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Raphael kills SD-Cards??

Hello everyone,
i own a Raphael since January and in this time it allready killed 2 SD-Cards.
The first one about 4 months ago.
Suddenly in the middle of usage the Raphael froze and i could not get it started again. even after a hardreset it was stuck in the bootscreen.
after a lot of trying and finally removing the sd card it bootet again without a problem.
the card was not readable anymore in any of my devices or windows boxes.
i thougth myself. well can happen even when a card is only half a year old got a new 8GB card and forgot about the incident.
yesterday while listening to some podcast suddenly the sound died. taking out the phone i found out it did not reacted to any power button presses or anything the screen stayed black.
after a softreset the phone worked again but took about 5 minutes to get in a usable state and the programms installed on the sd card where not aviable anymore.
taking a closer look i found that the card was not displayed in file explorer anymore.
gave it a try with my mp3 player. same result no card was found.
today in the morning i gave it a try on the pc with an sd-adabter. but also no result, wondows does not even recocnizes any device being plugged in. tryed a few data recover tools but non of them found the card.
someone has similiar experiances or any tips how i could get my data back from the card?
i guess the phone has to be send back for maintainance, but i doubt that they will find anything, if they accept it at all.

I have changed 4 sd cards because of similar problems. But the problem is most likely because of the fragility of high capacity microSDs, I wouldn't blame Raphael. Try other manufacturers (and try to find the ones that are not just rebranded)

I've had many issues with sd card corruption, but have solved some of the issues. Here's my advice (fwiw):
1. Get a card scanner, and regularly scan your catd. I do it everyday (takes 5 min). I use Wizcode Scandisk. It fixes errors and dumps out files that can be opened in notepad. It's worth looking at them, as it helped me find the multiple sources of corruption that I had.
2. Don't put your PIE cache on the card.
3. Change all 'save' paths (esp. the camera) to main memory.
4. Store any programs you use a lot on main memory.
5. Do NOT have any programs that run constantly on the sd card.
6. Do NOT put Fingerkeyboard on the sd card (major problem for me).
Basically, my advice is to use sd cards for storage. The Raphael has a lot of memory-use it for programs. I haven't had to format my card in about 4 months. I was doing it every couple of weeks for a while.

well basically i was using my sd card as a storage place for movies and podcast + podcastplayer prog.
and was using the player more or less the whole day.
i used the same card (and the other one before) also in my mp3 player when the raphael or the bt headset run out of power and there is no power outlet aviable to recharge. and twice the card failed in the rapahel.
when i got a new card, i also found that the card is working 100% on pc and mp3 player, but the raphael still can not see any sd card.
i really blame the phone and also assume that it now has a defective reader.
have to give it back to repairs as soon i have flashed the original firmware and make my way back to the store

You should scan the disk to find out the error sources. It may be something simple that causing them. Also, if your phone freezes when listening to music, you may want to either wait it out, or remove the card before soft resetting. You should do some searches on card corruption. There are lots of threads here that can be helpful.

many Sdcard and usbStick manufacturers got lowlevel format tools you can download and get cards not otherwise working in cardreaders on pc back to life

would love to get those cards working again. but i also would love to get the data back that was on them.
but the problem is the cards do not even appear on the pc, or any other device i have that can read/write them (usb card reader, digi cam, mp3 player)
its just as if nothing is ever inserted in the reader.

the low level format tools don't rely on windows driver model to detect cards

Flash Format (cnetx) has always been able to re-format my card, even when my pc couldn't recognize it and neither could my fuze. It has a free trial that works fine.

