Help SD Card Not Recognized Galaxy S4

[Muhnamana]

So a few weeks ago I popped in my micro SD card, mounted, formatted and what not and away I went. Worked fine up until last night. The card does not read.

I took the card out, put it back in, restarted, nothing.

I go to Settings>More>Storage and scroll the whole way down and "Mount SD card...Insert SD card" is grayed out.

I assume my card could be corrupt though. I'm waiting until I get home to try the card in my reader I have.

Could this also be a phone issue?

 

[Unforgiven]

Welcome to Android Forums Muhnamana.

I moved this here from the Galaxy S 4G forum so you get the right eyes on it. I'm sure another device owner will chime in.

 

[Muhnamana]

Welcome to Android Forums Muhnamana.

I moved this here from the Galaxy S 4G forum so you get the right eyes on it. I'm sure another device owner will chime in.

Thanks again!

 

[bradyapba]

what kind of card?

 

[Muhnamana]

http://www.target.com/p/lexar-16gb-.../-/A-14453640#prodSlot=medium_1_21&term=Lexar

Lexar 16G

 

[Muhnamana]

Well some good news. A coworker tried to mount the same card in his phone with no such luck. This leads me to believe the card is corrupt. Sigh of relief for now.

 

[valorian]

If you have access to a PC with a card slot see if the PC can format the card.

 

[Muhnamana]

If you have access to a PC with a card slot see if the PC can format the card.

You thinking maybe a reformat might work? I thought of this myself but wasn't sure if that would really do the trick. Its worth a shot though.

 

[Tware]

I have tried many SD cards (sandisk 32g, kingston 16 , pny 32, all class 10), they all corrupted. in my case, when I plug in headphones to listen to Slacker or Pandora, Google Music loads too. Very annoying, but it would seem that the phone sleeps with Google Music accessing some music files, and soon I will get a corruption message... and so on. It's been noted a few places here that many brands of cards have a sleeping timing issue with the S4. My friends have noted the same thing with other Non-Samsung cards. My fix was to finally break down and get a Samsung Plus or Pro mSD card as cheaply as I could. When not on sale, they aren't a very great value. But.. after a good bit of time, I have no corruption problems. :/

 

[craigfnyc]

I just left Verizon due to SD card and SIM card issues. They changed my SIM card and after researching, they did find issues with Samsung not being able to recognize some Sandisk cards."They are working on the problem", is what I was told. They gave me Sandisk's number to call to see if they will replace the SD card. I think I will just buy a different brand versus trying to get a replacement from Sandisk.

 

[humandroidster]

smart phones + memory cards have always being nightmares.

 

[humandroidster]

So what is the best way to go with memory cards? No one has finalised the thread.

 

[ANewDay]

Get a Samsung micro sd card, didn't hear any problems with them.

 

[Punkrulz24]

Get a Samsung micro sd card, didn't hear any problems with them.

Unfortunately this is not true. I've been researching the heck out of this issue due to ongoing problems. It seems all cards are susceptible to this problem in the GS4. I'm awaiting my replacement from sandisk as we speak.

My issues: card worked for awhile. Then when unlocking phone it would give me messages about unmounting then preparing SD card. A few days after that it would say it was damaged. After a week the problems stopped for a month, then came back. Now the card is completely dead and /if/ I can get windows to recognize it, it says it needs to format it but it cant.

Other users reported similar things and a few reported same issues with Samsung cards.

 

[ANewDay]

Unfortunately this is not true. I've been researching the heck out of this issue due to ongoing problems. It seems all cards are susceptible to this problem in the GS4. I'm awaiting my replacement from sandisk as we speak.

My issues: card worked for awhile. Then when unlocking phone it would give me messages about unmounting then preparing SD card. A few days after that it would say it was damaged. After a week the problems stopped for a month, then came back. Now the card is completely dead and /if/ I can get windows to recognize it, it says it needs to format it but it cant.

Other users reported similar things and a few reported same issues with Samsung cards.

I never heard of any issues based on reviews from various sites like amazon, newegg and forums.

