yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Gabeloooooo:
My S3 (i9300) also busted a sandisk 32G from costco after ~3 months.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] gsmithwa:
I found this thread after trashing 2 x 64GB SD cards in my new Samsung Galaxy S3 4G (i9305) after a couple of days. A guy on AndroidCenrtral got a very useful report from Sandisk on failed card. To my mind it pointed to a poor power supply as the "smoking gun". In my case, the cards failed during recharging on the integrated USB port I have in a bluetooth speaker (brand is "Mutant"). I measured the power supply with an oscilloscope and found some disturbing peaks, and also a significant common mode voltage down to ground (i.e. it's 5V between positive and negative, but both lines had an AC voltage superimposed to ground. This is probably leakage current from some sort of RFI/EMI filter poorly designed in the power supply itself. It's reasonable that activity to the card with a crappy and noisy supply will end up corrupting something.

So far I've returned to just using the original Samsung power supply / charger and so far (1 week) no issues. I've also junked the speaker power supply and replaced it with something a bit better. I haven't tried charging the Samsung Galaxy on this new power supply yet - I just wanted to confirm firstly that the issue goes away using the standard charger.

So my suggestions at the moment are :

A. Only use the original Samsung charger, or another well known and proven brand.

B. Be careful what you put on the SD card. Try to avoid applications that do lots of read writes (which will only increase the risk of a corruption). In my case, I've just got music on the card and everything else on board.

Perhaps those effected could indicate what power supply / charger's they are using.

Cheers : Greg Smith
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] allotrios:
mine was on a samsung charger when it broke. granted was a galaxy s 1 charger

lost a bunch of priceless photos I hadn't managed to back up yet. will have to pay £170 to a recovery company to get them back...
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Gabeloooooo:
Yep, I only use the samsung charger and only thing I do is store backups and pics/videos on the sd card. Still it broke.

Nah, I think the i9300 has bad sd card hardware and/or design, pure and simple.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] kabangeka:
i am using Samsung 16g class 6, and don't have any problems with it.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] meniak:
I have 2 64 gb sandisk ultra's that all of a sudden got into read only mode. Looked on the net for a solution but it seems there's no way to format those cards. Will have to send this second one back I guess and get a new one. Don't really know what triggers the cards to get into read only mode.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jpt19:
For what it is worth, this also happened to me. It took a couple of months, and a 32gb Sandisk SDHC-I card flaked out in my AT&T GS3, as others here are describing. I was able to get a replacement from Sandisk.

Just wanted to add a data point, as some people here to think this is not widespread. I figure the more people that report here, the better.

PS- For unrelated reasons, I also had to get a brand new phone. So, I guess I will find out (eventually) if I can break a new SD card on an entirely different phone.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Igaku:
Tiny as in having also Samsung SD cards getting corrupted or SD cards in general? If the latter I don't think it's tiny at all...

My 32GB Sandisk class 10 died after 3 months in such a way it's unrecoverable, never had such serious corruption happen to me before in the past with other phones or cameras I had. I read people having their S3 replaced and still getting their SD cards killed...

Note that may be useful: in those whole 3 months I had first music files added, then recorded videos little by little. Right before the SD card toasted what I had done was moving all files into it from the PC and then back into the card (I was testing an issue with phone firmware status) and I made sure the transfer was successful. After the next phone reboot card had disappeared from memory. I think the more lucky people just haven't needed to mess much with the card.

In any case as I'm still in warranty I'll probably ask for another 32GB Sandisk class 10, but wondering if I should use it in something else and get a 32GB Samsung class 6 for the S3...

The only problem is that there's a 32GB Samsung class 6 (blue, up to 24 mb/s) and a 32GB Samsung class 6 UHS-1 (orange, up to 48 mb/s). I take it the better choice is the blue 24 mb/s one?
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] xxxhxxx2001:
AW: Galaxy S3 - the sd card destroyer

Same here, had a SanDisk class 10 32gb and after 2 month's of use it started telling me, sdcard removed unexpectedly. And after about two days the card stopped working.

Tried to put it in my card reader but the card is not even detected by Windows, the same happenes with a live version of Ubuntu, so I guess it's dead.

In addition I have lost the receipt so no warranty....

Well I've ordered a Samsung class 6 32gb I hope this one will not be destroyed...

Gesendet von meinem GT-I9300 mit Tapatalk 2
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dimsum888:
same experience with sandisk 32gb class 10.. although it appears to occur only in JB. i flashed an ICS firmware and so far no issues.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Ev0d3vil:
I've had this sd card removed etc popping up after 4.1.2 :( damn. Do i need to swap to a Kingston?
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sak500:
Do you have any media player or digital camera which supports your card? I was able to recover most files via my HD media player.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] edenk:
Storage I've never heard about something like that
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] xxxhxxx2001:
AW: Galaxy S3 - the sd card destroyer

Tried to put it in a Canon camera, it sees the card but it only says it's corrupt Without any option to format.