I haven't experienced any of these issues myself. But I'm sure I will now that I said that....

i gave that flash format a try, but it even failed to install. was one of those weird .exe installers. on the pc side it told me install was sucessfull, but on the ppc side was just a promt "installation failed".
a cab install would be nice, but without a working cardreader in the phone i guess would also not be of much help. i guess cuz of that that prog will not help me much. the reader in the phone is broken. cant read any cards, even brand new unused ones that are fine everywhere else just dont show up on the phone.
as for other "low level format tools" my search was quite unsecessful. i was looking at the sandisk and the transcend page (the suppliers of my 3 cards) but could not find anything.
google just found more request for this kind of program but not really somewhere where i could get it.

patlabor said:
i gave that flash format a try, but it even failed to install. was one of those weird .exe installers. on the pc side it told me install was sucessfull, but on the ppc side was just a promt "installation failed".
a cab install would be nice, but without a working cardreader in the phone i guess would also not be of much help. i guess cuz of that that prog will not help me much. the reader in the phone is broken. cant read any cards, even brand new unused ones that are fine everywhere else just dont show up on the phone.
as for other "low level format tools" my search was quite unsecessful. i was looking at the sandisk and the transcend page (the suppliers of my 3 cards) but could not find anything.
google just found more request for this kind of program but not really somewhere where i could get it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check C:\Program Files\Microsoft ActiveSync\CNETX-you'll find the cab in there. There will be several-you want the PPC-Arm one. It should install fine.

Card Freeze
Yeah I had the same thing happen. Raphael would not boot unless I removed the card and as soon as I placed the card back into the sd slot it would lock up. Unlike you I was able to get on of my PCs (either the XP Pro or the Vista Pro) to recognize it but all I could do was format it.
OK I like the idea of moving all the data to the main however I'm an old Windows CE guy (yeah I had a Jornado) and the memory used to be shared between program and storage. The device would allocate from the other when more was needed. If I place all the stuff I want into the Raphael main memory won't that lower the amount of RAM I have for running programs or vice versa? I really don't know if the memory is fluid since all I get when I look into the memory is one listing total storage and one total program, there is no slider bar like there used to be in windows ce.

webfrm said:
Yeah I had the same thing happen. Raphael would not boot unless I removed the card and as soon as I placed the card back into the sd slot it would lock up. Unlike you I was able to get on of my PCs (either the XP Pro or the Vista Pro) to recognize it but all I could do was format it.
OK I like the idea of moving all the data to the main however I'm an old Windows CE guy (yeah I had a Jornado) and the memory used to be shared between program and storage. The device would allocate from the other when more was needed. If I place all the stuff I want into the Raphael main memory won't that lower the amount of RAM I have for running programs or vice versa? I really don't know if the memory is fluid since all I get when I look into the memory is one listing total storage and one total program, there is no slider bar like there used to be in windows ce.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The storage memory on the device is flash, not ram, so you don't lose program memory changing the save paths to main memory (if that's what you meant by moving data to main memory).
I never had any issues with my storage cards (sd and cf) on my 2003 device. I don't think it was the device, but rather the cards. The big, 16 gb cards just seem to be less hardy than a 1-2 gb card. I had all my apps on the storage card (including stuff like magic button), and never had a problem. But, jeez, the 16 g microsd is sensitive as hell. It gets minor bits of corruption at least once a week. I scan it everyday to avoid it crashing, which has helped, because I've gone 4 months without formatting it. One thing that I've found screws it up royally is doing a lot of file/directory operations over active sync on a pc. I don't know why, but cutting and pasting files from one folder to another in the sd card frequently results in lost clusters. Renaming folders is also a bad idea.

OK Flash
Well I guess I didn't explain it correctly. According to HTC the RAM is 288MB with a ROM of 512MB. So I'm really confused since according to the start>settings>system>memory the total for my storage and my program = 549MB which is of course more than 288 and 512. So when I load applications into my device and get a choice of main or storage card when it was a large file (some apps I use were 14 megs or more) I would choose the storage card.
My old experience with Windows CE was whatever memory was on the device was shared with both the program and storage, so I would put as much as possible on my storage card. However in windows 6.1 or higher it lists two separate columns for Program and Storage with: Total, In Use, and Free. So when I install apps I presumed they went into the storage area. Am I mistaken? I figured Program on the device meant how much is currently in use. Kinda like opening multiple windows on a PC. I notice it's low when at once I have 4 applications open on my windows mobile device so that's what I thought Program memory was.
Therefore does installing to the Main, when given a choice during program installation. where does it get installed ROM, RAM? Why is my total memory higher than RAM or the ROM
Any insight would help me decide the best location for my program installation to not corrupt the data, or have the flash card screw me up either.

