yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] thanharossi:
Sick and tired

Hi all,

I came across this post and wanted to jump on the band wagon. I have been getting non stop problems with my S3 and its memory card issue. The phone store claim there is no known issue with the memory card problems. My original memory card which was a transcend fried and died. I then bought a Sandisk and I am getting issues with it constantly disconnecting meaning I cannot have musing in playlist etc as it would be wiped 5 minutes later. Also there is no confidence that what I have on there will still be there tomorrow as it could be destroyed at any moment. At first I thought it was just a sandisk problem as some post online have said but I went on the sandisk website and nothing regarding this admittance with their cards is on their support page. I even read some customer reviews on amazon from customers who have tried to buy Samsung cards hoping to cure this problem but to no prevail. So if Sandisk cards experience this issue, Transcend cards have this issue and even SAMSUNG cards gets the same issue. Then why has Samsung no admitted to this yet? Personally I do think its a problem on the phone. I have kicked up a stink with the phone store so much that they have replaced my phone twice. And guess what? SAME PROBLEM!!!!!!!! I can see this becoming a finger pointing issue with memory card companies sayinf its the phone and Samsung saying its the cards.

I dont know where to start to get some kind of viral fault awareness thing started as one of the members here suggest. We need to get someone to admit at fault here and do a recall on this product or something as its not fair. The internal memory is only 16GB which can easily be filled up so the use of a memory card is a must but this problem is making that impossible. If anyone knows of any official campaign on this issue then please post the link. Some must be done. Very poor I think. Not ggod for a Samsung flagship phone.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] DEEBS808:
I had a 16gb and recently a 32gb destroyed by my s3:mad:
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] goodthaimer:
I think I figured out our problem:

STATIC ELECTRICITY..
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] thanharossi:
Care to explain? The first time this happened to me it was in my pocket. The card I have now is half working. By that I mean it had files on it but it keep diconnecting and reconnecting to the phone. So if I had a playlist on the phone with music in it. It wont be there 5 minutes later.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] goodthaimer:
A few years ago I took an automotive technology class for a couple years and one of the courses was electrical/ electronics.. and if I remember correctly static electricity can damage electrical components..

We remember we had to be grounded to the vehicle when handling the vehicles cpu..

So I'm "thinking" it's might be possible that we are frying our cards by the static electricity coming from our finger tips. (Try sliding side to side on a chair and stand up and touch someone or something, you will zap whatever it is you touch)
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rookiegenius:
Nah the s3 is the only device that fried my card. There must be something wrong with either the S3's design or the compatibility between the s3 and the card
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FileFixer:
I have a mount/dismount/error problem on my SanDisk 32GB Mobile Ultra Class 10 card since two months ago.

When it happend, i backup all data to computer and it safe.

The problem is occur only on SGS3. When i put card into laptop card reader, card work without any error or similar mout/dismoun error. I suppose that is SIM/SD module on SGS3 have issue.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jin1992:
does ur phone check sd card every boot up? something like a sd card logo on the top of ur screen for like 2 seconds after a fresh boot everytime.

when i had the card brand new it never showed this.

i already had a class10 32 gb sandisk died on me, i managed to claim a brand new one from warranty and now its showing the same symptoms.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rookiegenius:
That's normal. Probably you remember it wrong but the phone checks the card every time it restarts. Something like "preparing sd card" and yes, the logo there too. ( my dad's s1 also shows this) Just got my replacement from Sandisk and it works fine. I only store unimportant stuff on it from now on.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Ajdnet:
I have been looking about to find a 'good' SD card for my new S3...not sure which way to go now after reading all the posts. I fancied using it with an OTG cable for portable mass storage data transfers, but it sounds like it could be a waste of money. Might try a small cheap (but not fake/ebay) one and see how it goes. At least there wouldn't be any data on it for long that I would worry about losing if it failed.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ixon2001:
My Sandisk 32gb Class 10 which i've had for about 3 months problem free has now started showing this problem were it unmounting, happened 3 time now this week, to avoid damaging the card i've took it out and formatted it using the PC to Fat32, it not going back in the S3 instead i've put my old Sandisk 16gig class 4 back in which hasn't missed a beat since i bought it back in 2010 for the Galaxy S.

There are alot of people suffering from this problem, Sandisk now say it's an compatability issues with their cards & the S3.

What eventually kills the card is the constant unmounting, so while it still working it staying out of the S3, may try it out again in the S4 when i get one, see if it shows the same problem.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] lefttobleed:
Even mine used to unmount all the time. but both my phone memory and sd-card used to unmount. dont know if same issue.

i used to go crazy for like 3months not able to copy big files. tried everything.

finally i notced that the pins in my s3 datacable are different from the ones in my nexus s datacable. one pin is not there in the s3 datacable.

so i started using the nexus s datacable. n now so far i dont have unmounts.

