Help Strange SD card issue ...

[blackcap76]

I have searched all over to try and find a solution to the problem i am having with my SD card and my Samsung Galaxy S II. A couple days ago I shut off the phone and restarted and soon found that the phone was not seeing my SD card, or so i thought. The first thing i did was restart the phone again, thinking it was just a fluke, it was not. I then tried unmounting the SD card and remounting, and no change. I then poked around trying to find some strange setting that might have checked by mistake, still nothing.

Now here is the strange part.

I then went into the files>external_sd and started poking around and was able to open music/images i had stored on the SD card. So the phone recognizes the SD card but it doesn't "See" it. Because of this issue i can not see images in the Gallery and use ringtones that were saved on the SD card.

Has anyone ever seen this and know how to fix it?

Thanks in advance for any input.

 

[Atma]

Welcome to the forums Blackcap :hello:

I haven't seen that problem before. If you can see the card on the computer I would copy what files I could off of it. Download Kies and use it to backup what it can.

Do you have another sd card you can try? That one could be going bad.

You can try a factory reset to see if that helps, but you will have to reinstall your apps.

 

[Cardimom]

This is the first post anywhere that I have seen that seems to have a similar problem as I do. I am quite technically challenged. So, I downloaded 15 photos from my computer to my T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S2 but it went into the DCIM folder, which I know takes up a lot of internal storage. So, I wanted to move the photos from the DCIM folder to the external SD card that was already in the phone. I could not figure out how to do so and called my carrier. They walked me through the process of connecting the phone to the computer via USB and went through the USB storage process etc. They ended up having me copy all the photos from DCIM folder and paste it onto the External SD "folder". Then I deleted all the images from the DCIM folder. While the phone and the computer was still attached via the USB cable, I went into the SD folder on the computer screen and saw that all the photos were in there.

However, after I detached the USB cable and went to "Gallery" on the phone, none of the photos were in there. I spent THREE hours trying to explain this to the T-Mobile Tech Support person to no avail.

So, how can it be that the photos on on the External SD folder on the computer window/screen while connected to the computer via USB and then not on the phone when the cable is detached. PLEASE HELP.....I've spent 5 hours trying to figure this out and I don't think the tech support person believed me when I told them what was happening.

 

[Atma]

So, how can it be that the photos on on the External SD folder on the computer window/screen while connected to the computer via USB and then not on the phone when the cable is detached. PLEASE HELP.....I've spent 5 hours trying to figure this out and I don't think the tech support person believed me when I told them what was happening.

Welcome to the forums Cardimom. I no longer have the gallery on my phone so I might be wrong how this works.

Open the gallery and then press your phone's menu key. Is gallery set to look in the correct folder?

Also, I would recommend trying QuickPic from the Play Store. Its much better than Gallery.

 

[Captain Mal 78]

It's possible that there's currupted data on the SD card. Copy the files you want to keep to your computer and use windows to reformat the SD Card (FAT 32). This will erase everything on the SD card. Copy the photos back to the SD card and then see if the phone can see them without any issues.

 

[Samuvisser]

I have almost the same too, maybe a little diferent.
My phone is seeing the sd-card, and i could enter the card with the 'my documents' app.
My music is working, but the movies i had are working very strange, it gives a black screen, but the sound is working.
Also, all the apps i had on my sd-card are not working, and i can not install apps from the store because there is something wrong with the sd- card.

I did try to format it, but saidly i lose everything for nothing, because it is not working

PLEASE can anybody hele me with this??

 

[Atma]

I have almost the same too, maybe a little diferent.
My phone is seeing the sd-card, and i could enter the card with the 'my documents' app.
My music is working, but the movies i had are working very strange, it gives a black screen, but the sound is working.
Also, all the apps i had on my sd-card are not working, and i can not install apps from the store because there is something wrong with the sd- card.

I did try to format it, but saidly i lose everything for nothing, because it is not working

PLEASE can anybody hele me with this??

Hi Samuvisser :ciao: Welcome to the forums

Do you have another sd card you can try? Also, I don't understand why apps from the Play Store won't install. Your sd card should have nothing to do with that. Are you using some app to move apps to your sd card when they are downloaded?

 

[OrlandoFL]

Before you format you could run error-checking on your SDCard. Insert the SDCard into a card reader & plug the card reader into your PC. Go-to My Computer, right-click on the SDCard & go to properties. Go to the Tools tab, and click on error-checking.

While your at it you can backup all your data as well.

 

[ksh2013]

So, I have had continued trouble with a corrupted SD cards. I'm on my second one. Not sure why it keeps doing this but I lose my pictures every time... Is it the phone or the two cards I've tried? Hard to believe its the card...