288 MB is the total amount of system ram. A large amount is not user-accessible, it's used by the kernel/OS/Page-pool, so you don't see it reported. It's still there, though. The rom memory is 512 MB, but the actual memory in rom is subtracted by the storage memory so you see the amount of user-available memory. With 2003 devices, if the battery ran down, you lost all of your data, because the storage memory was in RAM (except perhaps for a little flash disk space). But with a fuze, you can pull the battery out, and not lose your data.

Totally confused
OK your right about the 2003 devices which is why I placed most of my stuff on a storage card. However why is my total reported memory 549MB more than the 512 ROM? Also when I install stuff to the device where does it get stored, the 512 ROM? Are you saying that the 200mb of Program being shown is 288 RAM minus the 88 being used to run the OS?
So are you saying its safe to install all my apps onto the device and I won't lose anything if the battery runs out?

Yeah, I've been saying that for about 3 weeks, lol! They got rid of the volatile storage memory with winmo 5; we're onto 6.5 now, and it's a thing of the distant past. I you don't believe me, pull out your battery (there's no backup battery on the device) and see if it causes a hard reset.

This is not an uncommon problem with digital cameras, as well. It's complicated, but the bottom line is this: whenever you buy an SD/micro SDHC/etc. card, you should do a full format of it on your COMPUTER, then put it in your device.

Sd Corruption in DesireZ

Hi,
just to advise:
i bought a microSDHC 8gb kingmax Class10,that i swapped with the supplied
one but after only 10 hours of my desire's use, i had a message "sd card appears as read only etc" so it's corrupted(not yet having time to format it on my laptop)
So i put my Sandisk 8gb class4 back, so far 24hours still functionnal
so perhaps a defective one

This has happened to me using my G2. I have gone through 3 SD cards and lost some very important data. It has gone as far as completely killing 2 of them and not being read by computers or data recovery machines designed to get the data back...

Superthrust said:
This has happened to me using my G2. I have gone through 3 SD cards and lost some very important data. It has gone as far as completely killing 2 of them and not being read by computers or data recovery machines designed to get the data back...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
same here
a couple of days ago my 16GB SD card went compltely unusable, not recognized by windows or any repairing tool
and yes I always dismount the card from the phone after unplugging the USB cable

Hi, perhaps you could tell us what brands/size were involved(editing your post) if you dont mind
@gtrab : i a newbie for android, is that important to unmount the card after unplugging the usb(shouldnt it be rather before ;-) ?

invasion13 said:
Hi, perhaps you could tell us what brands/size were involved(editing your post) if you dont mind
@gtrab : i a newbie for android, is that important to unmount the card after unplugging the usb(shouldnt it be rather before ;-) ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LOL yes I meant "before"
and yes, it is important to unmount any USB thumb drive or USB card reader before removing it from a Windows PC
I am not sure if this is related or not, but I found Windows trying to use the card to "accelerate windows performance" or something like that (its an option that pops up when any USB gets connected, I never enable it, but I found a windows-related file there and I just deleted it)

gtrab said:
..
and yes, it is important to unmount any USB thumb drive or USB card reader before removing it from a Windows PC
I am not sure if this is related or not, but I found Windows trying to use the card to "accelerate windows performance" or something like that (its an option that pops up when any USB gets connected, I never enable it, but I found a windows-related file there and I just deleted it)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your tips, it could be useful to avoid corruption

Accidentally unplugged USB from phone. Now can't read SD card...

