerina: I am sorry to inform you that.
Valerina: As you have already tried with all possible steps to resolve the issue and the issue still persists. The issue might be with Software/Hardware part in the device. As this is beyond the Technical Support, the device has to be examined by the Technicians. To service the device from the Technicians you have to place a Service Request.
Valerina: As we have performed all possible troubleshooting steps and the issue persists, I suggest you contact the carrier or purchase store for any insurance or 30 days exchange warranty or I will be glad in filing a service request to send the device for repair

streetkilln · Jan 7, 2013

i have 3 sd cards i had 8gb, 16gb, 32gb, they worked perfectly fine. 2 was a samsung sd and the other was a sandisk. it must be ur phone or ur buying cheap sd cards

GOMGOM · Jan 7, 2013

Yeah I had a very similar problem with a Kingston 64Gb SD - went to Thailand Bali and Oz took loads of photos and video. The Settings told me I had only used 10Gb of card when it crashed. Recovered many photos using "Zero Assumption" recovery software. I saw that I recovered 30.5Gb off the card so I think there is an error in the space recording/ space allocation/ io space software in the phone. The card maybe OK, though until I have finished recovering all the videos I won't try reformatting the card

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

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