My phone was acting weird (programs that were installed were not being found) so I soft reset. THe phone became infinitely paused at the touch pro flash screen. So i tried reflashing with my SD card. I flashed 2 different roms, both with filesizes greater than 110 megs. They would get stuck infinitely flashing through the SD card. Finally I flashed a rom (Mighty 6) which was under 100 megs and it worked.
1) It almost sounds like I had a device filesystem corruption or something. How would I determine if a portion of my device's filesystem is corrupt?
2) If part of the file system is corrupt, is there a way to mark the corrupt portions?
3) If it's not a corrupt filesystem, what else could it be?
Thanks guys, I'd appreciate any help!
Have you tried flashing using activesync? or a different SD card?
If so and you still have the same problem, then its quite probable you have some corrupted memory on the phone (sry, i dont know how to block use of the corrupted parts) - if not i'd say you have a corrupted SD card, and everytime you use it, it screws the flash.
Did you not try a hard reset between a softreset and a new flash??
Beeble said:
Have you tried flashing using activesync? or a different SD card?
If so and you still have the same problem, then its quite probable you have some corrupted memory on the phone (sry, i dont know how to block use of the corrupted parts) - if not i'd say you have a corrupted SD card, and everytime you use it, it screws the flash.
Did you not try a hard reset between a softreset and a new flash??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey, thanks for the reply...I could not get an activesync connection since the OS wouldn't load. I tried two different cards same result. I formatted both cards. I tried hard reset, at the time the phone would not even hard reset. Fortunately I have yet to encounter any issues with since I flashed Mighty's Rom.
I have a thread about this on ppcgeeks as well. I mentioned there it would be nice to have a utility such as chkdsk on windows mobile. I guess I'll take it as it goes, since it seems my phone is functioning correctly right now.
A few notes about Flash (the hardware type) and flashing (the 'firmware' type).
Flash memory isn't permanent. Writing to the flash memory itself is a (slightly) destructive process. Older chips used to have only a few hundred re-writes; newer flash devices support millions (and some of the newer ones, billions) of rewrites. This is important to your question because the hardware that controls the flash itself is designed to deal with the possibility of bad blocks.
Just like a normal HDD can develop bad sectors, Flash memory can develop bad 'blocks'. In fact, most flash chips actually ship with several bad blocks from the factory. Knowing the manufacturing process is imperfect, manufacturers which would design a flash chip meant to store 600 blocks might actually develop one with 650 blocks; factory testing is then performed to ensure that the amount of valid blocks is greater than or equal to 600.
The hardware/firmware controller that controls read/writes to the flash chip is designed to catalog all invalid bytes- bytes which, for example, after being written retain their previous value. It then automatically reroutes data writing around the bad block.
More succinctly, you shouldn't have to mark bad portions of the NAND flash- the device should be doing it by itself.
As a second note, you don't actually need a real ActiveSync connection to flash 'via ActiveSync.' A connection to the bootloader using the activesync drivers works fine most of the time- this is the device's "recovery mode."
ktemkin said:
A few notes about Flash (the hardware type) and flashing (the 'firmware' type).
Flash memory isn't permanent. Writing to the flash memory itself is a (slightly) destructive process. Older chips used to have only a few hundred re-writes; newer flash devices support millions (and some of the newer ones, billions) of rewrites. This is important to your question because the hardware that controls the flash itself is designed to deal with the possibility of bad blocks.
Just like a normal HDD can develop bad sectors, Flash memory can develop bad 'blocks'. In fact, most flash chips actually ship with several bad blocks from the factory. Knowing the manufacturing process is imperfect, manufacturers which would design a flash chip meant to store 600 blocks might actually develop one with 650 blocks; factory testing is then performed to ensure that the amount of valid blocks is greater than or equal to 600.
The hardware/firmware controller that controls read/writes to the flash chip is designed to catalog all invalid bytes- bytes which, for example, after being written retain their previous value. It then automatically reroutes data writing around the bad block.
More succinctly, you shouldn't have to mark bad portions of the NAND flash- the device should be doing it by itself.