While I was charging my phone via USB connected to my computer, I made sure it was selected on "charge only," mode and unplugged the USB from my phone.
Then got an error message on my computer saying, "..was not ejected properly..."
Now I can't access any of my photos, videos etc...
How can I recover the improper ejection? Is it even possible or am I SOL and have to reformat the card?
I know the data can be retrieved because I have a program to do it, but I'm wondering if there is anything that can be done to make it as if it never happened?

Not sure if you mean you can't read the card on the computer, or the phone.
Best case scenario - you power off the phone, pop the cover off the back, and remove the MicroSD card. Use a card reader (preferably a USB card reader, but a full-size SD adapter will do if you have the slot) to plug the card directly into your computer.
Then you can back up all the information onto the computer, reformat the card, and put your data back onto it.
When you put it back into the phone, and power it on, it should read fine and you can just keep right on going.
The phone is pretty sensitive, and if anything doesn't finish writing to the card properly it won't read in the phone.
No matter what state it's in, even charge mode only, you should always properly stop and eject the device from the computer. Otherwise you risk this happening every time.
Worst case scenario - the computer itself won't read the card through a standalone card reader (not the phone) and you have to re-format the card losing all your data.
In any case, reformatting the card will make it readable by the phone again.
You may not be able to reformat the card in the phone, and have to do it in a computer. Whenever you can make that happen, the phone will be able to read the card again.
DON'T pull the card from the phone without powering it off completely first.
MAKE SURE fastboot is turned to off in your settings menu BEFORE turning it off to remove the card. Fastboot is a hibernation mode, and removing the card when powered off with fastboot enabled could cause problems - especially if the card has different information on it then when you "turned it off".
Fastboot = hibernation, and it's still using a very minimal amount of power to keep the system at the lowest level of powered on.
Yes, you can turn it off and pull the battery and the card and stuff with fastboot enabled, but sooner or later you will run into a problem - most likely a corrupted memory card.

