yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ZenorGR:
HTC Support answer:

"We would have to investigate, as having just tried it on mine, it works absolutely fine.

you haven't been messing around with Apps to SD have you? i wonder if that could have anything to do with it? The device should work with any SD card, and it certainly seems to when we try it here, but of course we haven't done anything to the ROM.

what programs have you installed from the market? maybe we could test here and see if the same thing happens here once we have installed the same.

best regards,

HTC Europe Support"
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sixpackbud:
nuvvanda, I also got it working earlier with the SanDisk microSDHC 8 GB class 2 card periodicly/randomly by playing around with coping thumbnails from my working card but it always ended up none working after a while. Try to copy a couple of new folders with pictures.

Once again a gave it a try by copying thumbails from my original card but with no success. I am now using the 16 GB class 6 card. I didn't have the files as you reffered to tough.

If everything works ok for you now I could give it a try with your files from Magic. Please upload or mail.

sixpackbud@gmail.com

Thanks
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] stripealipe:
I have this problem too.

The album on my Sandisk SDHC 8GB is slow, yet i've just popped my old 2GB card that came with the Hero in, and the album is *way* quicker.

Really want to get to the bottom of this. I'm using a mac though and i can't create or seem to access files beginning with a '.' in order to copy them. Any ideas?!
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] soulehmoo:
Also have this problem with Transcend 8gb class 6.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sixpackbud:
A growing problem !!! Seems like we now we are six with the same issue.

stripealipe: Is your card a class 6 ??

Let's try to nail this done further. We know for sure that it is not rom related. I can figure out two common things I have made with my two none working cards that hasn't been done on the working original one.

1. "Format SD card" in menu -> Settings -> SD card & phone storage.

2. Manually set upp a ext3 partition by following this guide: http://androidandme.com/2009/08/news/how-to-manually-partition-your-sd-card-for-android-apps2sd/

What about you guys. Have you done any of the above procedures??
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sixpackbud:
Question!

When I "Format SD card" from the settings menu on my two none working cards they will not show up in the phone. It says card failure or unknown format.... or something like that. The only way to get them going again is to manually make partitions according to no. "2." in above post.

I thought I would try to format them from windows but I am stuck. My computers (tried with xp, home server and windows 7) can never find them by using a USB SD card reader. Puting in my original card and it pops up instantly.

All three cards are readable when put in the phone through usb.

IS THIS NORMAL ???
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] stripealipe:
I formatted my new card using Gparted Live CD on an Apple Mac.

I setup my FAT32/EXT3/Linux-Swap and then went through my ROM upgrade, but it went into a continuous loop. So what i did was mount the SD card onto my Mac OSX desktop and reformat the FAT32 partition. For some reason, this then worked.

I'm now wondering if there is something not quite right with this partition that causes the album thumbnails not to be created, though it seems a bit weird.

The only real difference between the cards is that the original is not an SDHC card, but a standard micro SD card, and it was factory formatted as FAT16.

My new card is also Class 6, but i can't see this causing the problem.

I'm going to try and reformat and partition on some different ways and see if i can get to the bottom of this, as the album view is ridiculously quick on the old 'slower' card compared to the newer card, as thumbnails are just not being produced for some reason.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sixpackbud:
OK, great. I am also thinking that this thumbnail issue is related to how the card is formated. I will also do some futher testing. Probably tomorrow. Busy today.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ZenorGR:
Could it be that after installing the latest modaco rom(Thanks P) I installed the apps2sd from the Market and tried to partition the SD card, although apps2sd is pre-installed on modaco rom?
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ZenorGR:
SOLUTION

:

*Installed Drizzy's custom ROM found here:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=559538

I just installed Drizzy's custom ROM over modaco's 2.2 ROM without wiping and the thumbnail indexing got fixed.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ZenorGR:
*double post - delete
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nicelad_uk:
Not exactly a solution for people who are on a different rom. There must be something setting wise or file wise which has changed. Would be good to find out what it is.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] salmanbodla:
Hi,

