Database Develop

[Q] External SD Card Wipes anything copied onto it!

Here's a weird one. I am not trying anything complicated. I just want to copy some music to my new 32GB external SD card that arrived in the post today. I put it into a microSD to SD adaptor, and slide it into my laptops SD slot. It shows up as fat32 and I drag 30 gigs of music on to it. After a long time it completes, and I check in with XP to make sure its all good. Yep fine.
However, the moment I insert it back into my I9000 things get weird. The status bar pops up the usual "Initialising SD card" message, then the media scanner comes up and completes in like a second. Then when I try to browse it from within the phone, the entire music directory has disappeared, and the OS is reporting that there is 28gb of 32gb free on the external sd. So I unmount the SD, slot it back into my pc, and find to my dismay the music directory has indeed been erased.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.. I need my tunes!!
Cheers,
C
Samsung Galaxy S I9000, running Firmware 2.2, Baseband: I9000XXJPH, Kernel version 2.6.32.9 root(at)SEI-28 1

My 1st guess is fake/faulty card.
Copy files onto card with a reader.
Eject.
Insert again into reader.
Try to copy from card. (If it fails -> card is faulty or is FAKE)

CheekyGreek said:
The status bar pops up the usual "Initialising SD card" message, then the media scanner comes up and completes in like a second.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I were to guess, when the phone says it's "Initializing SD card" it's likely formatting the card and erasing whatever data you had on it...
When you install the card in your PC, do you format it again and then copy the files? If so, try not to format it on the PC and let the phone do the formatting.

I fully agree. Let the phone format the card and then use MOUNT mode to copy the music over. It seems Fat32 (formated on PC) won't work well for our phones prob due to a flag setting or something the like too big cluster settings. Let the phone sort it out.

Thanks for the help peeps. Here's what I've tried:
Xan: I tried copying files to and from the device using my PC's card reader, and found no problems with it. It is a Kingston MicroSD SDC4/32GB bought from a reseller on Amazon. Are there any tools for around for the pc to run diagnostic tests on SD cards? Maybe I should give that a go? But from the looks of it I think the error lies in the phone somewhere...
An Droid: I am inclined to agree with you. In my original post I stated that it said "Inititialising SD Card", this was a mistake, as it actually says "Preparing SD Card". I have tried formatting it from both the PC and the Phone and still get the same problem.
Icky Boo: I tried this method last night. Used the USB Debugging mode to Mount the phone's card's onto my PC. My Computer displays the two cards as two seperate Drives. I then tried copying all my music onto it. When the copy completed, I pressed "Turn of USB Storage Mode" on the I9000, which immediately prompted the status bar to again show "Preparing SD Card". Then when I used a file explorer to look at the card, it only had about a gig of music copied onto it. It is quite clear now that in "Preparing SD Card" it is doing something strange. Is there anyway to disable this?
Also there is a directory on the SD called Lost.DIR which seems to increase in size every time this happens. Could be a clue?
Finally, just to confirm my phone is mounting it correctly, to browse the SD card from within the phone the path is /sdcard/external_sd/ right? (I understand this is the new path for Froyo 2.2?)
Thanks for the help, sorry for the essay!
C
UPDATE: Ok, Xan, you were right all along. Finally got a new SD card (sandisk this time, not Kingston) and it works just as it should. Thanks for the help and to everyone else too

[Q] SD Upgrade Problem?

I've got a problem with replacing the SD card. I searched for it and it seems like no-brainer. But I don't know what the problem is:
I bought a 16 GB Transcend to replace the SanDisk 2GB that came with my Liquid.
I have [Leaked]Froyo ROM. I had many apps on SD and some on the phone.
Here is what I did:
- I unmounted the 2GB card in my phone and turned it off.
- I put the new card and turned the phone back on.
- Then connected the old card with a card reader to my Mac. Also, connected the phone via USB and turned the USB storage on.
- I just copied everything from the old card to the new card and turned the USB storage off.
Now here's the problem:
None of the apps on SD are working! And they are not linked! It seems they are not installed.
When I tap their home screen icons, I get the error: "The application is not installed on your phone"
Also, only the apps on the phone are shown in applications.
I double tried the same process with formatting the new card in the phone, but got the same thing. I also copied the hidden folders as well. No luck with that, too.
Any suggestions? It is really driving me ...
BTW, I put the old card back and it is working just fine.

