SD Cards failing in Galaxy S3: Samsung's insane response.

[Robert White1]

I thought I'd share an interesting exchange I just had with Samsung support via chat. Three days ago, my S3 started having issues reading my SD card. I discovered that there seem to be dozens of forums (including this one) that are demonstrating this to be a widespread issue. Here is what Samsung has to say about it:

[/COLOR]

Hi there! I have a different perspective on your "problem" I work as an IT Systems engineer for a large transportation company and have seen more than anyone's share of zapped sd cards. I even personally experienced a failure of a SANDISK card I bought from a legitimate dealer and had it go bad after just adding ONE FILE to it. I contacted Sandsik company Tech support and in a matter of less than 2 minutes it was determined that this card was the "bomb" unit from China. It was called that as it "blows up" after the addition of a single file. There were many many more and just because one blows up in a device absolutely does not mean it's the fault of the device. I KNOW how these things work, and can tell you without reservation that it is not the problem with your device. I too, have a Samsung GS3 and find it to Electronically and mechanically be of sound design. Just because you THINK it's a problem with the phone and not your SDCard, does not make it a sound argument. There has been so many bad cards floating around that it's not funny. As I tell everyone I have had to help with SDCard recoveries, "Buy cheap - GET cheap" I had mine go bad but got a GENUINE replacement from the dealer with a credit on future purchase to boot!

Did you try to get your source to honor a warranty?

Bottom line dude, don't go bashing anyone or anything without getting all the facts from a source that has the knowledge to identify a problem.

You are absolutely and unequivocally wrong! 32gb class EXPENSIVE??? I have 3 64GB cards in 3 of our family's gs3's and none are, or have been destroyed by any of the phones.

 

[crester]

Is there anybody here having problems with SD cards that WERE NOT MADE BY SANDISK?

 

[AxlMyk]

How do i format my Sandisk 32g class 10 in exFAT? My PC is currently running Windows 7

Do it in the phone, or install a format program on the PC.



--Tapatalk on SGS3.

 

[LordAndroid]

Do it in the phone, or install a format program on the PC.



--Tapatalk on SGS3.

So the phone formats in exFAT?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk 2

 

[J Bergsma]

Having the same problem over and over again with 8 Gb Samsung Cl.4 SD and 32 Gb Adata Cl.4 SD. Sometimes after unmounted/damaged/etc. not working SD in Phone will work on computer or aren't being recognized at all. In Windows or other devices the card is than dead.

However so far with only the program Gparted in Gnu/Linux or the live-cd you can unmount the partition of the SD and repair the SD. The prblem here every time is: FILESYSTEM NEEDS TO BE ENLARGED TO FILL PARTITION COMPLETELY. After that repair the SD's work again every time. Only my Phone does the corrupting of filesystem SD-card, the cards never have problem in other devices.

Could there be the problem ?

Gparted report in Dutch:

Bestandssysteem (fat32) op /dev/sdb1 controleren en repareren 00:01:35 ( GESLAAGD )

/dev/sdb1 kalibreren 00:00:00 ( GESLAAGD )

pad: /dev/sdb1
begin: 2048
eind: 62332927
grootte: 62330880 (29.72 GiB)


bestandssysteem op /dev/sdb1 controleren op fouten en deze (indien mogelijk) repareren 00:00:08 ( GESLAAGD )

dosfsck -a -w -v /dev/sdb1

dosfsck 3.0.12 (29 Oct 2011)
dosfsck 3.0.12, 29 Oct 2011, FAT32, LFN
Checking we can access the last sector of the filesystem
Boot sector contents:
System ID "mkdosfs"
Media byte 0xf8 (hard disk)
512 bytes per logical sector
16384 bytes per cluster
32 reserved sectors
First FAT starts at byte 16384 (sector 32)
2 FATs, 32 bit entries
7798784 bytes per FAT (= 15232 sectors)
Root directory start at cluster 2 (arbitrary size)
Data area starts at byte 15613952 (sector 30496)
1946887 data clusters (31897796608 bytes)
32 sectors/track, 64 heads
0 hidden sectors
62330880 sectors total
Reclaiming unconnected clusters.
Checking free cluster summary.
/dev/sdb1: 12615 files, 495884/1946887 clusters


bestandssysteem vergroten tot de partitie geheel is opgevuld 00:01:27 ( GESLAAGD )

met gebruik van libparted

 

[GS4Bob]

When I connect my Sandisk 64gb card to my Win7 PC and choose format, it says default is exFat format.
So, it should not be an issue to get it formatted into exFat with Win7.