As a second note, you don't actually need a real ActiveSync connection to flash 'via ActiveSync.' A connection to the bootloader using the activesync drivers works fine most of the time- this is the device's "recovery mode."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Excellent information, much of what I was too lazy to look up . Considering the information about bad sectors on flash-based memory that you have given me, do you have any ideas as to what the issue may(is) have been?
The only other explanation (albeit in my limited knowledge lol) that I can come up with is that the data within the roms I used somehow became corrupted, either during the download process, or the process of transferring the data to the card. I was in linux when I transferred the data to the card. Although I find this highly unlikely, I guess it could be a driver implementation issue with my cardreader and linux. I have not had a problem thus far though.
Hi,
Did a search but could not find anything like this.
Problem with my new Gemei G9T Android 4 Tablet. Until 3 nights ago it functioned normally, but 2 days ago I switched on and there was a problem accessing storage. File Browser and ES File Explorer cannot access internal SD, nor can QuickPic, MoviePlayer, or Music. Icon continuously shows ‘preparing SD card’. Settings accesses most functions, except ‘storage’ and ‘developer options’ which cause it to freeze. Tried factory reset – did not work. Most apps work fine, but not Camera or Gallery. Cannot access external SD or USB storage, or connect to laptop. Entering sleep mode causes power off. Normal powering on and off now require two presses with time gap between. All of these functions were fine previously. Have you any suggestions, please?
Brian44 said:
Hi,
Did a search but could not find anything like this.
Problem with my new Gemei G9T Android 4 Tablet. Until 3 nights ago it functioned normally, but 2 days ago I switched on and there was a problem accessing storage. File Browser and ES File Explorer cannot access internal SD, nor can QuickPic, MoviePlayer, or Music. Icon continuously shows ‘preparing SD card’. Settings accesses most functions, except ‘storage’ and ‘developer options’ which cause it to freeze. Tried factory reset – did not work. Most apps work fine, but not Camera or Gallery. Cannot access external SD or USB storage, or connect to laptop. Entering sleep mode causes power off. Normal powering on and off now require two presses with time gap between. All of these functions were fine previously. Have you any suggestions, please?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try to take out your SD card and put it in a Card reader, remember to do it while your device is off or unmount it from memory settings, try to swtich on your device later and connect it to your computer and check if it connect through USB or not.
Try some system tools?
Brian44 said:
Hi,
Did a search but could not find anything like this.
Problem with my new Gemei G9T Android 4 Tablet. Until 3 nights ago it functioned normally, but 2 days ago I switched on and there was a problem accessing storage. File Browser and ES File Explorer cannot access internal SD, nor can QuickPic, MoviePlayer, or Music. Icon continuously shows ‘preparing SD card’. Settings accesses most functions, except ‘storage’ and ‘developer options’ which cause it to freeze. Tried factory reset – did not work. Most apps work fine, but not Camera or Gallery. Cannot access external SD or USB storage, or connect to laptop. Entering sleep mode causes power off. Normal powering on and off now require two presses with time gap between. All of these functions were fine previously. Have you any suggestions, please?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm guessing databaiz's suggestion to take out the card isn't an option because it's the internal sd card, right? If so, for the one-in-a-million chance that the external card is screwing with the bus, I'd take the external card out and reboot anyway, just to make sure; if it works OK then, I would check the external card as databaiz suggests. But assuming it still doesn't work, next question is, do you have a terminal app installed? Please try the 'mount' command and let us know what you see. One other question, will it still go into fastboot mode? Can you see it from your computer when in fastboot mode (the details of how to do this depend on whether you have windows or linux/macOS - I can maybe help with the latter, but not the former).
It could be bad card
It could be bad card.... Remove and test in card reader...
cannot access internal or external storage
Thanks guys, I have been booting without external memory, with problems still the same. So, cannot be problem with external SD.
The internal SD card is not accessed properly. When I go to settings>Apps>All, the line at bottom shows Internal storage 4.1 MB used, 798MB free. (I have uninstalled most apps to see if that helped – it did not.) So, something is accessing the internal SD, also apps are running which must be off the internal SD.