I really appreciate the quick response and your input. Thanks!
Right now I'm using a data rescue program and it's scanning as I'm typing this...
The SD card is a Lexar 32GB Class 10, yet it's still talking about an hour to do a deep scan. I can see that it's retrieving all the files as it's scanning...good news and as expected, for I've done this many times for friends in the past with diggy cameras.
Before running the scan this was the scenario:
Powered off the phone, pulled the card and put it in the lexar USB adapter it originally came with. The card mounted and read fine on my Mac, but in the folder it only contained very little stuff...it almost looked as if it was a regular stock card with normal folders that would usually come on the stock 8GB. It showed an android folder, picture folder etc...but it had nothing in it.
.
I think once the scan is complete and after backing up all the recovered files, I'll probably just reformat it. It's nice to start fresh anyways...heck maybe it was a sign to a certain degree, although it was my human error...
Question: Should I reformat it in the phone or through Disk Utility via Mac?
BTW: I had, or should say have, over 3,000 pictures on there for my food blog and some videos...was pretty filled up...
Thanks again...Cheers'
Blue6IX said:
Not sure if you mean you can't read the card on the computer, or the phone.
Best case scenario - you power off the phone, pop the cover off the back, and remove the MicroSD card. Use a card reader (preferably a USB card reader, but a full-size SD adapter will do if you have the slot) to plug the card directly into your computer.
Then you can back up all the information onto the computer, reformat the card, and put your data back onto it.
When you put it back into the phone, and power it on, it should read fine and you can just keep right on going.
The phone is pretty sensitive, and if anything doesn't finish writing to the card properly it won't read in the phone.
No matter what state it's in, even charge mode only, you should always properly stop and eject the device from the computer. Otherwise you risk this happening every time.
Worst case scenario - the computer itself won't read the card through a standalone card reader (not the phone) and you have to re-format the card losing all your data.
In any case, reformatting the card will make it readable by the phone again.
You may not be able to reformat the card in the phone, and have to do it in a computer. Whenever you can make that happen, the phone will be able to read the card again.
DON'T pull the card from the phone without powering it off completely first.
MAKE SURE fastboot is turned to off in your settings menu BEFORE turning it off to remove the card. Fastboot is a hibernation mode, and removing the card when powered off with fastboot enabled could cause problems - especially if the card has different information on it then when you "turned it off".
Fastboot = hibernation, and it's still using a very minimal amount of power to keep the system at the lowest level of powered on.
Yes, you can turn it off and pull the battery and the card and stuff with fastboot enabled, but sooner or later you will run into a problem - most likely a corrupted memory card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Firstly, good move on the recovery utility on the card. Probably the most sensible thing you could have done to ensure you get your data back with a minimal (if any) amount of corruption.
I'm running a windows box for everything i'm doing with this phone, and i'll be setting up a linux box as soon as I breakdown my NAS computer to work on android stuff.
I can't speak to mac, i've had very little interaction with them since the early 90's. Windows 3.1 came out and I dropped mac, ever since it's been something i've stayed away from.
I reformat all my cards in my windows computer, then put them in the powered off phone - it boots up and uses the cards fine.
I had one issue where I pulled a card before it popped up and said "safe to remove" on my computer, the phone wouldn't read the card. I pulled it and reformatted in the computer, and when I put it back in the phone it was fine again.
I'd say that formatting in the mac should be fine, try it out and see what happens.
I have used the phone to reformat the memory cards a few times, but it has always been when I did a factory reset on the phone. I would assume that is the same utility in settings that you can use to reformat the card on the phone.
Once you back up your data to the computer, my suggestion would be to reformat the card in the computer, then put all the data back onto it the same way it was before the format.
When you plug it into the phone, everything should be okay then, but check all your apps to make sure they still run right (if any had data stored on the card)
Theoretically this should work fine.
Are you rooted, and do you have a recent clockworkmod backup of your phone?
Edit - you can probably get away with not moving the pictures themselves back onto the phone.
That's a sizeable chunk of data there, USB transfer to the memory card off the computer will work many orders of magnitude faster then using a MicroSD to SD adapter into a card slot.

Backed Up / Restore complete and it pretty much got it all.
If I format it in the computer it should be a FAT32 correct?
I've always wondered about the encryption levels between formatting through the computer vs. SD card inside the phone (formatting)
Not that it really matters in my case (security wise), but do you know if formatting in the computer is better than reformatting w/ SD in the phone?
Would it be safe to say that reformatting inside the phone just does a single / simple pass through of putting 1's and 0's to wipe the data?
Whereas, reformatting in the computer you have different levels of pass throughs depending on the security level you desire.
-
Now taking it a step deeper, for me I've always wondered about the long term stability of SD Cards efficiency in general when doing the maximum pass throughs to erase the data instead of a simple 1 & 0 single pass through...
Kind of like painting a car:
If you paint directly on the bare bone primer sheet metal the paint will last longer without cracks down the road...ie.... cleaner, more organized data on a clean sheet of clusters of data.
If you paint over paint over paint with simple sand downs, then paint again over paint (thick).... over time it'll chip, crack and not last as long .... ie ..... higher probability of data corruption?
I've always had a piece of mind making it a habit to always do a fresh reformat with any SD cards I've had .... with the exception of this one for some odd reason... I guess I was in a rush to use it already to enjoy the Class 10 performance and speed.
I really appreciate your input and knowledge. It's nice to know there's people on here that can post intellectually...I was beginning to worry after reading all these posts with responses with no substance.
btw: You're either a major night owl or over seas being up at this hour? haha...kudos
Cheers...
Blue6IX said:
Firstly, good move on the recovery utility on the card. Probably the most sensible thing you could have done to ensure you get your data back with a minimal (if any) amount of corruption.
I'm running a windows box for everything i'm doing with this phone, and i'll be setting up a linux box as soon as I breakdown my NAS computer to work on android stuff.
I can't speak to mac, i've had very little interaction with them since the early 90's. Windows 3.1 came out and I dropped mac, ever since it's been something i've stayed away from.
I reformat all my cards in my windows computer, then put them in the powered off phone - it boots up and uses the cards fine.
I had one issue where I pulled a card before it popped up and said "safe to remove" on my computer, the phone wouldn't read the card. I pulled it and reformatted in the computer, and when I put it back in the phone it was fine again.
I'd say that formatting in the mac should be fine, try it out and see what happens.
I have used the phone to reformat the memory cards a few times, but it has always been when I did a factory reset on the phone. I would assume that is the same utility in settings that you can use to reformat the card on the phone.
Once you back up your data to the computer, my suggestion would be to reformat the card in the computer, then put all the data back onto it the same way it was before the format.
When you plug it into the phone, everything should be okay then, but check all your apps to make sure they still run right (if any had data stored on the card)
Theoretically this should work fine.
Are you rooted, and do you have a recent clockworkmod backup of your phone?
Edit - you can probably get away with not moving the pictures themselves back onto the phone.
That's a sizeable chunk of data there, USB transfer to the memory card off the computer will work many orders of magnitude faster then using a MicroSD to SD adapter into a card slot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

