Galaxy S4: Micro SD Card Corruption Issues

[judyjuju]

i recently bought my daughter an s4 mini and a 32 gig samsung micro sd class 10 and within a month she was having problems with corrupted pics and videos i have formatted the card and now it wont store anything and there are files still showing on the card with strange characters as the file names i have tried everythting i can think of and although it shows the storage space on the card in the memory tab it wont let her move anything to it or store any new items i think the card has had it !!

 

[NUFC12]

I transferred my wife's photos, all 1320 of them from the phone to the Micro SD card using the built in transfer option.

Every single one of them was corrupt. I thought I had lost them all but then I realised they would have backed up to Google+.

I downloaded them from Google+ onto my laptop and using a Micro SD card adaptor I transferred them back onto the memory card. 90% of them transferred ok and I can view them on the phone but the other 10% are corrupt. They open fine on the computer. ANNOYING!

I wont be getting a samsung

 

[monsieurms]

Im having the same issue im on the phone with samsung as we speak and I gave them the link to this thread so hopefully they will look into the issue n something will come from it. I have the note 3 with a brand new samsung 64gb sd card class 10 I believe. I also have another brand 64gb sd card and they are both having the same issue

All I can say is that I have two 128gb cards, one in an S4, and one in a Note 10.1

They both work perfectly. There have been no issues.

May I add that in that same Galaxy Note 10.1,when I flipped an old 64gb card into it on acquisition, it didn't work. I had to reformat the card in the tablet to get it to work. By contrast, when I recently got a new 128gb, it immediately worked perfectly. In an Amazon review I quoted somewhere, a poster said that SanDisk was aware of issues with the cards and Samsung, and had issued a rom patch in new cards to cover the problems.

I lack the expertise or first-hand knowledge to say. But as an anecdote and as noted, I had to reformat my old, used 64gb in the tablet whereas I just plugged in the brand new 128gb without doing any of that... and no problems.

Of course, part of the issue might also be that the 64gb was used in an older device before I popped it into the Galaxy Note 10.1, and the 128gb was unused and completely new. All I can do is relate the anecdote.

 

[AhmetA]

I had a similar problem with my S3 and S4.
With S3, SanDisk 32GB Class 10 card burned, but no problem with Kingston 16GB Class4 card.
I replaced my S3 with S4, and continued using 16GB card, still no problem. It shows all the pictures, play music files, and I can move apps to SD card.
I recently got a Samsung 64GB Class 10 card. When I transferred my photos and music files to new card, everything was OK initially. The next day I tried to play music, none of the music files were there, they were deleted. I copied them again, first it said this music file type is not recognizable, then it deleted all music files.
At least pictures were OK. But after about 10 days, recent pictures (about 10 of them) I took got corrupted. First it showed the pictures, next day it showed a few of them corrupted. Next, it showed all 10 of them corrupted. Luckily, pictures were already backed up in google.
So, this is a Samsung card and I still got the same problems.
I'm using the 16GB card again, and no problems. When I had the S3, I read that the problem was with Class 10 speed. Class 4 was slower and S3 did not have problem with that. May be it is something similar for S4. But largest class 4 card is 32GB.
Did anybody have the corruption issue with Class 4 cards?

 

[Bigdad10]

Re: Micro SD Card Corruption Issues

While not on an S4, my S3 had the same issue a couple of months ago. Was on vacation and while taking pictures, it told me my sd card had been dismounted. Tried another card and it was fine, ended up having to use a recovery program to save my pictures that were on the sd card. After recovering files, formatted card and it has worked fine since.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using AC Forums mobile app

What recovery program did u use?

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Carla Sadlier]

My files don't corrupt but the SD I can't run any apps or anything from the SD card. I really is useless to even have the SD card in my S4 phone or my Galaxy tab 2 tablet. I am trying to figure out how to use the SD card for any purpose.

 

[KevroniCoal]

I had a similar problem with my S3 and S4.
With S3, SanDisk 32GB Class 10 card burned, but no problem with Kingston 16GB Class4 card.
I replaced my S3 with S4, and continued using 16GB card, still no problem. It shows all the pictures, play music files, and I can move apps to SD card.
I recently got a Samsung 64GB Class 10 card. When I transferred my photos and music files to new card, everything was OK initially. The next day I tried to play music, none of the music files were there, they were deleted. I copied them again, first it said this music file type is not recognizable, then it deleted all music files.
At least pictures were OK. But after about 10 days, recent pictures (about 10 of them) I took got corrupted. First it showed the pictures, next day it showed a few of them corrupted. Next, it showed all 10 of them corrupted. Luckily, pictures were already backed up in google.
So, this is a Samsung card and I still got the same problems.
I'm using the 16GB card again, and no problems. When I had the S3, I read that the problem was with Class 10 speed. Class 4 was slower and S3 did not have problem with that. May be it is something similar for S4. But largest class 4 card is 32GB.
Did anybody have the corruption issue with Class 4 cards?