When I put it in my old Galaxy s2 it tells me the card is damaged, prompts me to format, I accept but it does nothing and comes back telling me the card is corrupt and to format... The eternal circle :(

Gesendet von meinem GT-I9300 mit Tapatalk 2
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Kombian:
No problems here either. Had my card since I bought the phone. Mine is a 32GB PNY.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] murrowxda:
I love all the replies accusing people of buying cheap SD cards and abusing them by deleting and transferring files constantly lol

Even before my S3 ate my micro SD I had assumed you had a legitimate card and wasn't using an app that was altering the read speed. I guess I was the only one.

So same thing happened with my Adata 32GB class 10. My computer didn't recognize it either. I had about 10GB of random stuff stored on it at the time. The funny thing is, after about a week of using my phone with an old backup card, I tried out the Adata again just for ****s and giggles, and it worked. And all of my files were still there.

After a month of it working again, the S3 just did the same thing today. I could view the card and files with Astro File Manager but could not write. So I rebooted and it wont detect the card now. Hopefully it will work again later.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] KeesStolk:
I am using a 32gb Kingston class 10 sd card from day one, 27 may 2012.

And really abuse it with constantly moving a lot files, manly video's, to it.

But I never let the free space go below 1gb.

Any way, still working without problems.

I have used a few SanDisk in my s2 time and they always did between 6 to 9 month.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mr. phillip:
Oops... it did it again...

6 months and it's the second 32gb sd card, my SGS3 destroys...

Same symptoms of everybody here...

Damn it Samsung, this phone is cursed!!

Today, i bought a 16gb samsung card to see how long will it last, but i don't have many hopes... this is another thing that is making me considering sellig this phone...:mad:
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Igaku:
I'm unsure if this is only an S3 problem...

Went to the store where I bought the SD Card for RMA and was told they have been having a lot other people reporting the same permanent SD card corruption on several Android phones (not sure if they were Samsung too), not just the S3.

Only thing they all had in common was that they were running JellyBean...
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] stenk:
Hi guys i have been having the same problem i bought my second sd card its a sandisk ultra and i am getting the same error again now i have decided to buy a new sd card tray because i have read on another forum that the tray could be causing the problem after i change my tray i will give you feedback if it worked!
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] CADude:
Relative today started having the "unexpectedly removed" issue with his S3 and this card.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007KFXIDE/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&redirect=true
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] hamidoo:
Had the same issue with my S3.

Turned out that the SD card was dying, this caused it to be unmounted by itself and then mounted again (sometimes showing notification “sd card removed unexpectedly”), hence triggering the media scanning process.

I created an application to monitor how many times the SD card was removed, and turned out to be unmounted every ~3 mins!!!

I then bought a new Transcend 32GB Class 10 card, and until now, this never happens, no reports from the application whatsoever, and no media process eating my battery.

I just published this app in the play store now, this is the link:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sdcardmonitor
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FileFixer:
Mine is this...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...isk 32 gb&qid=1360237085&s=electronics&sr=1-5
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] akirax:
Many thanks!
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] swan14:
Since yesterday

---------- Post added at 06:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:32 PM ----------

The weird thing is I hadn't been getting any unmount errors up until about 5 or 6 days ago. I initially started getting them about 2 months after I bought my San disk uhs that then it stopped again. But yeah its back with a vengeance now.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] querotequila:
May be a problem related to the kernel?
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] hamidoo:
Oh shoot! that's massive my friend!

I really recommend to backup it and buy a new one!
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] swan14:
About 3 days now.

Still going strong :o
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] murrowxda:
lol now she's working again and all the files are still there. Weird!?
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] arghness:
Mine lasted a month with constant warnings about it being unexpectedly removed. Please make sure that you don't put anything critical on the card, or at least back it up regularly so you don't lose too much!
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Smartie36:
Been using the same sd card on my s3 since I brought the phone last year, no problems at all, it's a samsung 32gb card.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] KruseLudsMobile:
I have been using a SanDisk 64GB MicroSDXC card and it has never had a problem. I only have about 5,000 files on the card taking up about 9GB.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Bizill:
2 Dead cards today. My son's and his mom's S3's. One white, one blue. Both cards Sandisk Ultra red/grey 32gb cards. Mom's was salvageable. My son's won't even register on my computer. Both died within the past 3 days. The only thing they say they did was an update on that game "4 pics 1 word".