I have got the exact same problem as well. I am running the older stock rom and a Sandisk microSDHC class 6 8GB card. This was the very first card I used in my phone. Have tired the factory-provided class 2 2GB card only after reading this thread, and the latter works just fine as described by you guys. But the faster card does not generate any thumbs. I have not done anything with the card, just formated it once from within the phone settings (again, after reading your comments). So, it is unlikely it is due to making partitions or trying different formatting methods. I would really like to see this problem solved. Please keep posting. Thanks.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] stripealipe:
Well at least we are getting somewhere! Was going to try a different ROM myself, so i'll do that today and report back.

I'm not sure if this is widespread either, but Modaco 2.2 ROM doesn't seem to want to format my card on the phone. Not sure if it's just this version, but i do know it worked on the standard ROM my phone came with. It does seem to do something to the card, but it seems to render it incompatible and i have to format on my mac or pc again.

Anyone else getting this?
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] stripealipe:
Ok, just formatted card FAT32, wiped, installed Drizzy ROM and still the same here.

NO thumbnails created. Folder is created, but nothing in it. Bah! .....

I also tried the Modaco 2.2 Enhanced as i previously had the 'core' installed, but still no thumbnails are generated. And i also tried this with the card formatted as 1 partition as previously i had my card partitioned in 3 for apps2sd, so it's def not this causing the issue either. My only option now is to try going back to the stock ROM and see if that works...
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] stripealipe:
No joy with the stock ROM either, so this is an SDHC card issue as far as i can tell.

Looks like i may have to send my nice Sandisk 8gb SDHC Mobile Ultra back and go with something non SDHC?! At least it will be quicker.

I'm running a stock white Hero fwiw.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ZenorGR:
This is what I did:

Wipe data.

Format of SDHC card inside the phone.

Format of SDHC card - slow mode in windows 7(still FAT32)

Then applied drizzy's ROM on modaco 2.2 and this fixed it.

I suppose people having this issue should be patient since it seems that it will be getting fixed in future updates.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] stripealipe:
Yep, it's def weird. I formatted my 2gb in exactly the same way as my 8gb, with all labels, flags etc set the same and it works fine.

So i'm reverting back to my 2gb for now, as it's quicker, and just in case something else isn't quite working right with it. A shame, but there ya go, i just can't get it working.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] soulonfirexx:
Aw, this is disappointing. I ordered a Tracend 8gb Class 6 SDHC just a couple of days ago for my new Hero. I really hope there's a fix for this soon. I haven't done any testing as of yet, but once I get it, I will see if I can find anything out.

Paul from MoDaCo said that a 2.3 update will be coming out sometime this week, so let's hope there's a fix in that!
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] stripealipe:
Hmmm, i'm not so sure tbh.

This seems to be a low level file system problem with Android and the way it addresses SDHC cards, or at least certain SDHC cards, and the way they work compared to normal SD cards. It is a pain tbh, especially when it makes no real sense.

Android seems to read/write to the card no problems, but just won't write the thumbnail images.

I've not really had any advise back so far, so will carry on seeing what i can find out myself and try some new things. Will try and get the Hero into it's debug mode and see if we can get some kind of log saved down when accessing the Album.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sixpackbud:
Have now tried different way of formatting the cards togheter with different roms but nu success. Even tried another (third) new 8 GB sandisk class 2 card, fresh out from box and in to the phone without formatting with the same bad result :(

My 2 GB original card always work.

I'll give up for now and hope that someone clever figure this out.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bandroid:
I have a Transcend 8GB Class 6 card with Modaco 2.2 and thumbnails are created perfectly fine. :confused:

Don't really know why it works for me haven't done anything special formatting wise except an ext3 partition for A2SD and a swap partition.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] vadonald:
I found this solution to the Album problem, I can't remember where, I think it was a solution to a different problem but I thought I'd try it.

