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

YES ... that is the case.

Nope,
statistics say otherwise.

I have used four different smart phones, and three different cameras, all using SD cards -- and THIS phone is the ONLY device that has trashed SD cards. So, in my experience, YES, the phone has something to do with the cards dying -- it's killed them!

How many of those smartphones and cameras had a thread about cards dying in them?

Even if only 100 units experience problems, out of 10 million phones, while that is a very small percentage, that is not zero -- it is not "nothing".

Statistically it is nothing and does not count as a problem. If the phone was causing that, we would be seeing it on a much larger scale.

It IS statistically insignificant (the term you should have used instead of "represents nothing") and, because of that, it is very unlikely that Samsung would commit any time or resources to fixing this problem.

It simply means that there are as many cards dying in this phone as there might be in any other piece of equipment. See above regarding posts about cards dying in other equipment.

But, for those of us who HAVE been affected by this, saying it "represents nothing" is being insulting.

I am just saying that having a thread with 100 people reporting a problem with their cards does not mean the phone causes the problem.
 
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How many of those smartphones and cameras had a thread about cards dying in them?
NONE -- but this phone DOES have threads about cards dying in them.

Statistically it is nothing and does not count as a problem.
In Samsung's view, YES, it is statistically insignificant. In the view of folks affected by this problem, it is a very different picture. In my case, 2 out of 3 SGS3s had this problem -- that is 67% for me, and THAT is statistically significant -- for me.

If the phone was causing that, we would be seeing it on a much larger scale.
No necessarily. I've read on other forums that it is a KLUDGE to get Android ICS (and JB) to even WORK with SD cards. So, the fact that this kludge fails on a small scale is quite possible.

It simply means that there are as many cards dying in this phone as there might be in any other piece of equipment. See above regarding posts about cards dying in other equipment.
That might be true -- but it still does not mean that this phone does NOT have a problem.

I am just saying that having a thread with 100 people reporting a problem with their cards does not mean the phone causes the problem.
If it were the case that, in all of these failures, it was the same BRAND of SD card, or the same Size of SD card, or the same Speed of SD card -- then it would most likely be that one thing that is in common. But, if you actually READ through these threads, you will find exceptions to these attributes.

I did hardware testing for a few years at a Laboratory a while back, and when we found failures in a set of equipment, and one item was common across all the failures -- it was THAT item that was most likely the main cause of the problem.

In this case, across all the different brands, sizes, and speeds of SD cards, the item that is the common one is THIS phone.

And ... in my own experience, I've used different brands, sizes, and speeds of SD cards across a variety of equipment, and as I indicated earlier, the ONLY piece of equipment that trashed ANY of those SD cards was this phone. And, of the SGS3s I have had, TWO of them have done the same thing -- I am on the third now.

So, you can choose to believe what you want -- I'm not arguing with you any more.
 
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In this case, across all the different brands, sizes, and speeds of SD cards, the item that is the common one is THIS phone.

And ... in my own experience, I've used different brands, sizes, and speeds of SD cards across a variety of equipment, and as I indicated earlier, the ONLY piece of equipment that trashed ANY of those SD cards was this phone. And, of the SGS3s I have had, TWO of them have done the same thing -- I am on the third now.

So, you can choose to believe what you want -- I'm not arguing with you any more.

This phone is the common factor as it is THE ONLY phone we are discussing here ;)

I do not know what testing techniques you used, but saying that this phone kills cards on the basis of this thread is totally presumptuous. Try open threads in other forums for very popular phones and you will then have grounds to say anything. You need SOMETHING to compare this phone to, otherwise there is no knowledge as to how many cards die in phones and whether what we're seeing here should be considered worrying or not.

This thread is like a study where the conclusion is drawn to say that X is more prone to kill cards than Y, without actually checking how many cards died in Y :). that means the conclusion has completely no grounds.
 
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'nuf said
 

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I think i've got a similar problem. last week I updated my galaxy s3 to jellybean 4.1.2. a few days later i got the 'damaged sd card' error. after having having (re)formatted the about three times now, I'm considering a full system reboot.... it's got to be the system. I tried two different sd cards of different sizes. both of them can't be faulty, I'm sure...

