Phone won't save or download!

[larry1076]

Since I installed a SD card recently things are going so wrong!

I did drop my phone a couple times and it didn't have a case so I'm wondering perhaps something got messed up.

Issues:

* Cannot download any media from WhatsApp.

* Cannot save screenshots. It snaps and I can see a preview in the notifications. But it's gray blank in the gallery album.

* Can download PDF from email.

* Can download images from email.

Please help!!

 

[B. Diddy]

Is your phone on Marshmallow, and if so, did you format the card as Internal or Portable Storage?

 

[larry1076]

Yes I think marshmallow, android version 6 I have.

I believe it was formatted as internal. Is that the type where it can only be used on this particular device? That's the way it was formatted.

 

[B. Diddy]

Go to Settings>Storage and see how much total internal storage it reports. Post a screenshot when you get a chance.

If it was formatted as internal storage, that means it's Adoptable Storage, and has been encrypted to be used only on that device. The problem with Adoptable Storage is that if the card is corrupt or unreliable (or if the phone's implementation of Adoptable Storage is buggy), then you might have difficulties saving data to it.

 

[larry1076]

[IMG

 

[B. Diddy]

The card is definitely formatted as Internal Storage. It's also virtually full, but I would've thought the system would know to try saving those images to Internal Storage instead.

What shows up when you tap the overflow menu button at the upper right on that SanDisk SD Card screen?

 

[larry1076]

The card is not full! Look at the image of the details, it doesn't add up!

There's something wrong either with the card or with the phone. It's very erratic, sometimes I can download, sometimes not.

 

[larry1076]

What shows up when you tap the overflow menu button at the upper right on that SanDisk SD Card screen?

 

[larry1076]

Can I transfer everything from the SD card back to the phone, to try another SD card?

 

[B. Diddy]

Oh, I see what you're saying -- the Apps, Videos, Images, etc. that are listed don't total to 7.27 GB. Does it seem reasonable to you that the card is actually full (i.e., do you have a lot of apps or data stored on the phone in general), or does it seem erroneous? I'm wondering if the phone is incorrectly showing the card as full, or incorrectly showing the contents (i.e., underreporting the size of the Apps, Videos, Images, etc.).

I'm not entirely sure why the phone is giving you that problem. As I mentioned before, it's possible that the firmware's implementation of Adoptable Storage is buggy. I'm not sure if you can easily move everything back to SD either if the card was formatted as Internal Storage. If you choose that Format as Portable option, I believe that will wipe the card, so that's not a good idea.

 

[larry1076]

Good news! Downloaded this file manager (see attached) and was able to find 7GB(!) Of files which seemed like cache trash, and deleted it. See attached.

Just tried and able to download and save.

Any idea what those files are?

 

[B. Diddy]

IMAP refers to the email client. But I'm not sure what those files are for. They might be intended to be temporary, because if you use the IMAP server of an email provider, the email app shouldn't be downloading emails directly to the phone's storage -- it should just be syncing with the server.