iunlock said:
Backed Up / Restore complete and it pretty much got it all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad to hear you got it all!
iunlock said:
If I format it in the computer it should be a FAT32 correct?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep.
iunlock said:
I've always wondered about the encryption levels between formatting through the computer vs. SD card inside the phone (formatting)
Not that it really matters in my case (security wise), but do you know if formatting in the computer is better than reformatting w/ SD in the phone?
Would it be safe to say that reformatting inside the phone just does a single / simple pass through of putting 1's and 0's to wipe the data?
Whereas, reformatting in the computer you have different levels of pass throughs depending on the security level you desire.
-
Now taking it a step deeper, for me I've always wondered about the long term stability of SD Cards efficiency in general when doing the maximum pass throughs to erase the data instead of a simple 1 & 0 single pass through...
Kind of like painting a car:
If you paint directly on the bare bone primer sheet metal the paint will last longer without cracks down the road...ie.... cleaner, more organized data on a clean sheet of clusters of data.
If you paint over paint over paint with simple sand downs, then paint again over paint (thick).... over time it'll chip, crack and not last as long .... ie ..... higher probability of data corruption?
I've always had a piece of mind making it a habit to always do a fresh reformat with any SD cards I've had .... with the exception of this one for some odd reason... I guess I was in a rush to use it already to enjoy the Class 10 performance and speed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not entirely sure about the different levels of security, or even if there are any advantages/disadvantages to this.
Your painting analogy is a real good one, and as someone who was a painter by trade for quite a few years, it's one I use a lot.
When I was doing memory speed tests in my Nook Color on flash memory, I always formatted the cards in the Nook Color, then again in the computer, ejected and re-inserted the cards before running the test using the computer.
Like what you are saying, it ensured a clean card and uniformity. I'd rather take an extra step that may or may not be unnecessary just to be sure. The focus of my tests at the time were on credibility and reliability of results, and the dual format meant that the cards always were the same.
Windows gets lazy sometimes, and if formatting a card that essentially looks no different then when it started, it might just skip over doing the work - coming from being formatted in the Nook Color meant that windows had to actually do something to the card to make it right, and made sure it would do it's work. Why leave anything to chance.
You're looking at hundreds of thousands of read/writes on modern flash memory before it wears out...a couple of extra formats aren't going to hurt anything when you look at the big picture.
When you're talking about moving a card to a device like this phone, where it's probably not going to come out much, then a fresh format first is probably a wise move. Why contaminate the new device with junk left over from other devices on the card. Everything will work better if you start fresh.
iunlock said:
I really appreciate your input and knowledge. It's nice to know there's people on here that can post intellectually...I was beginning to worry after reading all these posts with responses with no substance.
btw: You're either a major night owl or over seas being up at this hour? haha...kudos
Cheers...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad to be of help, I try to do whatever I can to help out, both online and off. I suffer from severe insomnia, and sleep very little. I have to do something to keep myself occupied, and the internet and computers in general give me something to do when everyone I know is sleeping.
The more I share what I know, the more I learn from other people who come by and add to it. No matter how much you know, someone else, probably many others know more on any given topic. With a board as big as XDA, and such a great community spirit, the amount of information here is just staggering.
I try to put what I know out there as completely as possible as much for myself as others. I'd rather have the tons of learned people browsing these boards add to what I know, instead of covering the same ground. It's one of the reasons I try to be so particular about the details in everything I post.
Something like this phone is especially exciting, because it's a new thing. In a sense, we're breaking new ground with some of the stuff we're doing here, and that amps me up even more.
I have a feeling This thread is going to turn into another in-depth flash memory review like what I was involved with in the Nook Color. Check it out, since you have one of those coveted 32gig class 10 cards and see if you can add anything at some point.
I'm looking forward to picking up some to test out, and figure out what a good way of benchmarking them through the phone will be to get some definitive comparisons. It'd be nice to be able to make suggestions for people who come by in the future about what are the good cards to buy if they want to get the best level of performance out of their phone.
I'm curious to know how it goes with your recovery of the memory card in regards to getting the data back on, and whether it hiccups or not when you put your device back together. I don't have a mac, and being able to tell others who come by that it works, or why it doesn't will be very helpful to the community in general.

