SD card causing phone to shut off

[meyerweb#CB]

This is one I haven't seen before. I've got a Sandisk 64GB SD card, formatted as FAT32. It seemed to work fine for a while, but a couple of days ago I noticed my phone was randomly shutting off (NOT rebooting, just turning off) multiple times during the day. At first, I thought it was some configuration change or app I had installed, so I did a factory reset and restore from a known good nandroid backup. The problem continued.

Yesterday evening, I took the SD card out to put into my PC and make a backup (much faster than going through the USB cable). I didn't get around to putting the card back in the phone right away, and it occurred to me later that the phone hadn't shut down in a while. So I left the card out over night, and all morning. No shut downs. So after lunch today, I put the card back in. Bang. Within 15 minutes or so, the phone shut down.

Thinking it might be a corrupt file, I reformatted the card in the phone. Nope. It just shut down again, with no files on it at all.

Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[gollum18]

This is one I haven't seen before. I've got a Sandisk 64GB SD card, formatted as FAT32. It seemed to work fine for a while, but a couple of days ago I noticed my phone was randomly shutting off (NOT rebooting, just turning off) multiple times during the day. At first, I thought it was some configuration change or app I had installed, so I did a factory reset and restore from a known good nandroid backup. The problem continued.

Yesterday evening, I took the SD card out to put into my PC and make a backup (much faster than going through the USB cable). I didn't get around to putting the card back in the phone right away, and it occurred to me later that the phone hadn't shut down in a while. So I left the card out over night, and all morning. No shut downs. So after lunch today, I put the card back in. Bang. Within 15 minutes or so, the phone shut down.

Thinking it might be a corrupt file, I reformatted the card in the phone. Nope. It just shut down again, with no files on it at all.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Wow, that is weird. I have never heard of that happening either. Perhaps you could try formatting it to two 32 gig partitions, instead of one 64? I know that the S3 only officially supports up to 32GB sdcards, so perhaps that suggestion may work. I would say to format your card to ext4, as it supports massive amounts of storage (like 2PB or something around there, don't know officail #), but from the sounds of things your running Windows on your PC, so thats a no go.

Otherwise, you might try a Samsung sdcard, I know they run in the s3 with no problems. I still stand by my theory of Samsung hardcoding something into the phone to kill non-samsung sds of specific sizes. Did you try formatting the card in Windows and then sticking it in your phone.

As far as I know, the sd doesn't have sufficient permissions to invoke a shutdown request, as something like that has to be invoked using root permissions. I'd hate to suggest it but it could be a hardware failure, probably with that shoddy sd slot. It is barely held on there with something similar to tack welds.

 

[meyerweb#CB]

Unfortunately, the GS3 doesn't really support exFAT. There seem to be a number of other members here using 64GB cards formatted as FAT32, so it seems it should work. And yes, I did format it in Windows initially. I just put an old 16 GB card in, so we'll see if I have a similar problem with that one. If so, you thought that it's a hardware issue would seem to be a good bet. If not, I think I'll contact Sandisk and ask them to replace the card.

 

[gollum18]

Unfortunately, the GS3 doesn't really support exFAT. There seem to be a number of other members here using 64GB cards formatted as FAT32, so it seems it should work. And yes, I did format it in Windows initially. I just put an old 16 GB card in, so we'll see if I have a similar problem with that one. If so, you thought that it's a hardware issue would seem to be a good bet. If not, I think I'll contact Sandisk and ask them to replace the card.

Oh I know, I didn't mean exFat I meant ext4, it's a Linux Filesystem that is lightyear's ahead of anything Windows has ever developed, but since you have a windows computer, you wouldnt be able to use it. Yeah that would be a good chioce before letting me blame your hardware. I hadn't thought about the card being defective.

 

[Ricky Babalu]

This is one I haven't seen before. I've got a Sandisk 64GB SD card, formatted as FAT32. It seemed to work fine for a while, but a couple of days ago I noticed my phone was randomly shutting off (NOT rebooting, just turning off) multiple times during the day. At first, I thought it was some configuration change or app I had installed, so I did a factory reset and restore from a known good nandroid backup. The problem continued.

Yesterday evening, I took the SD card out to put into my PC and make a backup (much faster than going through the USB cable). I didn't get around to putting the card back in the phone right away, and it occurred to me later that the phone hadn't shut down in a while. So I left the card out over night, and all morning. No shut downs. So after lunch today, I put the card back in. Bang. Within 15 minutes or so, the phone shut down.

Thinking it might be a corrupt file, I reformatted the card in the phone. Nope. It just shut down again, with no files on it at all.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Try reformatting the card on a PC instead of phone for a proper reformat.
SD Formatter

 

[meyerweb#CB]

The initial format of the card was in a PC. Since it was causing me problems that way, I decided to try reformatting it in the phone.

