If anyone would please help me, I would greatly appreciate it. I tried to be thorough in describing my problem and so the post became quite lengthy. Again, thanks to those who could offer any solutions.

I recently got my Spring Samsung Galaxy S3 set up with a 64 gigabyte Sandisk mircosdcx card. The phone initially recognized the card right when I put it in, but then the problems start when I try to transfer data into the external SD card through three ways that all eventually fail. I am using Windows Explorer through Windows 7 and Vista in turn for every instance.

First, I turn off the phone, I take the SD card out, and connect it to the computer with an adapter. I transfer music, movies, and games into it and put it back into the phone after ejecting it or safely removing it. ES File Explorer will show nothing, I turn off the phone, connect the SD card to the computer, and everything is there. I completely format the card with Panasonic's SDFormatter and put it back into the phone. Oh, now ES File Explorer can recognize its contents since I see "LOST.DIR" in the external SD card, but all of my data is gone.

Second, I dismount the SD card and do all of the above. Through ES File Explorer, the phone will either show absolutely nothing in the external SD card or will show all of my folders with no files or sub directories in them before going ahead and showing nothing at all. I format the SD card again and put it back into the phone.

Third, I connect the phone to the computer with the USB cable that came with the device with the SD card inside. I transfer data into the phone through Windows Explorer and unplug the cable straight from the phone when it is finished (since there is no "eject" or "safely remove" option). I check out my data and see that everything is there and in working order! I try doing this again and again until the computer tells me that the device suddenly is no longer connected or communicating to it. I unplug my phone and access the external SD card through ES File Explorer, and lo and behold everything is gone or disappears within 2 minutes of me accessing a working song or movie. Powering off and on or restarting the phone will show the data again until it evaporates back into the ether within a few moments.

Now I would love to take advantage of this powerful phone by making this basic process work correctly. All I want to do is transfer files to the external SD card like I have always done for numerous devices, and I feel like I am going through the nine circles of hell as I backup, format and restore data again and again. If I wasn't clear on any part of this process please make a mention.

 

Thanks for the responses. I am using EaseUS Partition Manager to change the SD card to FAT32 with limited success.

For the first try, I power the phone off and on as I exchange the SD card between the phone and the computer. The phone is off and the card is out, I format it from exfat to FAT32 with EaseUS, immediately eject/safely remove it, put it in the phone, and power the phone on. The phone recognizes it, I power it off, take it out, and store around 10 gigs of music on the card after placing it back into the computer. I safely remove it and put it back into the powered off phone, turn everything on, and it tells me that the SD card is damaged and that I should format it.

For the second try, I dismount the SD card and store around 30 gigs of media on it before putting it back into the phone. The phone begins to chug and slow down, but eventually speeds up and lets me access the data on the SD card as ES File Explorer recognizes it and makes it appear. Curiously enough, there are these new folders in the SD card that weren't there before, prefixed with a Greek "mu" before "apps" or "games." Since they are empty, I delete them, notice that there are more files under "LOST.DIR," and watch a video. I dismount the card again and plug it into the computer whereupon it recognizes all but one of the sub-directories in my video folders, leaving me with two videos to watch, and my music and games are likewise disappeared. I put the card back into the phone and it chugs without getting any faster, and it shows nothing in the same directories, yet the space is somehow being used up according to "data" in the settings. I take out the card and format it.

Third, I format the SD card with the Panasonic software, format it into FAT32 with EaseUS, and put it on the phone to transfer data through the USB cable. The computer eventually tells me that the device got disconnected as it transfers my music into the card and now nothing appears in ES File Explorer. I put the card back into the computer and format it.

I am honestly grateful for any help that I receive here, but I have struggled with this SD card business all day to the point that I am almost nostalgic for my old LG Optimus' ability to accomplish the simple task of recognizing new SD card data. If anyone has a specific and consistently successful way for going about putting their data on a fancy Sandisk, 64 gig, class 10 SD card please feel free to comment.

 

I do in fact connect the phone to the computer to transfer data, but it still fails. This is what I am referring to when I say, "transfer data through the USB cable."

But also, why should anything fail to support the card if the card is formatted in FAT32 from exfat? It is no longer an exfat card, but a 64 gig, FAT32, SD card which some claim works for them. Unfortunately, I am still forced to exclude myself from that list of happy customers.

 

Thanks guys, I'll just be employing the suggestion to use other tools to format the card aside from EaseUS. I'll also try out Airdroid, but hearsay tells me that there are some compatibility issues there as well.

For anyone else who might be reading this and wondering, I can't say for certain if the S3 is cut out for use with exfat SD cards since my friend is having a dandy time with his perfectly-functioning Sandisk, exfat, 64 gig card and Galaxy S3 from Sprint. We both have the Sprint models and the same kind of SD card. There seems to be a point where success with this technology can be on an individual level, since my friend disregards my advice to format his card to FAT32 as I cite this topic to him.