WELCOME TO ANDROID FORUMS,PASCALSIMONS:party:

Here's another thread on the topic,hopefully you'll find some solutions to your issues w/the SD Cards.

http://androidforums.com/samsung-galaxy-s3/654417-samsung-galaxy-s3-kills-sd-cards.html
 
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YES Galaxy s3 kills sd card. Today killed my second sd card without any reason. First was killed on the desk nobody touched , today second sd card killed with same condition. Sits on the desk and just said no sd card or unsupportd file. Tomorrow Ill take it back to o2 mine only 3 months old. mine were 32gb Kingston and Sandidisk Ultra
 
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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.

Iphones don't have sd card slots.
 
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For those who have lost sd cards have you done any of the following:

Formatted the card to a different file format than it originally came.

Updated to jellybean.

Powered down your device.

Disconnected your phone during a transfer process.

One card that S3 said was bad I was able to reformat in my camera. It's still there and working fine.
The next card that the S3 complained about was successfully reformatted in the S3, but a day later was bad again and couldn't be read or formatted by my camera.
Both were 32GB Lexar class 10 cards. (microSDHC).

Both of these failures were on ICS.
 
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One card that S3 said was bad I was able to reformat in my camera. It's still there and working fine.
The next card that the S3 complained about was successfully reformatted in the S3, but a day later was bad again and couldn't be read or formatted by my camera.
Both were 32GB Lexar class 10 cards. (microSDHC).

Both of these failures were on ICS.

did you run a full format on the cards before using them(no quick format)?

did you format them to exfat from FAT32 or vise versa?


when i bought my samsung 64GB card it was defaulted to exFAT and i did a full format to exFAT. i put it in my S3 and it gave me the "preparing Sd card", "safely remove card" notice and didnt recognize the card. after quick formatting it in my Lg motion i put it back in the S3, it recognized it, and i put all my stuff on it.

i've only had it for less than a week so its too early to tell if it wont have problems. the 32GB samsung card i had in my motion had no issues for the almost 3 weeks i used it in my S3.
 
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did you run a full format on the cards before using them(no quick format)?

did you format them to exfat from FAT32 or vise versa?


when i bought my samsung 64GB card it was defaulted to exFAT and i did a full format to exFAT. i put it in my S3 and it gave me the "preparing Sd card", "safely remove card" notice and didnt recognize the card. after quick formatting it in my Lg motion i put it back in the S3, it recognized it, and i put all my stuff on it.

i've only had it for less than a week so its too early to tell if it wont have problems. the 32GB samsung card i had in my motion had no issues for the almost 3 weeks i used it in my S3.

I'm fairly sure that with my first Sandisk 32gb I formatted it in the phone, to whatever file system that was. The card died with no warning just shy of three months of usage. One morning when I was taking my phone off the charger I had a notification it had been removed. Earlier in this thread I documented my contact with Samsung about it.

On my new Sandisk 32 I have done a full format to FAT32. As of now i have done some app backups and transferred some music to it. I am definitely not going to use it for camera storage ever again.
 
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Drawn to this discussion as I have just upgraded to the SIII from the original Galaxy S which I had for 2 years. I certainly had external SD card problems with the original S. I put a 16 GB PNY card in soon after I got it. It was fine for a couple of months but over a period of time it started to lose pictures and videos randomly, and music saved to it would freeze during playback, requiring a reboot to get the phone going again. My partner put an 8GB in hers and after a few months had identical problems. Presumably these problems have not been carried over to the SIII, but having lost the only video of my partners uni graduation ceremony I am understandably wary of putting anything important on the SIII external drive.
 
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Hi,
I'm not convinced it is only an SIII issue. My phone is a Sony Xperia T and I have recently getting the SD card unexpectedly removed messages, so far hasn't killed it.
Sony may use the same material when assembling the SD card mount point, or might be an issue with the Android itself. I googled around and found not only SIII topics :(
I also have Samsung SDHC 10 32 GB, my buddy has the same having no problem so far with the same phone (sony).
I noticed that I get this error mostly when I'm in cold places, for example skiing or jogging outside, so might be connectivity issue, however my fried dosn't have.
 
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Hi,
I'm not convinced it is only an SIII issue. My phone is a Sony Xperia T and I have recently getting the SD card unexpectedly removed messages, so far hasn't killed it.
Sony may use the same material when assembling the SD card mount point, or might be an issue with the Android itself. I googled around and found not only SIII topics :(
I also have Samsung SDHC 10 32 GB, my buddy has the same having no problem so far with the same phone (sony).
I noticed that I get this error mostly when I'm in cold places, for example skiing or jogging outside, so might be connectivity issue, however my fried dosn't have.
Well, sd cards do just fail sometimes, but the fact that Googling only brings up S3 topics should tell you something. This isn't a common problem to non Samsung phones.
 