Today, the game doesn't even show up on the android market....:confused:
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] kuntu:
I was using a Transcend 32GB Class 4 sd card Since Sept 2012 and

from a week or two had been getting the "sd card removed unexpectedly" error,

I suspected it to be a Rom issue, but today the phone froze and after a reset its not detecting the card, neither is it being detected by the PC.

Its within warranty so will try to claim it. All the data is lost and didnt take a backup :mad:

But still dont believe S3 directly has something to do with it, probably with my usage or something else.

I used to do a lot of gaming and mobile used to get real hot (50-55C),

and the sd card socket on S3 is placed right where it gets hot, can be reason, altho just a guess.

EDIT:

I did a chkdsk after reading this , in cmd and it gave an error at the beginning but somehow the card was detected by PC altho was blank/formatted. Maybe this may help some1 else too. Now im trying to recover data. :)
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jimbo77:
Well my i9300 has been giving me the very same symptoms, since last monday it started to give the "sd card removed unexpectedly" error and then out of nowhere it stopped working and the card wasn't recognized anymore.

I put the card into a NOKIA Phone and I was able to rescue it, no data loss or nothing. However when I put the card back on my GS3 the same issue all over again, every time the phone went to deep sleep the card was bad unmounted.

I tested the card on my Wife's Sony Live with Walkman (wt19) and my Brothers Xperia Arc (LT15) and the card worked flawlessly, no issues no data loss and no sudden disconnections. Lucky for me my brother has a Sandisk 32GB card, same as mine, so he agreed to swap cards since his cards works with no issues on my phone.

I don't have a single clue what triggered the issue and why the card works great on other phones, it is like my phone has left a mark or something in the card and it will no longer work right with it.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] goodthaimer:
Anyone has a "broken" 32gb or higher micro SD card they are getting rid of.??.

I would like to have it to do some experimenting with..
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] allotrios:
I got reply from the recovery company that I sent my card today and unfortunately they say they cannot recover the data. I am a bit discounted as I was told that they could take the card apart but apparently they cannot do that because the card parts are embedded? Not sure I am making sense of that.

Does anyone know if the data can be recovered from a micro sd that is not responding (phone pc etc)?
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rambo21es:
The same problem with the last stock firmware :(

I have a 32GB Class 10 Sansidk card.

Someone have the problem with a Samsung SD card?

regards!
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rambo21es:
I have fixed the problem with Rescan Media (available in Play Store) with the option 'disable media scanner'.

At least it doesn't appear the 'unmounted sd card' message.

Regards
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] buck32:
Sandisk 32gb class 4 mounting/unmounting error

I too had this especially more through the night when my phone was in sleepmode! If you have a custom rom like I do (Omega 42) I decided to start experimenting in flashing different kernels including stock original and the one I came across was Perseus alpha 32, I flashed that and now have no more mounting/ unmounting errors showing up on SD card monitor app as well as on my phone. It sounds like a mixture between Sandisk cards and the kernel to me.

Hope this helps.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rambo21es:
Sorry, but in fact, the Rescan Media program doesn't fix the problem :crying:

I'm thinking to buy a new mobile phone, but I'm sure that it won't be Samsung.

Regards
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Orical:
I have 2 32gb cards and a few 16s and 8s and I've never had one issue with any of them, I know there are some really low grade cards out there but you get what you pay for. Sure it can be a device that ruins one but that can happen with any device its not just one company.

You would have to be really ignorant to believe that Samsung is out to ruin your stuff considering HTC won't even let you use them at all now and personally I'll never buy a HTC device again if that's the direction they want to continue doing business, you might as well buy an iPhone.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] buck32:
Read this http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1663656&highlight=sd+card+unmounting&page=4825from post #48244 maybe this is your answer although ive not tried it myself :fingers-crossed:
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] dave106:
My SanDisk 32gb was killed today. For the last couple of days, have been getting several 'SD card removed unexpectedly' notifications. Wish I'd seen this thread before, would of recognised this as a sign of it being on its way out :( PC wouldnt format it.

EDIT: Tried it out this morning in an adapter in my camera. Working fine and was able to transfer the contents off it via cable! Phew
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] kuntu:
I will second that,

Altho i have a Transcend 32gb card, but Perseus seems to solve the issue.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] querotequila:
It's odd but I use the Siyah Kernel and my card got corrupted. I use the Perseus and it's all fine.

Enviado de meu GT-I9300 usando o Tapatalk 2
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jmpmjmpm:
Never had a problem with any genuine SanDisk card in any device. Hundreds of cards in hundreds of devices over the years including semi-pro photography where obviously card reliability is critical. I strongly suspect that the majority of these reports are of cheapo ebay/amazon market etc cards.