---------- Post added at 05:34 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:25 PM ----------

s3 killed my 32gb sandisk class 10 also. But i think it was my fault. i was watching a very interesting video till the battery went off. meaning the battery fully drained between the video. after that tried everything to get the sd card to work. had bought the card from ebay for Rs 1000 ($18) cheaper.

so now went and bought an original sandisk from an authorised dealer.

Lessons learnt:-

1> never use your phone till the battery ends.

2> buying original is cheaper.

---------- Post added at 06:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:34 PM ----------

good answer

however static issues rarely happen for sd cards. they are built for external use also. there are no exposed components.

but i think keeping it in your pocket and walking around..... maybe possible.... thats like extreme static.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] penguinjoe:
Been using my cheap-ass AData 32GB microsd card on 3 generations of Galaxy phones now. Bought it for my I9000 SGS over a year ago. Moved it to 3 different SGS2s phones (one I9100 and the other the HD SGH-757) finally landing in my current I9300 SG3 for the past 4 months.

Never had a problem with unmounting or losing data no matter how I much I abused the card and phones.

Note that as a hobby I build computers so I do treat all electronic parts that have any kind of contacts with due care and respect. It only takes frying a stick of DDR3 SDRAM to teach you respect for static. Static electricity is not a piddly 3 or 5 volts. No indeed! Static electricity measures in the thousands of volts - though at very low amperage (thus the static spark you sometimes see). Everybody has static electricity in them. Most of the time you don't even notice you are discharging static electricity. the amperage is so low you don't feel the spark. However electronic components like sd cards operate also at very amperage (measured in Milli-amps or thousandths of an amp) tand most certainly DO notice it. It really doesn't take much to fry them (or the circuits that read them) or burn random blocks of memory cells just by touching them wrong.

Treat your microsd cards with respect. If they are not in your phone, keep them in their static-resistant cases. Only handle them by their plastic bits. Never touch the gold contacts --- ever. Do that they will reward you by keeping your nude pictures of yourself nice and secure.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] arghness:
Just a quick +1 to having a 32GB grey/red Sandisk Ultra card fail.

Stock XXELLA, constant unmounting / remounting and now it just says that the card is blank or file system not recognised. The card is not recognised at all in my laptop with the supplied Sandisk SD card adapter, so I can't try to reformat it etc.

Edit: And it's not static, unless the S3 itself is passing the static on! I've never had any other card fail in any phone since I started using smartphones with SD storage in 2004. Has anyone got any links to information from either Samsung or Sandisk on this issue? I'm hoping that I can at least get a replacement card, even if it won't work in the S3.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rookiegenius:
Sandisk is cool. I think all sd card have a 5 year warranty. Got my replacement. Probably it will fail again in my s3. I just put unimportant stuff on it so yeah
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Cyberdutch:
The second 32GB grey/red Sandisk Ultra card is starting to unmount/mount errorchecking etc etc. will soon die also :crying:

This will be another RMA :(
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] qq67:
My second SD killed today. This is definetly samsung problem. I am surprised not found any techblog post about this, nor samsung statement. Shouldnt we start something with samsung?
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Pat123:
I have received my replacement 32 GB Sandisk but am afraid to put it in thinking it will fail again. :-|
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] qq67:
it will as mine. second was 32 Sandisk Ultra. I thought first just the Kingston quality wasnt good enough
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] tigger95:
Great... my phone killed my 32gb ADATA micro SD card last Friday... this is by far the most unreliable phone I've ever had.

Charging problems, cracked bezel (quite a common problem), sudden death and now this. :(
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Limeproszero:
Same here it killed 2 grey/red 32gb sandisk card.

But my no name 2gb card is working since a month now without any problems.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dlads:
It's just bad luck, lightening struck twice, it's not the phone either.

Buy a new one and simply move on.

I've had a 64GB SDXC class 10 sandisk from amazon for about 3 - 4 months now and it's working perfectly still.

The problems i had with formatting it went away when i formatted it using a windows 8 computer.

Using windows 7 and easus to format it to fat32 simply wouldn't work, did the same on windows 8 and first time it worked.

---------- Post added at 08:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:28 AM ----------

That is simply a failing card, not static, not anything else, just bad luck.

Check other threads about different phones and SD card's dying. I think you'll find that SD cards die in all phones, not just the S3 but every phone and it's just the cards failing, i've personally never had a card fail on me, i've still got the 8GB card that came with my desire HD, still got the SD card that came with my hero, all still working.