Thanks again!
I'm reformatting the SD card now via the Mac using Disk Utility. For giggles I just selected the maximum 7 pass through, which will probably take a few hours. I'll just let it run while I sleep.
Here's another thing I've always wondered about:
When you install an app or game and let's say you uninstall it, I wonder how much clutter it leaves behind of the original app or game system files?
I'd figure over time all the 'dust' would add up to accumulate to something that may potentially have an impact on the performance of the SD card.
This has always been one of the biggest reasons I love reformatting a SD card when I can. It's like spring cleaning for me....starting fresh on a clean plate.
---
You're contribution is greatly appreciated and brings much value to the forums.
I think I too suffer from insomnia to a certain degree... yikes! It's 2:41PM HST right now...prob won't sleep til 5am ...

LOL, I don't think I've 'Safely Removed' any USB since USB 1.0 or 1.1 days..yeah, I like to live on the edge!
So far I've hooked my phone up to my computer 5 times to transfer MP3s to it. I just pull the plug when I'm done..no problems (yet)

Living on the edge there eh? I'm surprised you haven't had any issues yet...to be on the safe side, I'd make sure to safely remove it first.
Especially if you have important stuff on your card.
Good luck!
token2k6 said:
LOL, I don't think I've 'Safely Removed' any USB since USB 1.0 or 1.1 days..yeah, I like to live on the edge!
So far I've hooked my phone up to my computer 5 times to transfer MP3s to it. I just pull the plug when I'm done..no problems (yet)
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iunlock said:
Living on the edge there eh? I'm surprised you haven't had any issues yet...to be on the safe side, I'd make sure to safely remove it first.
Especially if you have important stuff on your card.
Good luck!
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99.99999% of the time, you do not need to use safely remove hardware for usb mass storage devices (like a usb stick or a phone with an sd storage card). unless you have specifically configured the device to have write caching enabled in device manager (no reason to do this for a phone or usb flash drive), as long as there is nothing being written to the storage device, it's completely harmless.

Mozart not recognised by windows so can't backup please help!!

