Galaxy S4: Micro SD Card Corruption Issues

[Trent Bowman]

Im having an issue with a Sandisk ultra 64g card that I have had since May 2013, just recently, I can still read the card, but cannot modify the contents in any way either from my S4 or via computer, thankfully I havent lost anything but it looks like Im going to be up for a new card as this is well out of warranty unfortunately

 

[doxiesrock912]

I would upload them to google drive or whatever you can before you start to lose them. My issues occurred over time, I didn't lose pictures right away but when it started (Kitkat) I lost a lot.

 

[Blackie_X]

I joined this forum as I had this problem with my Samsung Tablet. Last week, I started to get signs that the problem was also now about to happen with my phone which is a Sony - showing the photos to a friend, one was clearly corrupted, showing only the top half of the picture. Also, the SD card in it is a 1GB microSD, which I previously had in my HTC Wildfire. It has really surprised me that this has happened, given all the problems cited so far have been Samsung and High Capacity cards. With the phone, all new photos go straight to the phone; the photos on the card are all from the HTC. I didn't dare keep these photos on the card, and moved them all to the phone. I'm wondering whether this really is an Android problem, and Samsung just seem to suffer worst?
(What is also curious is that having moved the supposedly corrupted photo, it is perfect now it's on the phone...)

 

[mankor]

first of all i'm sorry if my English is bad since i'm not very good at it
i only joined this forum just to post my reply when i'd this problem
a year ago when i just brought my galaxy note 8.0 my older sis and my older bro sd cards broke at the same time (i think its because they brought it at the same time) both of them thought it was because it was a cheap 4 class card ... so i made sure to buy class 10 sd card ... and here its sanDisk ultra micro sdhc 32GB card is going crazy right now ... i took all my files and photos from it and unmounted right away

 

[William Tuvell]

I have located what is doing it to the micro sd cards, But am not sure what I can do about it. I have a GS3 sch-i535. recently upgraded to a 64gb micro sd card and have been haveing the same issues as pretty much all here have been describing. As I stated I know what's doing it. I put 5 songs on the card and load it into the phone and all data is intact. I then tried 10 songs and lose all newly uploaded data as well as lose the ability to delete data either with the phone or directly on the computer. It's the GS3 error checking service that is corrupting the data. It activates when the phone has a sizable load to process. the service does not activate when loading 5 at a time. but does at 10 and then i have to format the card and start all over.so far I am progressing well in loading 32gb of music on the card. 5 album artists at a time.

Now that I have identified the cause of the problem, can anyone find a fix? could this be kitkat specific?

 

[danbear777]

OP MemberThanks: 0
*
45 posts Joined: Aug 2012
I have a Samsung Evo class 10 SDXC 64 gigabyte card. when I take pictures and autosave them to the SD card it will show them immediately. But if I reboot my phone or take the card out and put it back in its says it cannot read the file and I lose all of my pictures. Also I can only put certain mp4 movies on the card . some will work some will not and I don't understand why. I see that there are a lot of people having this issue. Is there any type of fix?

 

[KevroniCoal]

I apologize for not being able to reply lately at all - have been quite busy, especially this year of school!


After reading all the newer posts in this thread, I'm thinking about trying a test with a micro SD card that is currently in one of my cameras. (Well, it *should* be there, since I think someone might have took it... Grrr!)
Anyways, I have never used an SD card in my GS4 (same exact one from the beginning of the thread) ever since thus issue began. This is mostly since I have been using my newer camera for pics instead . Who knows - maybe after the year or so since never using a card, maybe my phone got some updates over time and the card might now work? (Knock on wood!)
I want to test out seeing if things go corrupt depending on the size of chuncks of uploading to the card. Like previous posts by William Tuvell and others, I want to try and transfer files a few at a time again, and crank up the file transfer sizes to see what happens. I might want to also test the card before and after, using programs like h2testw and others previously mentioned.
Finally, I also want to try and locate the LOST.DIR folder(s) I saved from my phone's card while ago, which is/are on my computer, and see if I can recover those files (like using chkdisk, recuva or cardrecorvery, as mentioned before - being sure to copy the LOST.DIR folder for each test to be separate, kinda like as a control haha).