Problem Solved!
I finally found out what the problem was and upgraded my microSD successfully with all the applications working.
I decided to post the SOLUTION so it may help others as well:
The key issue is in the .android_secure folder on the SD card. Before this, I didn't know it is the place where Froyo puts all the apps that are transferred to SD.
Here are the steps that worked for me:
1) Unmounted the old SD and turned the phone off.
2) Copied EVERYTHING from the old card to my PC (I used a card reader).
**ATTENTION: By everything I mean all the files and folders including folders starting with "." (Especially .android_secure)
3) Formatted the new card (FAT32) using the Windows.
**FOR CAUTION: DO NOT use the phone to format the card. Because it makes a .android_secure and it will screw with the one you want to replace. [If you have done it anyways, just make sure to REPLACE the .android_secure folder]
4) Connected the new card to the PC and paste everything to it.
5) Put the new card in to the phone and turn it back on. BINGO! All should work without any problem.

Micro SD Help

I just got my class 10 micro SD in the mail today and want to swap out my old one. Is the process as easy as copying everything over to the new card, or is there something else I need to do? Also, when I plug my Nook into my pc, I get two drives. One is a removeable disk, the other is mynookcolor. So yeah, now Im really confused. My rom is installed on the internal memory.

DozeBeatS said:
I just got my class 10 micro SD in the mail today and want to swap out my old one. Is the process as easy as copying everything over to the new card, or is there something else I need to do? Also, when I plug my Nook into my pc, I get two drives. One is a removeable disk, the other is mynookcolor. So yeah, now Im really confused. My rom is installed on the internal memory.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If your running off of EMMC then it's pretty simple if the Old card is just 1 big fat32 partition with normal Android data files and other things. I reccomend using a seperate card reader however. Now just Plug the Old card into your PC and copy all of the files to a Folder on said PC. Now plugin New card in and copy the files to the New Card. Enjoy.
____________________________________________________
Sent from Nookie Froyo using Tapatalk

Done. What was throwing me off was the partition the system automatically creates. I wasnt sure if I needed to copy that as well. Once I popped the new card in it automatically created those files. Everything is good. Time to test speeds.
Thanks!

[Q] SOLVED: Connecting with USB shows only internal memorycard...

HI!
I have this problem that when I turn on the file sharing, the computer shows only internal memory card and not the external. Because the phone itself recognizes the external card I have tried to unmount and mount several times without any improvement. I am currently using the latest CM7 nightly, but the problem seemes to have started after I changed the card from 4gb to 16 gb. Any ideas?
EDIT: Erasing sd card from the phones menu helped to solve the problem.

Go Setting>Storage and remount your sd card and try???

I've done that several times....no help... android system accesses the card without problems...music, pics etc.

Did you physically remove your card and reinsert it, or just software remount?
Have you tried the card directly in your computer?
Have a look in windows device manager and see if it reports any problems. (right
click my computer and select manage)

I have tried it all and everything is ok with the sd card itself (I copied recent nightly from the computer on the sd card) also recovery recognizes is... there are also no problems in device manager...

Try to put on debugging mode. And try it with debugging mode on.
If the debugging mode is on try to take it off.
Regards Kali

I tried that also and nothing changed.... I have a feeling that it is somehow attached to me using mybackup pro... I restored application apk and data from another phone to this one and It seems that usually the application data should go to internal memory card. In this case it is on external card... so i believe that somehow the programs are still using the card when connected and do not allow phone to share it out... It's just a guess though...
EDIT: so I think the solution is to wipe everything and start all over again

So I fresh installed Rom and wiped everything and the problem still exist... still can see files with file managers in phone and when connected to computer, autorun shows only internal card...
Edit: I tried now 2gb sized sdcard and it works perfectly... the problem is with 16gb card.

Weird. Did you try another USB-port?