Hard drives on the other hand well thats a different matter :)

Saying that i've still got a scuzzy around here somewhere.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Frostfree:
I'm still using the 32GB card I carried over from my S2 ito my S3 since lauch with no problems. Could this be a quality issue with more recent cards rather than the phone.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] arghness:
Are you using a red/grey Sandisk Ultra? They all seem to be failing. It's not just "bad luck", unless Sandisk are having "bad luck" with the manufacturing of a massive quantity of their cards. Possibly it's an incompatibility with the UHS1 on this card with the GS3? I'm still going to try a second card, but the moment it shows "Card was unexpectedly removed", which will likely happen on the same day I put it in, I'm going to stop using the card, before it gets damaged.

As I understand it, the people who are not seeing their cards die are also not seeing the "Card was unexpectedly removed" message when they switch the phone on (not every time, but most times)? The people who are seeing their cards die get this message within a day of putting in their brand new card, as I did.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] qq67:
Are you joking? you can find on the net numerous topic with tousands of killed sd card diferend brands. And that is just bad luck???
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] MichelN:
I remember i bought a fake card, it said 32GB and after i copied a file on to it it said no memory available and when i checked the card it was like 4 kilobytes or something. It's not the phone that destroys the card, it's the card you bought!
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] arghness:
*sigh* I bought my card from a very reputable retailer, not eBay. It's not a fake, it's a real Sandisk.

It's not because it's a cheap fake but it might be an incompatibility with the type of card. I am certain that it's the phone destroying it, as these cards work in other devices with no issues before being put in the S3.

I'm not sure why people are so insistent that it's not the phone. Are you denying the phone had any other bugs, such as SDS as well, just because it didn't happen to you?
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] lefttobleed:
Exact same thing happened to my ebay sandisk card. now bought my card from a registered distributor. have no probs since 2 months.

however my new card was also behaving the same way.

so what i did is changed my datacable to the nexus s datacable.

As i had mentioned in my earlier post, my s3 datacable has a pin missing, unlike the nexus s datacable.

now i use the nexus s datacable without any unmount issues.

Guys please let me know if this makes a diff as i am no expert.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] winol:
no way

THis is not true, Ihave had 3 different cards, no harm in any, as everyday life, you have bad luck, or bad choices of cards, I get my cards only from authorized retailers in stabilished places, so, guaranties are always available, think twice, pay accordingly
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rookiegenius:
When many people have the same problem, it's not the matter of luck any more. You don't have this problem doesn't mean it's not there. And I bought from Amazon. My card is sandisk. It still failed after 4 months use. Got my replacement.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] arghness:
I bought from a very reputable retailer in a store. It's 100% going to be a legitimate card and obviously from a store like that, I did pay accordingly. Congratulations on not having issues. I didn't have SDS issue either, but I 100% believe that other people did have it. Perhaps it's time that you actually trust some of the reports from other people, or just stay out of the thread if you have nothing useful to add?

How about you actually contribute by giving details on what cards you have tried that have had no issues after at least a couple of days of use, along with whether you put them in the phone without reformatting, or details of how you reformatted?
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ixon2001:
I'm 100% positive it the card not the phone, I was getting the same error as everybody else took my Sandisk 32Gb class 10 out, put the old 16gb class 4 back in not a single problem, otherday tried the 32gb again after a day got the same error as before.

It not going back in this phone again now, I'll stick with the 16GB for the foreseeable future as i don't want to destroy the 32GB card, as it working with no probs in either PC or laptop.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Pat123:
As someone mentioned, it could likely be an issue with UHS cards since the Android implementation of UHS driver is not perfect as of now.

Is anyone using a non-UHS (red-grey color Sandisk cards are not non-UHS) and still facing this issue?
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Brammers:
That theory fits with my experiences.

My S3 ate a 32GB SanDisk UHS card in a little under 5 weeks. Swapped it out for a Verbatim 32GB Class10 (non-UHS) and it's been fine for over 6 months now.

J
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jurijvi:
My S3 has a liking for Sandisk. It has destroyed 2 of them in matter of months (32GB red and grey class10). Luckily Amazon was kind enough to replace them. After the second card got bricked I switched to Samsung. So far so good (2 months).
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] giannoug:
My S3 also killed my Sandisk 16GB card (Class 6). Strange, I thought the airport Xray machines killed it as it stopped working after a flight.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Ethernauta:
After 3 months and upgrade to XXELLC my 32Gb Sandisk Ultra SDHC1 (red n grey) started to give a lot of unmount/mount when wakes from dormancy status, etc

I noted also a very ****ty battery duration after the upgrade to XXELLC, and the "Media process" was there draining 30-40% of battery.