I was recently given a Htc mozart by a friend who had cracked the screen and bought a new phone, they said I could have it but would like their photos and vids off it so if I could back it up (easy as pie I thought!!!)
The phone charges and functions fine (I changed the digitzer) but when plugged into a pc it displays usb unrecognized error code 43 (malfunction?). I have tried multiple cables, laptops and even os (xp, 7 32bit/64bit and osx), I have searched the internet and have seen some suggestions on wiping the phone (but I don't want to do this until the data is backed up) also looked at reading the micro sd but found you can't by conventional methods.
I have also tried multiple apps - boxfiles, sendstuffnow,sharefile (they seem to allow one photo at a time but not videos), I also tried emailing them but again I can't email vids and the phone has over 500 pics! tried bluetooth and also yivosoft but it doesn't seem to be able to view the files (root access required??), tried a few other programs such as ftp and they just state the phone needs to be updated via zune (currently running 7.0.7004.0).
I was thinking of sticking another microsd card in and formatting it etc just to see if it is then recognised in windows and poss update the firmware then put the old micro sd back in? would this work or is the firmware stored on the micro sd card and also if not when I update would it then state the old micro sd needs formatting or something? If anyone has any suggestions on how I can get the pics and vids off it would be greatly appreciated! I am an android user and this is my first experience with a windows phone so if I am way off my apologies. Thanks again

For sure don't mess with the uSD cards. They're locked to the device (the "S" in SD stands for "Secure" and refers to a rarely-used ability to lock an SD card). Even if you managed to make the card usable again, the data on it would be gone. Also, yes, the OS is at least partially stored on the SD card, and your switch-update suggestion would not work.
WiFi sync would work, but if that's not already set up you'd need to connect the phone to Zune via the USB to set it up. There are some homebrew apps that would be able to lift the files easily enough, but unless you have something lile TouchXplorer or Advanced Explorer installed already, that's not an option (you need USB connection to install more homebrew).
Sorry, man. This is one of the reasons why I plug in my phone to my PC every day or two and sync it; the tiny amount of time it takes is worth the reassurance. I realize that doesn't help now, though...

GoodDayToDie said:
For sure don't mess with the uSD cards. They're locked to the device (the "S" in SD stands for "Secure" and refers to a rarely-used ability to lock an SD card). Even if you managed to make the card usable again, the data on it would be gone. Also, yes, the OS is at least partially stored on the SD card, and your switch-update suggestion would not work.
WiFi sync would work, but if that's not already set up you'd need to connect the phone to Zune via the USB to set it up. There are some homebrew apps that would be able to lift the files easily enough, but unless you have something lile TouchXplorer or Advanced Explorer installed already, that's not an option (you need USB connection to install more homebrew).
Sorry, man. This is one of the reasons why I plug in my phone to my PC every day or two and sync it; the tiny amount of time it takes is worth the reassurance. I realize that doesn't help now, though...
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Thanks for the reply, know what you mean I back up regular also but my friend didn't. I can't believe its so difficult to transfer the files without the usb connection :S also can't believe the updates are no ota :S was hoping there might be a method of unlocking the phone for homebrew like there was with the iphone at one stage. Ah well back to the drawing board unless someone can come up with any other ideas!

SD card died in Moto X Pure, combined with system, any way to get the pictures off?

The SD card in my wife's Moto X Pure died this morning (phone is saying there is no card connected). When we first put the card in we picked the option that had the phone simply use the card as additional memory in the phone, rather than keeping the card as a separate entity where you would need to drag files. She thought that google was backing up all of her photos (including almost all of our baby photos), but when we went to recover them nothing had been backed up since we got the phone erasing 95% of the baby photos
I tried to simply take the card out and put it back in, but that didn't get me anywhere. I did a recovery on the card using disk digger and it found two very small DST files titled "Sector 420728" and "Sector 39189795," but neither one of them could be opened. The phone says that it is saving the data of the card (and keeps asking me to reinsert it), and she only had a few hundred pictures on the phone, not nearly enough to fill it up the space on the phone, so my guess is that the pictures are still on the phone but it can't access them.
I have thought about trying to copy the DST files over to another SD card and inserting that seeing if it gives the correct pathing to find the photos, but I don't know how to format it correctly originally and even if I did, if that will do more harm then good.
Anyone have any idea how to recover the pictures?