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did you run a full format on the cards before using them(no quick format)?

did you format them to exfat from FAT32 or vise versa?


when i bought my samsung 64GB card it was defaulted to exFAT and i did a full format to exFAT. i put it in my S3 and it gave me the "preparing Sd card", "safely remove card" notice and didnt recognize the card. after quick formatting it in my Lg motion i put it back in the S3, it recognized it, and i put all my stuff on it.

i've only had it for less than a week so its too early to tell if it wont have problems. the 32GB samsung card i had in my motion had no issues for the almost 3 weeks i used it in my S3.

I originally formatted both cards in the S3. I assume that Android knows what to do.

I've been using SD cards for years. These are the only failures I've had.
 
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Well, sd cards do just fail sometimes, but the fact that Googling only brings up S3 topics should tell you something. This isn't a common problem to non Samsung phones.

I've said it and will repeat again: How many phones with an SD slot have been old as well as S3?

Wanna know the answer? NONE!

That should answer your question about why you get hits for it. Not to mention this thread has probably added a few results on its own.
 
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I've said it and will repeat again: How many phones with an SD slot have been old as well as S3?

Wanna know the answer? NONE!

That should answer your question about why you get hits for it. Not to mention this thread has probably added a few results on its own.

Why do you participate in this thread only to constantly repeat yourself when you have nothing constructive to offer. As I posted, if you specifically Google many other popular phones you will find few discussions of high failure rates of SD cards.
 
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Why do you participate in this thread only to constantly repeat yourself when you have nothing constructive to offer. As I posted, if you specifically Google many other popular phones you will find few discussions of high failure rates of SD cards.

A few reasons:

1. I hate when people spread unconfirmed information based on a 0.00005% occurrences.

2. People will come here and believe now that very single card that dies, dies because of the S3, which of course is untrue.

3. I know how research and statistics work and cannot stand it when someone says that the phone causes all the trouble when there is no reason to believe 90% of the stuff in this thread.

4. I am a no-BS person and just hate anything that balances on the verge of a myth, urban legend, misconception, misinformation, arrogance and this thread represents everything I just mentioned.

5. The result of threads like this: newbies coming here and believing what all the people with dead cards say.

6. Half of those cards, and especially in the case of users who had 2 of them dead in 2 different S3s might just as well have died from viruses on a PC the S3 was connected to.

If you do not understand the fact that there are other reasons for a card to die other than manufacturing fault or S3, you should really go out there and do some proper research on how all that works.
 
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A few reasons:

1. I hate when people spread unconfirmed information based on a 0.00005% occurrences.

2. People will come here and believe now that very single card that dies, dies because of the S3, which of course is untrue.

3. I know how research and statistics work and cannot stand it when someone says that the phone causes all the trouble when there is no reason to believe 90% of the stuff in this thread.

4. I am a no-BS person and just hate anything that balances on the verge of a myth, urban legend, misconception, misinformation, arrogance and this thread represents everything I just mentioned.

5. The result of threads like this: newbies coming here and believing what all the people with dead cards say.

6. Half of those cards, and especially in the case of users who had 2 of them dead in 2 different S3s might just as well have died from viruses on a PC the S3 was connected to.

If you do not understand the fact that there are other reasons for a card to die other than manufacturing fault or S3, you should really go out there and do some proper research on how all that works.

For such an ardent believer in hard numbers and statistics it sure looks like you take liberties making up your own percentages in items 1, 3, and 6.

I get your point, nobody knows exactly what is causing the SD failures. However, for the people who are experiencing the issue with an S3, statistics mean very little. The problem is very real for them and it should be ok for them to discuss the issue or even infer the problem may be related to the phone. In the world of statistics, this is after all a viable possibility, even if a remote one.

Don't get so hung up on what people may or may not think after reading this or any other thread. As a statistics guy, you know that a miniscule percentage of Galaxy S3 owners frequent web forums. Also, it's true that hardly anyone ever comes to a forum to say "my phone is working fine". The nature of the forums lends itself to discuss problems so most threads are just that.

The point of the forum should be to discuss, whether we agree or not. I have read these forums as I research my next phone. Tonight, I will be buying an S3 to replace my iPhone 4S. This thread is not going to keep me from buying the phone or using an SD card but I'm glad I read about it and I'm going into it making an informed decision.
 
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