I had previously the I9300UBDLJ1 package, and never had this problem, I'm almost sure there is something related to the upgrade to 4.1.2.

I will upgrade today to I9300UBEMA1 and check... who knows...
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] arghness:
Yes, the media scanner battery impact was massive for me too, when the card remounted. Please let us know if your upgrade makes a difference.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dlads:
Yea its bad luck. Simple as that, either that or a dud.

---------- Post added at 11:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:33 PM ----------

It is a grey and red official Sandisk memory card. I don't think Sandisk do a black variant.

I've not had that come up on this or any of the androids I've ever had, and I've had hundreds in my possesion over the last 5 years

Can i just ask, if you had a different phone would you be blaming that for murdering your SD card too?

Nothing to do with removing it whilst its switched on or it crashing due to an improper install or corruption on the card due to poor maintenance?

The phone isn't the killer, chances are its the user.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] swan14:
So which one is it... Bad luck? The card? Or the user?
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FileFixer:
@dladz:

If you think the user was wrong for unmoun/mount or error SD card, how explain that my SD card work properly on computer but not work on SGS3?

After complete format SD card from AOS, CWM or computer block per block, same problem on SGS3 was happened. User was something do wrong...? I don't think so...
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] arghness:
If it was happening for multiple cards for many people, not just in these forums, then yes. However, that isn't the case. As I said before, I've been using smartphones with SD storage since 2004 (WinMo, Symbian and Android) and have never had a single damaged card until now. As far as Android phones go, before this, I have only had an HTC Desire with a MicroSD card in it for over 2 years with no problems. I'm usually on long contracts so take very good care of my devices.

Can I just ask, if a different phone had SDS for many people, but not you (and from the way that you seem to think the S3 is perfectly bug free, I assume that's the case), would you be denying the existence of that too?

Because the S3 has a fair amount of internal storage already, I would expect that a lot less people are using extra storage cards than on some other devices (the Desire was almost unusable if you didn't have an SD card -- it even shipped with a small one). If everyone installed one, I'd expect to see far more instances of this issue.

I don't know why I'm bothering to answer your patronising questions, but I took the card straight from the sealed packaging bought from a shop and put it in to the phone while it was off (I always shut the phone down cleanly before removing the back cover). I have a Masters degree in Electronic Engineering and am quite happy designing and constructing circuit boards without damaging them, so I'm familiar with how to avoid damage to electronic components.

The card was only configured to store photos from the camera and podcasts from a popular 3rd party podcatcher.

I didn't remove it again (I hoped I would never have to remove it!) until after I saw the issue for the first time, at which point I thought that it might not be in correctly, even though it looked like it was, so switched off the phone again, ejected the card and reinserted it.

After seeing the issue again, I searched and found that this was a very common issue.

Chances are very very high that it is not the user at all, at least in my case and from the number of other people who are suffering from the same issues I'd suspect in a lot of their cases too.

I'm not running a custom ROM / overclocking anything, the only thing that I've changed at a "low level" is rooting the device (for Titanium Backup).

I'm going to take a look at the MicroSD connector that's mentioned in another thread -- one user found that it was loose in their S3 and that fixed their issue, although other users replying had no success, so it may have been a one-off.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mr_xx:
I logged on to see if others were having this problem too

today my S3 ate its second SD card

both Sandisk class 4 32Gb ... (Black cards) i sent the 1st one back to Sandisk and now the replacement is dead too

my S3 is rooted but no Roms and i dont take my card in and out either

WTF Samsung ??
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] lefttobleed:
according to me its the datacable. mine works fine after i changed my datacable.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] swan14:
Can you please elaborate on what you mean?
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] lefttobleed:
as i have mentioned in previous posts. my s3 datacable has a pin in the connector missing. but my nexus s datacable has all the pins.

My first 32gb sandisk used to always unmount and then finally failed. then i bought a new one from a registered distributer and again it used to unmount.

So i noticed the change in the datacable and changed my datacable to the nexus s datacable and now i have never had any unmounts since 2 months.

Check the pins in your datacable.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] swan14:
Thanks for the info.

I will check this on mine.

If it is missing a pin where can I get another?

---------- Post added at 05:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:16 PM ----------

Also, by the detachable do you mean the ribbon?
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] lefttobleed:
I dont know what u mean by detachable.... i am talking about the datacable not ribbon cables inside the phone. Please do not open your phone.

I am talking about the micro usb connector on the datacable. it will have 5 rows/slots. In these rows/slots there are gold plated pins. in my datacable a pin is missing.

You cannot replace the pin. you will have to use another datacable. many products like cameras, harddrives, use micro usb datacables. u can try them.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] swan14:
Ok sorry I completely misread you.