MENU > Settings > Applications > Manage Applications (Now theres a big delay - 10 seconds or more whilst it reads in info on ALL apps)

Select Albums (obviously), then select Clear data and Clear cache.

Next time you run Albums, it will be slow as it rebuilds its thumbnails, then subsequent runs should be quick again.

Well this worked for me, standard Orange ROM (no update yet - grrr Orange), I have upgraded my 2Gig card for a new Transcend 8gig class 6 card.

Vince
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] stripealipe:
Damn, i didn't even think to try clearing the DATA settings for the Album app.

I've not got my 8GB card on me at work today, so if anyone else wants to see if this sorts the problem for them too?

I do hope this works!

Cheers vad
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ZenorGR:
I just restored back to modaco 2.2 and the issue is still gone(like when I updated to Drizzy's ROM) so I suppose the fix was elsewhere. I had also cleared both data and cache from the Album application but I thought that didn't fix it.

Oh well, good luck hope that is the actual fix.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] joemax:
It was my suggestion to an issue with Album and thumbnails... hope it works for you guys too. Clearing caches and app data usually fixes a bunch of problem. Inc People app.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] vadonald:
Yeah, I didn't want to claim credit for this fix.

All I know is that I had some thumbnails, but not many (didn't go and look at my previous SD card), and no matter how many times I ran the Album app, the other thumbnails didn't re-appear.

I wondered if there was a way to 'tell' Album to clear its cache, but I looked for an option using the Menu key in Album itself, and there's no option.

When I saw this fix on the web, I thought I'd try it - hey presto, all my thumbnails are back and Album is fast again

Vince
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] joemax:
Cool, glad it helped you out :)

It happened to me when I tried changing memory cards.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] sixpackbud:
Clearing data and cache in settings DOES NOT fix the "thumbnail" issue for me an probably not for anyone else with this problem. Have tried it tons of times earlier together with all other testings.

There is no working solution to this, only a lot of suggestions.

ZenorGR: Could you change the heading from "[FIXED-SOLUTION] Album is slow" to "Album is slow, thumbnails are not created on sdcard".
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] stripealipe:
Yup, confirmed not working here too, with 2 different cards.

Balls. :(
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ZenorGR:
Suggestion one:

Boot into recovery mode(Power+Home buttons) and select the last option: "repair ext filesystems" then reboot. If that didn't work then consider trying the following.

Suggestion two:

1) Backup SD Card in order not to lose your content.

2) Format SD Card by going to Settings -> SD Card & phone storage -> Unmount SD card -> Format SD card

3) Remove SD card and use a card reader to connect it with your PC(I suppose mounting it by using USB might also work)

4) Go to My Computer, right click on the SD Card and hit Format

5) Select FAT32 and uncheck Quick Format
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] stripealipe:
Nope, none of the above worked.

Creates the .thumbnail folder everytime, but refuses to create the thumbnails themselves....
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] stilghar:
Surprisingly, it fixed the problem for me. Going to the Settings-> Applications -> Manage Applications and selecting the Album one, clearing cache and data did the trick for me. Now the Album app is fast again with a 16 Gig Samsung SDHC Ultra and the thumbnails are created (checked with Astro). Strangely, I thought I already tried this with no success, don't know why today this worked. But I'm happy it did :D
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] joemax:
Worked for me too, which was why I posted it ;)
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ZenorGR:
Astro also has an option to clear album cache, maybe people that are still experiencing this issue could try that out aswell.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] stripealipe:
OK......

I know this is boring for some, but i finally getting somewhere, kind of, with the album thumbnail issue.

Firstly, i've tried *everything* ok? Everything.... Caches, formats, labels, roms, different cards...

Now, today i tried some final things and one of them was to format my 8GB card with only a 2GB (just under) partition.

Hey presto, thumbnails get created everytime and everything flies along. Delete the .thumbnails folder and it's recreated again, and thumbnails work.