The card I used was a Sandisk 32GB Class 4, which didn't work out with my phone.

(I just typed out the longest comment ever, and accidentally backed out instead of clicking send , so this is a very short version of what I wanted to say!)

I used an application on my computer, h2testw, to test my 32GB card. The results were that the card was apparently corrupt/not legit, and could only carry ~1.8GB instead of the full 32GB. I think this was either due to me buying a fake card in the first place, OR from the possibility that my phone could have corrupted the card in some way to make it hold only 2GB.

Interesingly, I tried testing an 8GB Sandisk SD card that I was pretty darn sure was corrupt and held only 4GB. The results for this card showed that it was completely fine! I'm currently using it in my camera, and have never tried it on my phone in the fear of it becoming corrupt in some way.

I'm thinking: perhaps if I were to let my 32GB sit around for a long time without being used, just maybe it could be 'resurrected' like this 8GB...?

 

[monsieurms]

My files don't corrupt but the SD I can't run any apps or anything from the SD card. I really is useless to even have the SD card in my S4 phone or my Galaxy tab 2 tablet. I am trying to figure out how to use the SD card for any purpose.

There are some apps that will install some large data files there (Kindle, for instance; although not the actual ebooks), but the emerging informal rule seems to be that the cards are largely for storgage of large files, like Mp3s and the like.

 

[Paul Hughes2]

I have just lost the entire contents of my sd card on my Galaxy S4. It suddenly says the card is blank. Tried to inspect it in various other machines...nothing BUT when I use ES file explorer the whole directory structure is there and there are thumbnails available of my images. Unfortunately as I used samsung kies to back up the phone before receiving a new s4 on 1-8-14 I didn't realise it didn't fully back up the sd card. This means I have lost all my images for the past 3 months as I only do 1/4ly backups of the card.

Very annoying.

How the hell can ES file explorer still see the directory structure if the S4 is saying the card is blank????

I have also had individual file corruption of images but never really paid attention to it as it was only the odd image

 

[krue1free]

Yes my phone over heated then I started have this problem. I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 its about a year old. Recently when I take pictures with it, they last for about 10minutes. Auto Backup seems to recover most of them. Then an icon appears (black square with an icon in the middle) some times I see a, "Data lost message". I have a Scandisk ultra 64gb card. This is where I store most of my pictures. I am thinking some how this card has become corrupted.

I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 its about a year old. Recently when I take pictures with it, they last for about 10minutes. Auto Backup seems to recover most of them. Then an icon appears (black square with an icon in the middle) some times I see a, "Data lost message". I have a Scandisk ultra 64gb card. This is where I store most of my pictures. I am thinking some how this card has become corrupted.

 

[DanPackMan]

Re: Micro SD Card Corruption Issues

If your card appears to be corrupt, stop using it immediately or risk losing more data. Try to open on a PC & copy files. If that doesn't work on the first try, use one of the data recovery tools suggested in this thread to recover as much of your data as possible.

Once you have recovered data, the card may still be useable. Use a partition tool like Mini-Tool Partition wizard to delete all partitions on the card, then create a new one. Then do a "full" (not quick) reformat of the card. You may find the card works just fine in most devices, even if it is problematic in your phone/tablet.

I have started getting in the habit of doing a full reformat of new cards before using them in our Samsung tablets and phones after initially suffering corruption. So far, so good.

 

[Paul Hughes2]

Re: Micro SD Card Corruption Issues

I don't know what to do with this...

My 64gb micro SD card somehow unmounted from my Samsung Galaxy S4. I just had it sitting there idle, went to pick it up and it said the card was unmounted. I went to the settings to connect the card and the mount option was greyed out. So, I turned then phone off, then back on, I even pulled the battery a couple times and it is still greyed out. I then tried to put the card in my laptop. It won't even show up in the My Computer menu. Has the card gone bad? Any thoughts? Thanks!

This is exactly the fault I have. Card has been fine until I fitted it to my new S4 on 1-8-2014 and a few days ago it blanked

 

[Airon_Prado]

Re: Micro SD Card Corruption Issues

Hello!

I'm having the same issue on my girlfriend's brand new S4!!!
She has a Samsung SDHC 32Gb Class 10.
Her model is GT-I9515L (Value Edition, the only diference: already comes with Android 4.4.2, "L" for Latin America)

The strange thing is: I have a S4 too! (GT-I9505) With the same model Samsung SDHC 32Gb Class 10, and everything works just fine! I have it for 1 year and never had any corruption at all!

