Help "SD card unexpectedly removed"? WTF? I didn't touch it!

[cipher6]

You guys, your phone is fine... your SD card has gone bad. I had same issue. Card would mount and show files. the second anything tried to read or write from it, "SD card unexpectedly removed."

I pulled the card, put it in my PC and had the same issue. I could see the files, but all attempts to read or write to it failed.

Bad SD card. Buy a new one and keep your stuff backed up.

 

[Mr. Incredible]

Same thing happened to me a few months ago. The SD card was going bad.
Unmount/Remount message, then it started only mounting read-only, finally the card died.

 

[WhizGidget]

I just had this happen to me too. I had plugged in my phone and went to mount it as a drive, and my laptop couldn't see the SD card as a drive. Once I unplugged and used Astro to go see what's there, I got the error message and HTC's launcher crashed and rebooted.

I ejected the card, put it into a reader on a different PC and was able to get most of the files off. Reformatted the card, put it into the phone and reloaded apps. Then I started carefully moving some files back over, and everything's fine out.

The worst part was rebuilding my screens, but I was thinking about doing that anyway, so it wasn't a big deal.

 

[wtnixon]

It's odd that you mentioned Angry Birds. I didn't have any problems with my phone since I bought it the first day. I downloaded Angry Birds... Voila, I have a corrupted sd card for the first time ever in my life. Too much of a coincidence that you mentioned Angry Birds to me. I have so much stuff on my SD card, I hate imagining having to reformat it. I can't seem to get everything copied off of it.

 

[arghya98]

my phone started showing this since i unmounted my sd card in order to install angry birds. i dont know why but i read somewhere that in order to install angry birds i have to unmount and remount my sd card. n violaaa my sd card is screwed

 

[marknhl]

my phone started showing this since i unmounted my sd card in order to install angry birds. i dont know why but i read somewhere that in order to install angry birds i have to unmount and remount my sd card. n violaaa my sd card is screwed

can more people confirm this? I keep replacing my SD cards, but at this point my Incredible (or Angry Birds) seems to eat them within a month or so. I don't like have to keep buying SD cards...

 

[Skulyosis]

Just had this happen starting today, i tried to copy the important items to my computer before reformatting but it did not work, everything showed 0 bytes...oddly enough when I put the SD card into an old phone (samsung omnia) the card worked perfectly fine, i was able to view all the pictures on it and everything. I thought of moving the pictures to the old phone and then to a new card, but i don't know if i would inadvertently move the bad file(s) as well, I'll try a few more solutions that I saw on here (uninstalling angry birds and chkdsk in DOS). I just don't get why it works on one phone but not the other.

 

[marknhl]

The last time I tried to copy files to my computer and then move them to a new sd card I noticed something interesting. During the copy procedure my computer alerted me that one of the files was corrupted. I deleted that specific file and reinserted the sd card into my phone. Since then I've had almost no issues. Once in a great great while I've had the "SD card unexpectedly removed" pop up for a second or so but then it goes away so I think I'm set for now.

 

[switch10]

I have 2 brand new 16gb sdcards that give me the "sdcard has been unexpectedly removed" error. I purchased the latest one from my cell phone dealer yesterday. Other than the size, it is identical to the sdcard that came with the phone, which works perfectly. Both cards are class 2.

I have reformatted the cards, checked the disk for errors, and reset to factory settings in case the apps that I moved to the sdcard were causing problems. There is absolutely nothing on the cards, formated as FAT32, I can read and write to them from my computer, and as soon as I try to take a picture I get the error.

It seems to me that this is an issue with the Android OS, since the error has been reproduced on many different phones.

Has anyone tried formating the cards as an EXT2 or 3? Android is a Linux OS, so I would imagine it could read it.

Short of contacting Google, I am completely out of ideas, and pretty disappointed in my new expensive phone. Does anyone have any other ideas?

 

[switch10]

Tell Google we want this issue fixed!! Issue 9736 - android - SD card unexpectedly removed error LG Ally - Android - An Open Handset Alliance Project - Google Project Hosting

 

[jake9696]

Hey guys

I was having the same problem for days and it made me sooo mad!!!
I had photos on it from my vacation that I didn't want to erase so I really didn't want to have to buy an SD card adapter or reformat it. This is what worked for me when it said "SD card unexpectedly removed" I went >settings>SD and phone storage, then took off the case where the sd card goes and took it out and while it said "preparing SD card" at the top of the notifications screen I hit unmount for the split second it showed up then it said safe to remove SD card I took it out and put it back in and everything was fine didn't have to reformat or anything. I don't know if this will work for everyone else bit I hope this is helpful

 

[richullman]

I noticed earlier in the thread that people had raised the issue of Angry Birds and its "stability." (is that the right word?).

When trying to copy the SD card to backup, I got an error message associated with angrybirds. (attached).

I deleted this file from the SD and uninstalled the Angry Birds app... and have yet to see the problem again.

Fingers crossed. We'll see.

 

[richullman]

I noticed earlier in the thread that people had raised the issue of Angry Birds and its "stability." (is that the right word?).

When trying to copy the SD card to backup, I got an error message associated with angrybirds. (attached).

I deleted this file from the SD and uninstalled the Angry Birds app... and have yet to see the problem again.

Fingers crossed. We'll see.

I was wrong. The problem is back. Looking for a new solution and will try reformatting.