Sent from my ARHD S3
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] naveed_hind:
wat to do

im worried abt it i have also gs3 wit 64gb
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] edong23:
been using my class 4 32GB Sandisk for 2 months now and so far no problem. but the number of sd cards being corrupted/unusable is really alarming.hope it wont happen to me. fingers crossed
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Slimboball:
I have had this happen to me today. 32gb SanDisk Ultra bought from mymemory.co.uk on 04/01/2013.

Lost all last nights photos from a top night out! :( Previous photos automatically sync with Dropbox, thank God!

Sent from a Galaxy S3 LTE, far far away........
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jmpmjmpm:
I always run h2testw on my cards to check they have genuine capacities. A few years back I bought a few 8gb cards from various online retailers including the likes of eBay and amazon marketplace and online stores. When tested most of the cards turned out to be either fake capacity or failed during a stress test. Now I only buy retail packaged branded cards from big name retailers like amazon (when sold directly by amazon or fulfilled by Amazon) or argos, etc (my SanDisk 64gb was half price when I bought it with my phone at argos) then I test the crap out of them before entrusting photos to them.

I can only recommend that anyone buys from well established retailers that have genuine supply chains and something to lose if they were found to be selling fakes. Then stress test the card, try to break it. If it does then you dodged the bullet. Date the card, (label it) and once it's a few years old bin it or give it a throw away use coz these things only last about a 100,000 write cycles anyway.

Most importantly though, if you value your photos, videos etc please backup. There are lots of free and low cost solutions for this. I personally learned the hard way and a hard drive crash cost me 1year of my son's "baby photos", the wife and I were gutted but never again. If every device I own blew up right this moment I wouldn't lose a shred of valuable data.

Remember if you don't have 3 copies of it, it doesn't exist, 1 copy always needs to be off site I. E. Online and preferably 2 copies online with different storage providers ;)

Sorry if that's a bit of a lecture but if it saves just 1 persons irreplaceable data then it's worth the page space here :)

Sent from my ARHD S3
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Slimboball:
Following on from my post yesterday. I was reluctant to have a go at reformatting my card in the hope that I would be able to find a way to salvage my lost data. I was only going to try this as a last resort.

However, having put the card back in my phone I was astonished to see that I could access all the folders & data on the card this morning! I immediately did a full back up of the card as a precaution (including all the photo's I'd 'lost' from my jolly boys outing on Saturday! :)

I don't know how long the card will now last, but at least I know not to rely on it as the only source for storing important data.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] arghness:
That's great. I bought my 32GB Sandisk card from a bricks and mortar store, it broke after less than a month of very light use in the S3, I returned it to Sandisk directly who sent out another card that also broke within a month.

I don't expect Sandisk to be sending out fake cards, so I'm still suspecting issues with (some?) S3s with (some?) types of card.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] FileFixer:
New SIM/SD module is placed into S3 but problem not dissapear. Same thing happened as before.

My card was purchased from local distributor who was deal only genuine SanDisk cards and acessories. That was eliminate any possibilities for non genuine or fake SanDisk card.

SD card work on laptop but not on S3. In my opinion it seems that is something else was happened. Maybe software problem, kernel or ROM...?!
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jmpmjmpm:
Well that's why I used the word "majority" not "all"

No doubt some people will have issues with any mass produced product but then your phone could be killing the cards if it is faulty. I very much doubt that the s3 has an inherent or even common fault that kills memory cards. 9/10 of these cases are most likely to be cheap/fake crappy cards from eBay etc.

Sent from my ARHD S3
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] allotrios:
The majority of people in this thread have had original SanDisk cards fail.

I am not sure why anyone would assume the issue is mainly with fake cards. You must not have bothered reading more than a couple of posts here.

There is definitely a problem with s3 & SanDisk. In my case it took over 4 months to happen, all was perfect before. So I would strongly advise everyone to either dump SanDisk or back up every night if they store important data on the card.
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mustang2012:
I also had my 32 gb card was destroyed after about one year of use. Happened week ago while I was down loading the rom. Either one phone nor my notebook or my friends s3 recognize the card. It simply were dead... it was after market which I bought from ebay as well. Ordered genuine samsung 32gb card and hopefully wont have any issues. ..
[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jmpmjmpm:
With respect, where is the proof of this? How do you know that these people can be certain their card is genuine? Just because it says Sandisk on the card doesn't mean it is genuinely Sandisk. For what I know everyone here has a genuine card and the s3 is killing them, that's fine. Equally everyone may have fake cards and can't tell the difference, that's fine too. Maybe someone can explain exactly what damage is being done to the cards on a technical level but I bet no one can.

Perhaps people are using a hack to swap the internal memory and extsd around, or stupidly creating swap areas on their write cycle limited cards? How many completely stock never rooted s3's have this issue?

I will stick with my opinion until my s3 kills my GENUINE 64 gig Sandisk card (which will never happen) ;)

Sent from my ARHD S3