I tried putting her SD Card on my phone, and... SURPRISE... no problem..

Later i'll try to use my SD Card on her phone.

 

[lafountain]

Re: Micro SD Card Corruption Issues

What recovery program did u use?

Posted via Android Central App

Hadn't been on the forums in a while and just saw this.

If you still are wondering, I used recuva

 

[CathyK13]

Does anyone know of an app or software that can get these pictures back? Desperate to have the photos I lost because of this. Thanks.

 

[lafountain]

Does anyone know of an app or software that can get these pictures back? Desperate to have the photos I lost because of this. Thanks.

If you are referring to the sd card, I used so program called recuva using a card reader on my computer and got back just about everything.

 

[Kevin OFlynn]

Sorry to hear you got the same problems!
But I'll be sure to try out what you're doing! To avoid most of my files becoming corrupt, I've been using Dropbox and Google+ to upload my pictures and videos as I take them. This works most of the time; but on a couple of occasions, some photos got corrupt before the uploading finished, so some of the files turn out corrupt online. A downside to uploading is that sharing the photos is hard (using links) and that the pictures seem to lose their quality (for Dropbox at least - I haven't yet checked up on the files on Google+). So doing what you're doing is probably the better method of saving files for now.

I love the S4 in so many ways - it's a spectacular phone and all. But this SD card problem is just getting annoying, which a problem like this shouldn't be happening on such a high end, new (not necessarily new now, but still haha) phone...

Oh, and I posted a thread a while ago about this problem when I first experienced it. Someone mentioned their music files also becoming corrupt. I myself haven't had this problem since I never sent music to my SD card. [Which has me ask: do you know if other files (like pdfs, .docx, etc) also become corrupt? I never tried these file types either]

[Is there a way to link that thread to this one to see it here (and vice versa)?]

Thank you for your reply! I'm hoping we can find a solution to this issue.

Posted via Android Central App

I'm having exactly the same problem with my (new) S3. Lost a whole days photos of the poppies at the tower of London. Pretty upset. I'm about to do the same thing - save them to the phone and then copy across via laptop / external hard drive. Annoyed as I purposely bought a 64gb card especially to handle the amount of photos I take. Anyone found a better solution?

 

[Kevin Willson]

I have a class 10 card and it is a complete loss. Wont format, wont read in S4 or computer. This is the 2nd card to toast in a year. Class doesn't mean Schmidt.

 

[Gayle P]

About 2 months ago my pictures suddenly began to disappear from my phone also. I have tried 3 different SD cards with the same results. Tonight, I took a short video of a band performance and it was corrupted before I ever had a chance to view or back it up. grrrr.... my iphone never had these problems. My phone is less than a year old and basically has ZERO camera functionality because it keep deleting them.

 

[doxiesrock912]

I have had the exact progression of issues and coincidentally, this is also with a brand new 64gb 10 Class Samsung Micro SD Pro card. This the second card with this issue, the first being a ScanDisk.

First, I started seeing weird icons where some pictures should have been in one of the folders that I created in the gallery. Yet, I could still see the actual thumbnails correctly. Shortly after noticing this, the thumbnails disappeared and so did the entire "camera" folder in the gallery.

I hooked the phone to the PC and wasn't able to find the camera folder so off to the Samsung kiosk at Best Buy. Their rep didn't offer a reason, but he did "flash" the firmware on the phone and the camera folder reappeared without any of the pictures that I'd taken. The corrupt file icon is still in the other folder that I created, so flashing the firmware didn't resolve the issue. He assured me that the pictures were recoverable but told me that he wasn't allowed to attach my micro sd card to his computer.

I've spent 2 days trying to find a solution, most of it on the phone with Samsung (ticket # 2130661933). That was the most recent ticket number because previous reps kept losing my call and since Samsung won't allow their employees to give you a call back number for them if the call is lost, you have to start from scratch.

As with the previous post, my issues began over a period of time and ended with only recent photos being corrupted. One rep blamed non-Samsung cards. Clearly not applicable in my case. Another rep from the remote access department actually admitted that the GS4 hardware is not fully compatible with Kitkat which needs a more beefed up phone (S5) in order to run efficiently,

Needless to say, I got nowhere with Samsung and ZAR and chkdisk weren't able to recover the photos that are damaged. Verizon is sending me another S4, but if that has Kitkat installed, I'm SOL.

Please, PLEASE escalate all issues to Samsung (feel free to reference my ticket number) as well as the carrier because they obviously don't share information or aren't truly interested in fixing the problem. I'd also like to know if someone finds a solution.
Thanks and good luck to everyone.