I tried different USB-s now and still same I found out that when I connect the phone, under my computer appears two removable disks.... if I turn on the usb connection, only one transforms to usable removable disk (internal) and the other one asks to insert the removable disk. I used the same sd card on my HTC desire with CM nightlies and it worked perfectly... could it be CM-s bug?

Sorry to ask (maby the obvious)
On Your phone.. using your filemanager (Root explorer astro or what-ever..)
Browse to sdcard
Do you have a folder called _externalSD?
On this phone, for some reason the external SD is not mounted under./ but as i said under ./sdcard/ (i.e its mounted under the internal SD card..)
Just a thought

Where the different cards are mounted doesn't make any difference. And as he said, it works with other cards (2GB and 4GB).
CyanogenMOD mounts internal card as /mnt/emmc, and external card as /mnt/sdcard by default.
When turning on USB storage, both cards should be unmounted and shared over USB.

Hi, I had the same problem with mine, and as you said in one of your previous posts, I had to do a format through the phone and as soon as I did that I was good to go.
I did use the same memory card in my old hero so this might have something to do with it... I'm not sure.

By formatting do you mean from the menu Erase SD card? On the desire I actually had the formatting request from the computer, but there was another problem (some of the rom's files were on the sdcards ext or something and I had no access to the card from the USB).... kind of a similar problem if I think back now but after changing to CM, the problem disappeared.

I forgot to mention I am running completely stock rom and unrooted (for the time being) and there is just an option under sd card & phone storage setting to format external sd card

After erasing the sd card from the phone, the computer recognized it i'm currently copying stuff back and i'm pretty sure it does not affect the recognition

I faced the same problem. I had Swapper2 on my NC, and after I uninstalled it (and cleared the data of Swapper2, just in case) everything went to normal back again.
^ a solution.

Micro SD Card Data Recovery?

So.... I always backup my things, but my friend not so much and well all the sudden he was asking me why there where hardly any pictures in his gallery. Well the micro sd card was not being detected so I put another in and it reads it fine.
Also put the Micro SD Card into my PC nothing at all even under storage devices, it detects the adapter is plugged in but as if there was no card in the SD to micro sd adapter. Also placed it in several other phones nothing like its dead.
I`m not getting the error like people have where the card is detected but corrupted, This card reads not at all! If it was "courpted" I have data recovery software for that ive used for people in the past, but this card seems dead.
Anything I can do? It has a ton of family pics etc on it which cannot be got back. I know the data is most likely there as there has been no physical damage to the card or even the phone.
I have also tried cleaning the cards contacts.
Any suggestions? Its a 8GB Samsung Micro SD card.

Hello. I suggest Recuva ( https://www.piriform.com/recuva ). Run it with your PC and use Admin rights. Deep scan your sdcard. You maybe able to recover files then, if the files themselves are readable and not corrupted. I have had these file corruption problems with cheap ebay sdcards wich at the end appeared to be fake/counterfeits.
I also suggest to format sdcard exFAT and run h2testw ( http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Miscellaneous/H2testw.shtml ) to sdcard with PC to see is your card faulty.
Sent from my GT-P5220 using XDA Free mobile app

You will need some specialist recovery software. We were recommended a program called ZAR. Other similar programs are available, but ZAR worked well for us and is free for this purpose.
Install ZAR, then insert the damaged SD card into your PC's card reader. Launch ZAR. (You may have to disable your PC's security software, in which case we recommend you also disable the internet connection).
When prompted, click the Image Recovery (Free) option. This will help you to recover photos from an SD card.
ZAR will now look for devices that are installed, and you need to point it to the offending SD card. Select the correct disk and click Next. ZAR will now analyze your SD card. This will take a few minutes.
Once this is complete you'll see a list of the recovered files. On most SD cards the chances are that clicking the 'Root' checkbox will select all the images. Click Next and you can then select the folder into which recovered files will be placed. By default, this will be the same as the folder you chose to save (so 'Root', in all likelihood).
One important point: you will be asked to select a destination folder for the recovered files. Make sure you choose one on your PC's hard disk and not back on to the corrupt SD card. The latter option will help you not one jot!
It will take a few minutes for the files to copy across. Once this is complete browse to the destination folder you selected. You should find most if not all of the files you wanted to rescue.