Hope everyone has been well and not having too much of a problem with the issue over the many months. If I find anything, I'll post again - I just need to find the time to do everything I mentioned, after tons of school work and catching up on other classes..

 

[Raveen Edirisinghe]

I bought a samsung class 10 16gb memory card(not evo) but i have the same problem When I copy/move files from external memory It became corrupt

Any suggestions please?????

 

[titityy]

I had similar problem with Xcover2 corrupting SD card. The phone could freeze when trying to open videos of pics stored in SD. Sometimes it didn't find the card or said it need to be formatted. Usually all files were readable when I moved the card to my laptop. I had 16GB scandisk class 10 card.

I got fed up after losing some "home videos" and got A-data 8GB class 6 card. No issues after that. I still have that scandisk and use it as readyboost in my laptop. I read somewhere that this could have something to do with class 10. And if I can remember it right most of the problems happened with videos.

I came here because I bought my wife a Samsung Ace 4 as gift and can't decide what kind of SD to by there.

 

[Benny Gundlach]

Don't bother getting a Samsung SD card. After having issues with generic cards, I splurged and got the fancy Samsung version figuring it would have to work in my Galaxy S4. Nope -- this SD card corrupts just like the other ones. Piece of crap phone if you ask me. I have wasted so much money on this phone and now I am going to have to sell it at a loss and buy something else. DON'T BUY SAMSUNG!!!!!!!!!!

 

[The Monitor]

Try with this Data Recovery, it enables you to recover lost photos from memory card.

Don't even waste your time or money on this solution. I tried about 7 different photo recovery programs. Not a single one of them recovered the corrupted photos from my SD Card.

 

[tristanho14]

Im assuming that its not the Micro SDCard. I might not be using a Samsung S4 or 5, but Im getting the same problems. The pictures that I take soon either corrupt by becoming blur( Watsapp Image Gallery ) or they just disappear from my Image gallery. But there a few incidents where I manage to get my files back, weeks after the incident happened. But it only lasts for a few days. So I think the External SD card is corrupt having your files embedded somewhere in your phone. Sometimes, I cant even access my applications. I saw this 'AD', online. Saying that my card has been corrupted by online websites, by adult websites. So im not really sure anymore. It has been happening to all media in phone, From Mp3 to Mp4 to applications and PDF files.

Even after checking my storage function, it states that my SD Card ( EXTERNAL ) is not placed in my phone. Thus, Im unable to view my files.
Im not sure to either get a new Micro SD or just to reset my phone as they backup files for my messaging( watsapp, etc.) is saved in my external SD. So, its like on the brink of deletion. But Im just afraid that my new MicroSD might also get corrupt.

Can someone please help? Thanks.

 

[lockeboemmel]

Im having an issue with a Sandisk ultra 64g card that I have had since May 2013, just recently, I can still read the card, but cannot modify the contents in any way either from my S4 or via computer, thankfully I havent lost anything but it looks like Im going to be up for a new card as this is well out of warranty unfortunately

This sounds exactly what happend with my Galaxy S4 with a SanDisk Ultra Class 10 64GB microSDXC, bought in feb. 2013. Everything went fine with this card, even moving large files to the card, etc.
But some days ago, the S4 got pretty hot on its back right under the flashlight for no obvious reason.
I used OS Monitor to see what's going on. A process called krtccd was pretty active so i killed this process and the temperature of the phone went down. Short after that, I wanted to take a photo and pressed accidentally the video button. I stopped the video after a short notice about the external sd card was shown, but it disappeard to fast to remember the exact words.
All photos I took after that, showed up in gallery like normal but today they become corrupt and only this grey/black sign is shown.