 

[Matt Hochberger]

Have a 16GB GS3 & bought 2 Kingston 16GB in August of last year. Have been using one in my T3i and one in my GS3. SD card just died randomly overnight in my GS3. Is the consensus that the GS3 is frying them?

 

[GS4Bob]

Have a 16GB GS3 & bought 2 Kingston 16GB in August of last year. Have been using one in my T3i and one in my GS3. SD card just died randomly overnight in my GS3. Is the consensus that the GS3 is frying them?

Issues with the S4 as well........
http://forums.androidcentral.com/sa...-s4-micro-sd-card-unmounting-during-boot.html

 

[GageHansen@gmail.com]

I have a card that is not produced by Scandisc and I have the same problem. This is most definitely a problem with the SIII.

 

[GS4Bob]

I have the GS4 and have both a Sandisk and Kingston 64gb; both have random "Damaged sdcard" at boot. Simple fix is to manual "mount" the sdcard problem solved.

 

[Andrew Anderson3]

I have just experienced a related problem with a 2GB SD card from and old Blackberry that I've been using quite happily in my S3 for a few months. Long story short - a bunch of photos disappeared but I was able to get them out of a folder on the SD card called LOST.DIR. Just put the card into a laptop and renamed all the lost files to add .jpg extension.

Not quite as serious as losing everything and being unable to recover, but may have a similar root cause, i.e. the S3 doing irrational things to the SD card.

 

[ruel692002]

Thank you very much "burntorange" great but so simple solution.more power to you!!!...

 

[Brandon puntin]

Sdhc cards have a drive image beginning at partition 0 by default some Android phones ie: g2 my touch search for partition 1 since there is no position 1 I does not seea storage Device either flash new image on card or buy one of the more expensive SanDisk cards

 

[Vincent Doire]

Can't find how to delete this post...

 

[TORZIENJIM]

Is there anybody here having problems with SD cards that WERE NOT MADE BY SANDISK?

yes, ME!

I have a uk GT-I9300 which had a verbatim class4 card in. I noticed that the phone wasrandomly mounting/dismounting the card, The thing that switched me onto it was he deletion of my playlists that had been created in the phone....a few weeks later, the card was dead.

anyway, I sent it for repair to Sammy and a few days later it was returned and they had replaced the 'Motherboard'....

so I went and purchased a samsung 32gb sdhc class10....this card is currently in my phone, and currently deleting playlists and dismounting.

I will be contacting samsung again shortly through every social media avenue I can think of until I get a result. It is a joke that they won't own up to this one and issue a fix.

Edit: Verbatim was class 4 not 10

 

[Calpulz]

Just thought i would share my experience. Bought a Sandisk 32GB class 4 micro sdcard about 8 months ago for my S3. Worked fine for about 3 months, then started unmounting itself and crashing until finally it died and was no longer readable by any of the card readers i tried or any of the other phones i tried it in. Well i put it aside and forgot about it until today. Decided to look up to see if there was any news on the problem and found this thread. For the shear hell of it i tried plugging in the micro sdcard in to my card reader again to see if it had magically fixed itself after 5 months. Well it didn't work and still refused to show up in windows. So quite angrily, i rapidly pushed the card in and out of the sdcard slot about 20 times until i hear the magical windows "dun dun". Windows started detecting the SD card again and to my surprise, all my data was still on the card. Ive now backed up all the data on the card, reformatted the card and now its working fine again in my Galaxy S3.