 

[RhysLlewellyn]

I can confirm that my s4 manged to kill a SanDisk card AND a Samsung class 10 64gb card. Couldn't reformat it with a computer or anything. I'm on my second Samsung card and it's been flawless now since I put it in about a month ago.

 

[shmn]

in my case, when I plug in headphones to listen to Slacker or Pandora, Google Music loads too.

I believe there was a bug on the S3/S4 with Google Play Music where it would always load and run even if you never used it. If you don't use it, disable the Google Play Music app. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this...I may be mis-remembering (common as you get older).

 

[shmn]

It seems all cards are susceptible to this problem in the GS4.

I suspect you may be right. There may be something in the hardware on this phone which makes it very finicky when it comes to the micro SD cards. This is, of course, conjecture at this point. But given the number of problems I have read about on this forum with cards un-mounting, there may be a larger problem at work here.

My first card was a San Disk 64GB and it un-mounted constantly so I returned it and bought a Samsung 64GB card...haven't had any problems since. So my problem was most likely card related...but you never really know without more thorough testing.

I never heard of any issues based on reviews from various sites like amazon, newegg and forums.

This doesn't mean much. Any card is susceptible to problems. Although it seems like, at the moment, San Disk cards are more susceptible to problems given the that they seem to have come across a batch of bad chips.

 

[Tware]

My cards were still mounting in a PC, although giving corruption messages. Without fail, it would be file that Google Music was trying to read (though as stated above I wasnt using GM). Or an image or video that gallery/player had been accessing previously when the device went to sleep, usually while on charge overnight. So in my experiences, mine were sleeping timing related. So far, no issues with a Samsung Plus card, but also, there have been patches to those apps and a new OTA update came out, so it could be they just fixed the issue. (or my card just hasnt died YET)

 

[jkc120]

This is clearly an issue with Samsung somehow. I don't know if it's hardware or mechanical in nature (e.g. the spring or sleeve it goes into) or what. But if you google it, this is the SAME problem that plagued s3 and n2 owners. It doesn't affect everyone, and none of these factors are consistent:

- rooted vs. not rooted
- stock vs. AOSP
- class of SD card
- SD card brand (unless they all share the same underlying memory chip maker like Micron, etc, but no one has demonstrated that)

At this point, I'm afraid to even buy and put in a new card as it's eaten 2 of mine. I'm tempted to just go without an sd card at this point and just pull ROM backups/etc off the phone if/when I do a TWRP backup or something to keep the internal storage from filling up (since we have a whopping 10G of the 16G left over on the sdcard).

 

[vobguy]

Another one here - less than a month, my brand new 64 g class 10 Patriot SD card is failing. I noticed there is a big thread with issues like this for the SIII.

Really not happy right now. I put in a new Sandisk "Extreme" SDSDQX-032G-U46A 32G card straight out of the package. Hopefully this one won't die so quickly. I am willing to take a chance with this card, because I need to use it to review it anyhow since that is the reason I was sent the card. Just didn't realize I would be using it so quickly and without transferring any of the data from my brand new 64 gig Patriot card.

 

[Mr. Lucky]

Format the SD card in PC, then change the card to FAT16.

I think you meant FAT32. FAT16 is less efficient and has a partition size limit of 2GB.

 

[gixty]

Hello,

I sd card wont get recognized anymore after I updated my S4.

 

[windstrings]

I've been using my Samsung 64gig micro sd flawlessly since the S4 first came out.
I awoke this morning to find a message my sd card is blank or has the wrong formatting.

I did start to upload a youtube video yesterday and cancelled, but then uploaded just fine and my phone worked flawlessly all evening until this morning when I woke.

My computer won't even see it at all.. its invisible..... normally it sees it just fine.

I wasted 50.00 bucks buying "card recovery Pro" and it too could not see my card even though it scanned until it hit 1-- percent but no files ever showed.
My drive manager in windows 7 pro can't see it either....

If I try to reformat, it just loops and again tells me the same message.

I popped a 4 gig card in and my phone reads it perfect...

the card simply died?

I do use the samsung wireless charger but I never experience undue heat etc.... what gives?

 

[Mr. Lucky]

Muhnamana & windstrings: By any chance, did either of you ever defragment the sd card when you had it attached to your computer?