Computer won't open pictures from phone when connected via USB - says memory corrupt

cantooz

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I wasn't sure whether this is more a general help question or whether it is something related to my specific device so I have put it here for now, but please move it and accept my apologies if I have chosen the wrong forum.

I have a Samsung Galaxy S running 2.2 from Rogers (in Canada) that I have unlocked and am currently using in Australia. The 2.2 upgrade was done when I was with Rogers and I have not rooted the device or anything like that. Over the last few weeks, I have had problems when I connect my phone to a computer (similar with both Macs and PCs). The PC does not give any particular error message, but my most recent photos and videos do not open. When I connect it to my Mac (something that I have done many times before without issue), I get a message that the "disk" (i.e. my phone's memory) is corrupt and that I should format as soon as possible. It also says that I will be able to open up files from the device but that I won't be able to save anything to it. Unfortunately, I am also unable to open any of my recent photos and videos on here. Just to make me more confused though, I haven't had any issues with my phone being unstable or anything and all of my media opens fine on the device. I can email pictures from the phone and open the files on my computer without any trouble.

So a few questions:
- What is going on and how serious is it?
- If this is a serious issue and I do need to format the device, can I somehow back everything up? (Sorry, the last time I was up on this technology was in the Palm days when you could just backup to an memory card... nice and easy!)
- Is there anything I can do to prevent this type of thing from happening in the future?

Thank you very much for the help!
 

srkmagnus

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It sounds like the memory card is corrupt and may require a re-format. Can you access the files from the phone with a File Manager? If you can I'd suggest backing the most important files to services like Dropbox and re-format the sd card. You can retrieve the backup files from your computer if necessary.

What type of SD Card do you have?
 

RHChan84

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Do you have an adapter for that memory card? if so, try it. But if not then you would need to access it from your phone and back it up. Then reformat.
 

cantooz

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Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear or maybe I'm just confused. The memory card (assuming we're talking about the removable little SD card) seems fine. I believe that my pictures are stored on the phone itself. I have used the memory card in a memory card reader and I can access things on that without problems.
 

greydarrah

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Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear or maybe I'm just confused. The memory card (assuming we're talking about the removable little SD card) seems fine. I believe that my pictures are stored on the phone itself. I have used the memory card in a memory card reader and I can access things on that without problems.

Unless you have specifically told the phone to do otherwise, it should be storing any images you take on the sd card in the DCIM directory. You can download Astro (a file manager) and look. I'd suggest plugging up to you pc, copy all the files from the sd card to your pc hard drive, then unplug and from the phone (not from the pc), format the sd card. Then plug back into the pc and copy all the data back to the card.

I believe the errors you are getting are related to the sd card, not the phones memory. If you have another sd card, you could just try to put it on your phone, take a picture, then plug into the pc to see if you still have the problem.
 

srkmagnus

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Look for the DCIM folder through the reader and see if the pictures are there. You can also remove the SD Card from the phone and try and pull up images. If no images come up, then they are on the card. I'm also not sure that you can save images onto the phones internal memory. I though this was reserved only for /data, meaning apps and such.
 

cantooz

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Thanks for all of the feedback. i tried removing the SD card and plugging my phone into the computer and I got the same error message as before. The pictures do not seem to be stored on this removable SD card and the SD card does not seem to have any issues being read.

Now that I look more on my phone though, I'm wondering whether I am getting confused by the "Internal SD card" part of the phone's memory that I had just been considering the phone's memory (but I now see that it lists its "Internal phone storage" as separate). When I have been mentioning the SD/memory card before, I have been referring to the external one.

So basically, the pictures are not on the external SD card at least. When I plug the phone in (without the external SD card), I still get the message about the disk being corrupt. Any further thoughts?
 

soy_estoy_2008

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Mar 4, 2011
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I'm having a similar problem with my Galaxy S Captivate (Rogers Canada). Photos taken with the camera appear to work fine on the phone itself (saved to the DCIM folder of the "internal SD card"), but when connected to my Windows PC via "mass storage" mode, Windows can not open the files and says they're corrupt.

If I try and copy a picture file to my PC, I get prompted with an error telling me "the parameter is incorrect", with error code 0x80070057.

Similar to the previous poster, I can send these files directly from my phone, via bluetooth for example. In addition, if I connect in "media player" mode, there is no problem, but the transfers are slow.

anyone have any ideas?
Cheers
 

cantooz

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Well I'm glad it isn't just me, at least! I am wondering whether this is a Rogers-related issue at all. Too bad I'm in Australia so I can't bug them to fix it for me! Interesting that media player mode works sort of... I hadn't tried that. I've been tempted to just bit the bullet and hard reset, but it looks like it is going to be a pain to re-install everything and who knows whether it will even fix the problem. Sorry I can't offer any more insight, but thanks for posting and letting me know it isn't just me.

I've subscribed to the thread so if anyone ever has any thoughts please post them.
 

soy_estoy_2008

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Thanks tropper for the advice. The problem seems to lie with the internal SD card, which can't be unmounted in the same way as far as I know, only formatted. I'd like to be able to simply copy over my files from the internal SD card to my PC, then format the internal SD card and copy the files back over....however, the issue is that these newly made camera files won't copy over to windows....

very frustrating! has anyone else run into this problem