 

[shelly0]

I have had my phone for about 10 months with absolutely no problems. I decided to transfer all applications that I could to the SD card. The next day, my phone had a different ringtone. When I looked at my phone, I found the "SD Unmounted Unexpectedly" error. I read through all the advice, which is helpful, and wanted to share what I had to do to fix my specific problem. I am not sure if transferring the applications to the SD card caused the problem; however, it is the only thing I did out of the ordinary for my use.

I have the standard 8GB Samsung SD card that came with the phone. The phone would not recognize the card, even after trying all posted tips. I was only able to read and copy files to my MAC with an adapter - not erase, delete, reformat. I mounted the SD cardinto an old BlackBerry phone, which did recognize the card and the content. I was able to reformat the card with the BlackBerry, and now the myTouch 4G recognizes the SD card.

Thank you to all the people who posted their helpful tips and advice!

 

[Teleken]

Was this ever resolved?

I have a Desire HD and a 16GB Kingston Class 2 card (got it when 16GB cards first came out). The card was working perfectly fine for 8 months with no problems. Phone was rooted, various ROMs used. Never an issue.

I had to send the phone in for repair and they replaced the motherboard and now I get this problem randomly throughout the day. Doesn't matter if the screen timeout is disabled, doesn't matter if plugged in (with never turn off the screen enabled). There is nothing wrong with the card. I've reformatted and checked it various ways. Card is perfectly fine.

I see a large number of bugs filed on the android google tracker for this problem.

It's very strange that it was working with the DHD before, but now that it was repaired it stopped working.

 

[stickbowman68]

I have had the "SD card unexpectedly removed" error for just over a month now. And have tried removing or moving any app to the SD card. Nothing has worked to date so far. Today I was looking at my phone when a email from my Outlook account came through my Active sync and immediately my SD card error came up.
Went through and removed all my Active Sync accounts, turned the phone off and restarted and then reconnected my e-mail, calendar, & task. What do you know have not had an error since.

 

[countingback]

I got the error while taking a video a couple of days ago. Tried restarting and taking out the battery, etc. Didn't work. Tried using my son's SD card and it did work, so I knew it wasn't the phone. I put my SD card in my computer and the computer had issues with it, but I was able to open it if I held my mouth right. First I tried copying everything from the SD card to a folder on my computer to keep from losing my pictures etc. That errored out after copying some of the files. I copied the missing folders and files into the new folder on my computer one by one. (errors included that it couldn't read the data, couldn't copy some files, said it was full but it wasn't, slowed copy speed, etc.) Then I opened the properties for the SD card and ran a check disk on it with the fix errors boxes checked. (be sure to close the folder list or it will tell you the file is in use) At the end it told me that the errors were fixed and partial files were now in a folder called found....they weren't, but when I put the SD card back into my phone, it worked perfectly and I hadn't lost anything other than the video I was making at the time the error happened, so I didn't have to copy back to the card from the backup folder I made.

 

[Blessing]

I've read through the entire thread and have no idea how to reformat my sd card, let alone all the other tips that have been thrown around.

I have an htc evo 4g and this problem struck my phone today. All my apps and pictures stored on my card are no longer available to me.

My usb drive also does not recognize my sd card.

I have taken out the teeny sd card and don't know what to do with it on my pc - how do you hook it up? Do I need a special connector? Does the computer somehow direct you to reformatting it as "fat32"?

Please help a newbie out and break down the entire fix from A to Z.

 

[incxbxs]

Same issue with sony ericsson walkman with live.

Android version: 2.3.4
sdCard = Toshiba 16gb class 4 / Fat32
Phone software: 4.0.2.A.0.62

Randomly removing sdCard. Most likely never detect again.

 

[MikeyrInFL]

Had the same issue. Ended up running chkdsk /R <drive> (in DOS against the SD Card) and saw that I had some bad files (images).

I thought that would work, but still had the SD Card crap out on me again. However, running this did show me the names of the bad files, so I just deleted those files (again, in DOS) and haven't had an issue since.

Note: I did use another phone (running Android) and connected to my PC as a disk drive. My Incredible kept bombing out on me when trying to connect and run chkdsk, but the other worked --- guess you could try removing the card and inserting into your PC (if you have an SD Card reader).

What a pain...hope this helps.

Good grief! I'm going to have to brush up on my DOS commands. We've come so far that we are back to DOS.

My EVO 4G shipped with an 8GB MicroSDHC card. I started getting error messages indicating that I did not have an sd card in my phone; of course, I did. Each time this occurred I shut down, pulled the battery and removed/reinserted the card; then all was well until the next time. Finally, after several episodes of this behavior nothing would redeem my card and I am replacing it with a larger one...which I needed anyway.

I'll remember the DOS procedures you used so I can use them to resolve the problem. When they make smartphones with enough internal memory, we won't need to deal with this, I hope.

 

[MikeyrInFL]

My old 8GB card took a major dump and became terminal. RIP.

I just got a new 16GB MicroSDHC card and per advice on the forum, I put it in a card reader in my PC and formatted it using default allocation size and FAT32.

Do I just install it in my EVO 4G and hope for the best? Will my phone deal with it or what? Any guidance will be deeply appreciated, thanks!

 

[jdougs]

My eVo 4G does this after playing music for a while. Rebooting always fixes it though. I have suspexyed the card is the issue...not so sure after reading this post.

 

[xephshin]

unexpected SD card removal problem is not a firmware problem..
its just because your kernel is damage.. they have posted a fix here.. androidtech.tk

hope you find my reply helpful