All working as it should do.

I then tried resizing the partition to 8GB, complete with existing pics and thumbnails, and tried this. The existing thumbnails still work and everything flies along, BUT, if i then take more pics or add more pics, no more thumbnails get created.

Basically, my Hero, and some others on this forum, does not want to address and write thumbnails to anything over 2GB in size, regardless of the actual card.

I was quite an early adopter and bought my white Hero almost as soon as it came out, so i'm now wondering if there is an issue with some early models?

Saying that, i know some people that have had the problem have somehow managed to get their Hero to work with their larger card, so i'm not sure what goes on here.

It seems my Hero at least wants, or expects a 2GB or less partition, and if it doesn't get it it won't play ball...

Thoughts...?!
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ZenorGR:
I am not sure if it's a problem with the SD card being more than 2GB, but it was fixed for me even after the format of the SD card, which is 8GB.

What I also did was to add the images and .thumbnails of the stock SD card to my 8GB manually to see if that fixes it(basically copy the DCIM of the stock SD to the new one).

I can't really say which of the methods fixed the issue, since it started working as it should at random time.

When I suggested HTC to test it on a SDHC instead of the stock one I got no answer, maybe you should send them a tell aswell.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] stripealipe:
Yes, i have sent a mail to HTC, but will send one with my new findings.

I did get an answer to my firs mail, but it was suitably unhelpful. Basically saying they do not test SD compatibilty and to try yet another card.

Everyone seems to have gotten round the problem in a variety of random ways which makes it harder to pinpoint the real cause. It definitely seems to revolve around the fact that the Hero seems to keep an 'allegiance' to the original 2GB card until 'hassled' into submission!

The thing that really puzzles me however is that the Hero recreates the .thumbnail folder without fail, and so has no problem here, yet it seems unable to actually write the thumbnails into that folder. I've unfortunately been unable to make head or toe of the logcat whilst this happens.

Anyways, thanks for all your input so far Zenor, and indeed others who have suggested ways around this annoying problem. Will keep you updated...
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] salmanbodla:
How do you do that in ASTRO? Please help :)
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ZenorGR:
It actually clears astro's thumbnails and internal cache's so I was wrong :p

Astro -> Menu button -> More -> Preferences -> Caches
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] salmanbodla:
Interesting results stripealipe :) I have noticed another thing...

I have a Sandisk 8GB class 6 micrSDHC card and exactly the same problem as above i.e. .thumbnail folder is created but no actual thumbnails in it. This has been tested several times using ASTRO, after completely clearing Album's cache and data etc.

This time, incidentally, I installed LINDA file manager, browsed to my Photo's folder on the SD card, and changed the view to Thumbnail. Within Linda, it showed photos, but scrolling was really jerky. I went out of Linda, and opened ASTRO and checked the .thumbnails forlder agains, and to my surprise, ALL thumbnails were there!! However, when I opend the Albums app again, the loading of photos was the same slow with gray boxes (even after several attempts). Deleting newly created thumbnails and restarting Albums DIDN'T recreate them, doing the same thing with Linda DID recreate thumbnails.

It is very confusing. If we say there is something wrong with the Albums app that it can niehter create its own thumbnails nor use the ones created by another app, that could be plausible but not entirely true, since all those people who have got this issue ressolved, are using the same Albums app (I am using ROM 2.76.405.5). Don't know what's going on. Could you try this with Linda file manager too?
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] shirato:
If anyone get the solution for this problem, can you please update too?

I got the same problem and I don't know how to fix it... I changed many cards but the thumbnails still not created...

Thanks.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] joemax:
So are we saying effectively that the Hero has issues with cards larger than the stock 2GB card, or that Album has issues ?
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ZenorGR:
This issue is a real mystery. It has to do with both album and SD card, it's like a conflict when trying to index the thumbnails.

It could be a permission issue of the folder as well but who knows.