I have no idea what the problem was but its now working again. First thoughts was maybe dirty contacts, but the contacts were in pristine condition so maybe a loose connection but then i have experienced the same problems as the douses of other Galaxy S3 users. Maybe the rapid sdcard access request by windows kicked it back into life? Well if anyone else has given up on there card, give it a try. Rapidly f*ck your micro sdcard reader slot with your micro sdcard and see if windows detects it again

 

[mpkeith29]

Might just as well add my experience to the list: 3 phones all SPH-L710. 3 different 32gb sd cards 2 Sandisk (purchased at same time) and one PNY new and used for about 2 months.
Phone 1 Fiancee's"original" (purchased within 6 months of release) Sandisk 32gb never once had a problem. This phone has suffered through numerous drops, tosses, and throws, and one cracked and replaced screen. Not rooted.

Phone 2 purchased October 2012 I dropped and cracked the screen. Not a big drop just landed on the corner of something and hit right next to the button. I am fairly certain the card started to fail after the drop with occasional SD card removed unexpectedly messages, but I can't be 100% certain as it happened close together. Rooted stock.

Phone 3 refurb replacement phone through Best Buy in April. Brand new PNY card failed in the middle of the night 2 days ago, no messages or indications of problems. I woke up last Wednesday to see the SD card removed unexpectedly and the card was dead. CM10.1.0 (stable)

The dead cards are not detected whatsoever in a phone or PC. If I put one in my ASUS tf300t it detects the card and says Blank SD card inserted, blank card or unsupported file format. I can try to format it, but it comes back with the same message about 1 second later, obviously the card did not format. The card doesn't show through mount command in terminal either, so there's no way to access the card to reformat it that way.

I can put a known working SD card into my phone (phone 3) and it detects it and works fine with no immediate r/w or other storage errors, although I do not leave it in the phone for long.

Maybe the build quality of the S3 (and apparently Note 2 and S4) has dropped as production took off? Since the Sandisk cards were purchased at the same time and one is fine and the other died it doesn't make sense to blame the cards. The PNY card failed faster than the Sandisk cards did anyhow. Sounds to me like a under/over voltage or other sort of short problem. First stop will be Best Buy to try to get a replacement phone, if that fails I'll get a replacement card, try adding layers of tape to seat the card a little better and hope for the best.

If I could I'd switch to anything but a Samsung...

 

[Terre]

yes i am having a problem with my samsung 8gb card i think it's fried

 

[mlauzon]

He/She/It just started to trouble shoot and you cut them off. Seems you are the one that's insane and not willing to try and figure out what the issue is.

That is such a stupid statement! I've hung-up, if on a phone, or closed chat if on the Web when I've gotten similar statements like he posted:

Sherard S: We haven't seen this kind of issue with any of our customers. Please do not trust the information which you find in a third party website or forum. The information which is posted in forums or third party website is fake. Those website's or forums or not controlled by Samsung. Due to this, anyone can post anything in those websites/forums.

And, I've got a background in IT, so if I can't figure it out, turning to tech "support" is only taken as a final step!

 

[mlauzon]

The problem is apparently a SanDisk one, and they've acknowledged it:

http://forums.androidcentral.com/sa...cops-malfunctioning-micro-sds-galaxy-s3s.html

Edit ha just found this and it quotes this thread SanDisk cops to malfunctioning Micro SDs in Galaxy S3s ? The Register ITS SANDISK NOT THE PHONE you can try to still argue its the phone but for a corprate giant to admit something like that there must be an issue as normally they will argue it to the end. But my suggestion still says buy sammy cards there made for the phone then if it messes up you can call Samsung and argue your case easily, as either way its there stuff messing up.

Just had my 32GB card suddenly go "missing" in my S3, so I popped it out, mounted it on PC and zipping it for safe-keeping. Went hunting on a possible issue/fix and ran across this forum, as well as the link below. I'm not sure what brand my card is, till my zip is complete, but I find it interesting that many posts out in the WWW say to use SanDisk, and then this:

Samsung Galaxy S3 fault is caused by SanDisk memory cards | CNET UK

SanDisk Responsible for Malfunctioning Galaxy S3 Micro-SD Cards

SanDisk is the one stating the issue is their fault, they recognize it and are fixing the issue.

You four just don't seem to get it, it's not just SanDisk cards it's happening to, if you actually bothered to read the thread, then you'd know that, so it is an issue with the S3!

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There's one thing I haven't seen mentioned in 3 pages of this thread, the easiest way to get Samsung to admit it's at fault is to sue them, and there's enough people all over for a class action lawsuit!