S3 does NOT kill SD cards...

sopio said:

Ok, I just put in a new class 10, 32gb Samsung sd on Friday. Took some pictures and a video and yesterday, all but 1 of my pictures are unrecognizable. This happened to my first sd. All I can say is that if you're sd is functioning. You're lucky.

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Hmmm, maybe I am lucky, but for some reason, I have been fortunate enough to not ever have those types of issues people are mentioning in their replies to my OP, pre nor post 4.3 update.

Believe it or not, I have even tried using other SD cards just to see if I could "kill" any one of them and none of them have ever failed. I am on Stock 4.3 ROM (not rooted) with nothing disabled other than the Yahoo apps I mentioned already and have had ZERO issues with any of them. I don't know if it is device specific, but the people I have helped out since my OP date have been very happy with their S3 and no one else has had an issue afterward. I still cannot help but wonder if some people are either disabling apps they shouldn't, configuring their device in a way that it was not meant to be configured or simply have a bad device. I do not have the solution.

All I can share with you is my experiences. I am sorry you have had some issues with your card.

• Did you factory reset your device post 4.3 update and leave it alone, meaning don't disable anything?

• Did you reformat your SD card prior to installing it on the new 4.3 update? Maybe you have an app that you disabled that is affecting the communications of other apps that contact your SD card. Maybe you configured your device in such a way where it is causing other things to act funny.

Other than that, which has worked successfully for others I know, I cannot tell you specifically what is wrong with your device. All I know is my device and others work great and have better battery life. Maybe we are lucky

Disclaimer...I am not saying "Don't Disable apps."...I am merely saying, "Watch what you disable and see what apps are causing your device to act this way."

Tell you what, try what I mentioned and let me know if it works for you. It could save you money in the long run. just a suggestion...isn't that why you posted out here on the forum in the first place?

sandman82 said:

Has anyone found a way to retrieve lost data from my sd card that is not able to be read on a pc or phone?

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This is really easy. All you have to do is make a disk, put it in your CD ROM and let it do it's magic. Check out the video and it works like a charm. You will see some corrupt data on your card, but you will also be able to salvage some if not most of your stuff.

Linux is one amazing piece of Miracle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Solq8-mqRO0

I have a question for everyone...

If there aren't any threads talking about the S3 killing their SD cards on the rooted forums, and there is tons of talk about the S3 killing SD cards on the non-rooted forums, what does that tell you....?

It tells me it is a software issue...not a hardware issue and certainly not a "heat" issue...don't the rooted phones use the same hardware...I think Samsung needs to change their software to allow people to do whatever they want to their phones, right? Well, they do and they don't. You can adjust your phone, but will have a weird acting device, or you can root your phone and it will work great. Either way, it is still a software issue.

I'm just sayin'...:dontknow: Think about it for one moment.

I wanted to update everyone on how my situation is working out since my OP. So far, I have been rock solid on my update and no SD card issues, ever. Battery life has been amazing and an overall great update. And everyone I have helped out with their phones and their SD cards has been tremendously happy. No one has had an issue either.

BUT, I think I figured something out that may benefit many people. I read through some of the other posts regarding their cards dieing so I tried to replicate it and "kill" my SD Card...I think I found the headache a lot of these people may be having. It is how backups are being copied back to the SD card from the backup folder on the PC. I know it sounds weird, but so far, my method is working out great.

SD cards are "going bad" because the file system is either bad, cannot be read or corrupted. Solution (maybe)...when you update your Phone, be sure you do a factory reset. (Obviously perform a backup of your apps). Also perform a backup of your SD card to your PC as well, wipe and format the card in the S3.

Steps After updating.
- Insert your card into the S3, format it under storage, it will wipe it clean and format it under the S3 signatures. DO NOT MOVE YOUR BACK UP MEDIA OVER YET AT THIS TIME.
- Go to your camera, take a picture or a video. This creates a DCIM folder on the SD card with that specific "write signature" on the card.
- IMPORTANT-
When you are ready to copy your photos and videos over to your SD card from your backup, DO NOT COPY THE FOLDER. Wherever you have your backup (DCIM/CAMERA folder), open the folder where all the media is residing and "select all" of the files, copy and then go to the SD card where the DCIM/CAMERA folder is and then paste the individual files there. This also includes other folders that have been created by the S3. Do not copy the whole "backup folder" to the card, just the contents of the backup folders to the root folders S3 creates. I hope this makes sense.

I experimented with different ways of doing backups/file moves and have found, for whatever weird reason, when I copied and pasted the whole DCIM folder over, the SD Card would act strange. When I took a picture, allowed S3 to create its own root "DCIM" directory then pasted the backup files from the actual DCIM/CAMERA backup folder to the card root DCIM directory, nothing bad happened.

Methinks S3 is writing it's own "signature" to the SD card within the DCIM folder and if there is a "copied/moved" DCIM folder from a different OS build, the two are having "communication issues". Hence, showing the user that their SD card is removed, blank or unmounted. It simply cannot read the folder from another build.

I learned this when I took SD cards from an HTC 4G EVO and three S3's, made separate backups of the DCIM folders to my PC, formatted the cards in S3, copied and pasted the backup "DCIM folder" and immediately ran into issues on each phone. I tried everything to fix it until I finally isolated each folder to come up with the DCIM folder being the culprit. I did this two weeks ago and wanted to be sure that this legitimately was the issue and so far, there have not been any issues whatsoever with any of the phones.

I hope this helps some of you out there. Do not copy and paste the folders...instead, copy and paste the files under the folders over to the S3. I can't guarantee this will work for everyone, but I hope it does help.

I was wondering if anyone else has been able to use this to help themselves out and to see if they have had any other issues.

Mine seems to be going very strong without a hitch and I reached out to the others and they are happy as clams.

Anyone??

davoid said:

One question I would like to ask those who have not had their microSDCard die is this:

Do you use the camera to shoot video and record it to the microSD?

I have heard that cards have died because of recording video to the card.

I have had 3 Sandisk cards die in my S3, I've never disabled any apps, I have a rooted phone.

For my 4th card I decided I'd try a Samsung class 10 instead of the sandisk. So far I have had no problem, but I am too scared to enable sdcard in my camera app in case this is an issue.

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Interesting you mention that...I rooted a buddy of mine's phone and redirected the camera footage, photos and video, to the SD card and had a ton of issues. I rooted it to CyanogenMod 11 Nightlies as well as 10.2 stable and still had the issues. I told him to not have the feeds redirected...take the footage...and then move it over to the SD when he was ready to move it.

What ROM are you running?