 

[GSDer]

I reformatted the card in the phone.

When you reformatted the 64GB SDCard in the phone I'm pretty certain that it defaulted to ext4. I used to have a screenshot showing the format information but this topic came up so seldom I finally ditched it.

I assume that you just recently bought this 64GB card, so it should have whatever fixes SanDisk put in after the initial fiasco that the S3 had with SanDisk cards. I bought one right when the S3 came out and had nothing but trouble with it. I had tried encrypting the SDCard and for no obvious reason it got corrupted and was never recoverable, either on the phone or on a PC.

I can't say that I've read anything about an SDCard causing the phone to shut down. A short in the SDCard subsystem could do that if the card were moving around, but if the phone was just sitting there doing nothing that would be rather unlikely.

Keep us posted - the ongoing saga of the S3 and SDCards continues.

Sent from my rooted, debloated, deodexed Sinclair ZX-80 running CM -0.001 using Tapatalk 4

 

[meyerweb#CB]

You're right, the phone did revert it to exFAT. I assumed it would leave the current file system intact. I'll reformat it to FAT32 again and see what happens. So far, no reboots with the 16 GB card, but it hasn't been in very long. Also right that this card is brand new, so I assume it doesn't have the problem the older ones had. I haven't had any issues with the card failing, or unmounting itself, or corrupting data. Just turning the phone off at random intervals. Even while it's just sitting on my desk doing nothing.

If it keeps doing it after a fresh format, I'll have to set up some logging to see what happens just before it shuts down.

 

[meyerweb#CB]

Well, it gets even stranger.

With the old 16GB card installed, I had no problems. I copied most of the files that were on the 64 GB card (skipping some large videos) onto the 16, and ran it in the phone without any problems at all.

This morning, I reformatted the 64Gig card on my PC, as FAT 32, and stuck it in the phone without any files. The phone ran fine all day, without shutting down at all. So half an hour ago I copied all the same files that are on the 16 Gig card onto the 64, and put it back in the phone. Now the phone is shutting down again. I scanned the card for errors on the PC and it found nothing wrong, so I have no idea what's going on.

 

[GSDer]

Ah, bugger it all!
I'm willing to bet that if you had a non-SanDisk 32GB card and put all of that stuff on, it would work fine (after my 64GB SanDisk card crapped out I bought a 32GB Samsung card and have had no problems).
Heck, if Samsung makes a 64GB card THAT might even work fine.
I do believe that there's some compatibility problem with the S3 and various SDCard manufacturers, but SanDisk has taken the brunt of it.

Sent from my rooted, debloated, deodexed Sinclair ZX-80 running CM -0.001 using Tapatalk 4

 

[AxlMyk]

Just formatting the card with a PC isn't correct. There are SD format programs that do it properly.

Google "SD formatter" for several.

--Tapatalk on SGS3.

 

[Ricky Babalu]

Just formatting the card with a PC isn't correct. There are SD format programs that do it properly.

Google "SD formatter" for several.

--Tapatalk on SGS3.

See Post #5

 

[AxlMyk]

See Post #5

I did already. But there is no indication an SD format program has been used. So I repeated it.


--Tapatalk on SGS3.

 

[meyerweb#CB]

I did use 3rd party software to format the card as FAT32. Interestingly, after the last reformat, it seemed to work fine for a while. Then it started to reboot randomly. The exact same set of files copies to a 16GB card causes no problem at all (other than not having room for more files).

I've returned the card to Amazon for refund. I'm not sure whether I'll try a different 64GB card, or just settle for a 32.

 

[gravman]

I've been having this same issue, not with a Samsung phone, but with an HTC Amaze running CyanogenMod. I also have a sandisk 64GB ultra micro sd card bought on Amazon in June. My random shut downs only started in the last couple days so I'm not sure if it's the card or some incompatibility with the most recent CyanogenMod nightly. When the card is out, no shut downs. When the card is in... shut downs. And it is SO frustrating because it happens randomly, but frequently right in the middle of writing a text.

 

[meyerweb#CB]

Try copying all the files on the card to a computer, and then reformatting the card. It's possible the file structure is corrupted. I don't know why that would cause a shut down, but it's worth a try.

 

[francescos1]

samsung s5 brand new shutting down due to a currupt sd card ... Figured it out just as the other person posted his experience

 

[Stiles9190]

I have the same problem..but when i put another sd card the phone works fine..no shutting down whatsoever...
but in my case..i also tried to use my OTG DT microduo 16G to my phone..then bam..shut down...its no even entirely in..like at the very tip of my OTG..Weird..i tried it 5 time again...everytime..same result...
anyone know about this? my OTG was fine on every other phone..there must be an explaination to this?

my phone was lenovo a238t android 2.3.5

 

[Ndubueze Awa]

Had the same problem with my redmi 2.I simply tossed the memory card away and my phone has been fine since then