I moved the card into my computers (linux and windows 7) and even testdisk can't find the latest photos.
The latest file in DCIM/Camera is named "temp_video" with no file type.
I decided to do a full image of the sdcard and also copied all files to the computer.
After that I've tried to format the sdcard on windows and linux. Windows canceled this with an error and on linux it looked like it worked.
But after bringing the sdcard back into the Galaxy S4 and formatting it by the phone, nothing happened.
All files are still on the card. But if I take a new picture, is first showed up, but then it became corrupted so it looks like there is no more write access at all.
I've now ordered a Samsung Memory 64GB Evo MicroSDXC UHS-I Grade 1 Class 10 for about 32 EUR.
If the problem is temperature related, samsung really invented a 'money burning machine'.

TL;DR:
Seems like the microsd card crashed after the phone got pretty hot at the spot where the microsd is located.
After that no new data could be written to the card but old files won't be affected. I'm unable to format the card on PC, no matter which OS is used.
My guess is that samsung pulled the obsolescence trigger to get me first buying a bunch of new microsd cards and a new phone after the new cards got fired up, too.

 

[Mohammed Ada]

I had this problem.
most of the media copied to my external sd card get curropted. Sometimes all the files and sometimes few files survive.

It is no longer a problem for me.
I just installed an app
called kitkat external sd card patch

Root is needed in order for this to work
good luck

 

[Mohammed Ada]

OK I thought I solved it.

I feel bad for wasteing all that time.

Anyway, there are fake sd cards in the market.
For example, the card is 16 GB and windows/android will confirm it's 16GB
however it's only 300MB - 2GB
that's why when you copy some files it works. But if you copied big or a lot of files you will get corruption issue.

One way to check that is to get "SD insight" from google play. If it can NOT identify the maker then it's a fake SD CARD.
The only way to fix that is to get a new one.
I tried three SD cards, Insight said it's "invalid" and tested them by copying 1GB of media to them. They all were fake.
When the owner started to plain my phone, the fourth sd card was scandisk
And worked fine
Google fake sd card

 

[Nichole Berrieault]

YES it is happening on my Samsung Tablet too - well kind of. I am having issues with the whole 64g card corrupting and having to re-format it which of course loses all data. I got on to see if anyone has a fix or is there an app to make it work. I saw your question about if this is a problem with other devices and yes it is !!! :-\

 

[Linda Lee]

I've had the galary corruption problem with the S5. It happen two times to various amounts of photos stored on an SD card. Verizon replaced the first S5 - I sold the repacement phone and purchased another S5 thinking it was the units themselves malfunctioning. A few months went by without incident, then it started again, a grey curtain would seem to lower over my photos. I sold the second S5 and purchased an s4 knowing friends who had the s4 without problems. I must add that during the S5 ownership I spent days on the phone with samsung techs who at that time had never come across this problem.

I've had the s4, which I've grown to love, for almost a year and the problem has begun. The grey shade of doom or just a black square where the photo should be. It has also spead to my music. I've had it with samsung, they solve this problem by having the s6 not accept SD cards, really, what a crap solution for all of us who have had there life's memories stolen from them. I'm waiting for my LG G4 to arrive so I can close out this chapter with samsung.

I do believe that someone in this thread came up with the idea that heat may be the culprit do to the card placement. I tend to share that belief since this problem reoccurred when I began watching videos on Facebook more than usual.

I refuse to purchase the s6 because of the battery not being replacable and the phone being all glass and the lack of a SD card slot. Samsung listen to your customers. Let's hope my LG experience is better that this. Good luck to y'all.

 

[Jennifer B2]

I think the problem is that the Galaxy S4 only supports up ot 16GB micro sd cards. 32 is not compatible and is having errors. People ahve posted their 8gb/16gb are workign fine. I see many with 32gb having trouble.

Is there anyone having this same damaged corrupted sd card issue with a smaller sized card?