 

[Atma]

So, I have had continued trouble with a corrupted SD cards. I'm on my second one. Not sure why it keeps doing this but I lose my pictures every time... Is it the phone or the two cards I've tried? Hard to believe its the card...

Hi ksh :ciao: welcome to AF

What brand of cards? Where do you buy them?

Do you back your pics up to the computer or Google drive or something?

 

[LotionLady]

It certainly appears that I have the correct forum. I had a SII and it had a corrupted port, the phone was still under warranty, I got the replacement phone and it is working great and seems to have the ICS update or something, it's way cool. Took the SD card from the old phone and transferred it to the new phone, the new phone cannot see anything on the SD card. Took the card out, put it back in the old phone and everything is there. OHHH Kayyyy!!!! Took the card and put it in my reader and transferred the files to my PC, then transferred to files to my new phone or tried one or two files, my game Subway Surfer with 500,000 coins and a score of 786,000, damn, don't tell me I can't transfer this game to the new phone on the same frigging card. Whew!!! I could lose a few of the photos, but I'm so addicted to this game, I'm having the shakes by not having all those coins and my high score. I know...it's crazy. The game is on the card as an ASEC file and the phone says NO APPLICATIONS CAN PERFORM THIS ACTION....wtf? I can only see the game in the ASEC format when I go to "files", but can't see it anywhere else on my phone. Please help.

 

[Atma]

]


Hi LotionLady. You are probably going to have to reformat your SD card to get your new phone to recognize it. Unless you have the apps backed up with something like titanium backup, you will have to reinstall them. Even if you moved them to the SD card, part of them is stored in the phone's system. After you reinstall your game, maybe it will find saved game info in that other file but I wouldn't count on it.

 

[Atma]

LotionLady, if you still have the old phone, download an app called Carbon from the play store. Backup your apps and data. Copy that somewhere, reformat your SD card, put it in your new phone (with the phone off) reboot, install carbon on your new phone, try to restore the apps you backed up. Maybe you'll still have your game info.

 

[LotionLady]

After backing up to Carbon, can I store the data on my PC? How do I reformat my SD card?

 

[Atma]

After backing up to Carbon, can I store the data on my PC? How do I reformat my SD card?

Yes, you can copy the backup folder to your pc.

I will usually put the sd card in my computer and tell windows to format it. I haven't tried this, but the recommended way is to use SD Formatter.

 

[VoltronDeluxe]

After readying the replies on this thread. I want to add another angle to view.

File paths: I know that when I decided to save things on my ext sd card (ringtones, notifications (sounds), music. I had to manually create the folder and sub-folders. go to ext sd card then create a folder named MEDIA with the sub-folders music, ringtones, notifications.

The same could apply to the picture quandary. on the ext sd card make a folder name DCIM with a sub-folder Camera. (very well could be that some files became corrupted, it's not a perfect world and unfortunately... no matter how the files "upbringing" they can become corrupted.... bad parenting joke)

Also like Atma mentioned try formatting the sd card just remember it erases EVERYTHING.

 

[alextop30]

It is really interesting for me to understand what is really making these numerous problems with the sd cards.

I have a problem myself - 32 gig sd card - stop being recognized while my phone was working with the screen off. - plug it into computer works fine - plug it into phone now don't work at all (not even recognized). Error check it - no errors. Format it - Fat32 default allocation size. Phone says empty or incompatible card and cannot format it. So now system formatting it and will error check yet again.

Now - I wish I had my evo 4g so I can check whether it would work on it - just to know whether it is my phone that is the problem. BUT - what causes the software to unmount the storage by itself and not recognize it on mounting process? If the parameters have not changed why would it not be able to remount it. If the parameters changed where can I see the error log of why it is not being able to be remounted - I would think there would be error log because very system keeps a crash / event log!!!!

On the other hand it could be the card but it should not be functioning properly on a windows system (cannnot test it on linux because I just wiped my drive by mistake). Second why would it not show an error on the sectors if it is damaged - on a deep scan it should find a sector that is not functioning as it is supposed to and it should produce some sort of error. At least that's what numerous hard drives that I eventually threw away did when they were about to fail (don't ask how many because it is a ******ed number).

Finally - I wonder why has no one made a tool that would format check and prepare your card for your phone? Seems to me many people do not know the appropriate type of partition format/ allocation size / or other specs for particular cards. I do understand that there is a lot of flexibility built into android however - there are optimum specs that would make it function better! I am not currently there with my programming knowledge to be able to write a tool like that but I think it would be a great Idea!!!!