The .thumbnails folder is determined as a Read Only folder by windows. Just a notice.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] shirato:
I suspect this is both Albums apps and SD card.

because we can see the other app's thumbnails cache e.g. .bookmark_thumb1, .fbcache, etc. were created without problems...

but only /sdcard/DCIM/.thumbnails that is empty on my 4GB++ card.

only my 1GB card and 2GB card that can created thumbnails without problem... not more than 2GB...

I have no idea now...
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] random663322:
I can confirm that the problem lies with the directory's permissions. If you mount your card and give the ".thumbnails" directory rwx permissions for everyone (chmod 777 .thumbnails) then it should work.

I'm using a class 6 8GB sandisk card and albums now works as expected.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] shirato:
Hi random663322, did you root your phone? I ran the 'chmod 777 .thumbnails' in the apps better terminal and it displays permission denied.

Anyway, I think my problem is not the permission. because I ran 'ls -la' and can see that the .thumbnails folder is already dwrxwrxwrx, so no need to chmod, right?

All files in my /sdcard/ are already permission 777 and the owner of file is system.. could you please confirm if this is the same as yours but you can see all .thumbnails files were created?

I would like to know the details of the working one so we can analyze easier. Could you please also tell us what is your ROM build, the brand and size of your microSD card ?

Thank you for your answer
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] salmanbodla:
Hi random663322,

Please explain your method with full command used in the ADB shell... and please also answer shirato's questions (above). Thanks.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] commodoor:
i tried that (even with root) the permissions didn't change it's always rwx for the user not the group and not for everyone. i also thought it was the permissions and saw that only the user has rights on it. but i wasn't able to change it.

i will give it a try again, let you know
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] random663322:
I apologize for not explaining better. I had assumed that chmod would work. Sorry. :(

The actual method used was via the application "swiftp". I connected using "filezilla", deleted the existing thumbnails directory, recreated it and then added write permissions for both group and other (which I believe were unselected at the time).

I should point out that while my phone is rooted, the "swiftp" application didn't require this. It didn't ask for elevated access at any time during the process.

My phone details are as follows:

ROM: 2.73.405.5 (official but rooted)

SD: 8GB class 6

FILESYSTEM: fat32 (created using mkfs.vfat on linux with all standard options).

I'm assuming you already know, but the thumbnails directory mentioned is "/dcim/.thumbnails".

I'll run some tests later to make sure it wasn't a fluke. Hopefully it wasn't because albums is working great at the moment.

Hope this helps.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] :
I use Windows 7 with FileZilla. Fail to connect with Critical Error :-(
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] joemax:
Surely the size of card should make no difference with permissions ??

My guess (probably wrong) is that its a FAT32 issue with either Album or the Hero firmware. The 2GB card is FAT16 is it not as FAT32 is required for larger partitions ??
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] commodoor:
I also have this isseu now. but before (if you read myposts before) it worked perfect even when i deleted all the content of .thumbnails folder. i never used the 2GB card that was delivered with the phone. i first useed 4Gb class 6 and now using 16Gb class 4 never had problems with these two cards. they where always FAT32.

but one day the thumbnalis where messed up and i deleted .thumbnails i thought that would fix the problem. it didn't the pictures thumbnails are still wrong and cache isn't filling.

its not the fault of the size of sd card. i'm 100% sure. if it was i would had problems from the begining.

first

who has this problem: are they using rooted android?

are you guys using ap2sd?

how many partitions do you got on youre sd? (FAT32+swap+EXT2)

i'm going to try find the problem that is cousing this. and to find a solution we have to ask the right questions. what do we have in comment that the others don't have.
[Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] commodoor:
Update:

I tried to format: Swap > it didn't fix it

after that i formated fat32 partition > it fixed the problem i don't have a problem with the album now. i hope it will stay this way.

i insert new pictures on the sd card and thmbnails where created. so plz try to format your sd partion and try it.