I do not know what a terminal app is, Urilabob. I have downloaded it but what do I do with it?
At: [email protected]:/ $ I keyed in # mount [enter] , making:
[email protected]:/ $ # mount [enter]
But nothing happened, just another line of: [email protected]:/ $
Also, what is fast boot mode – this is not the same as sleep mode? This is all new to me. Appreciate your help.
My laptop is Windows 7.
Brian44 said:
Thanks guys, I have been booting without external memory, with problems still the same. So, cannot be problem with external SD.
The internal SD card is not accessed properly. When I go to settings>Apps>All, the line at bottom shows Internal storage 4.1 MB used, 798MB free. (I have uninstalled most apps to see if that helped – it did not.) So, something is accessing the internal SD, also apps are running which must be off the internal SD.
I do not know what a terminal app is, Urilabob. I have downloaded it but what do I do with it?
At: [email protected]:/ $ I keyed in # mount [enter] , making:
[email protected]:/ $ # mount [enter]
But nothing happened, just another line of: [email protected]:/ $
Also, what is fast boot mode – this is not the same as sleep mode? This is all new to me. Appreciate your help.
My laptop is Windows 7.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, I replied earlier but it seems I messed up so the reply didn't appear.
My problem is I know unix fairly well, and android is very similar, so I forget what is the same and what's different. Sorry, the command you need in the terminal is "df". That will show you a list of what partitions are mounted on your system. I'm guessing you're going to see /system, but not /mnt/sdcard. Why, I don't know. It's possible that the sdcard partition has got corrupted - but suspicious that the external card is also having problems. Is it possible that either the tablet or your pc crashed while you were copying files between them? Or that you disconnected the cable between them before telling the tablet to go out of connected mode? Either of those could explain corrupted partitions. Unfortunately fixing them may not be easy.
There are three different ways to connect your tablet to a computer. One is so it looks like external disks. I got the impression you already discovered this, and that it has now stopped working. The other two require you to install (parts of) the android development system on your computer. The simplest one is adb mode. Please google it to see how to use it. This might give you a chance to check the state of your partitions. The other is in fastboot mode. Fastboot mode is an alternative way of starting your computer, that goes into a fairly bulletproof, but very simple, mode that allows you to do various things on your tablet (it gives you very low level access to the tablet - powerful but dangerous). I'm pretty sure it will still be working. How you get into fastboot mode depends on your tablet; you'll need to google it. And how you access it in fastboot mode is fairly different on windows. So I'm not the best adviser. But please be careful - it's easy to brick the tablet in fastboot mode, you need to make sure you completely understand any steps you might take, especially any that might write to the tablet (of course, reading from it is safe). And of course the simplest alternative is simply to completely reinstall the tablet (sorry, I forget the android term for this). That should restore things OK, but it will mean you lose all your data and will have to reinstall all your applications.
cannot access internal or external storage
urilabob said:
Sorry, I replied earlier but it seems I messed up so the reply didn't appear.
My problem is I know unix fairly well, and android is very similar, so I forget what is the same and what's different. Sorry, the command you need in the terminal is "df". That will show you a list of what partitions are mounted on your system. I'm guessing you're going to see /system, but not /mnt/sdcard. Why, I don't know. It's possible that the sdcard partition has got corrupted - but suspicious that the external card is also having problems. Is it possible that either the tablet or your pc crashed while you were copying files between them? Or that you disconnected the cable between them before telling the tablet to go out of connected mode? Either of those could explain corrupted partitions. Unfortunately fixing them may not be easy.
There are three different ways to connect your tablet to a computer. One is so it looks like external disks. I got the impression you already discovered this, and that it has now stopped working. The other two require you to install (parts of) the android development system on your computer. The simplest one is adb mode. Please google it to see how to use it. This might give you a chance to check the state of your partitions. The other is in fastboot mode. Fastboot mode is an alternative way of starting your computer, that goes into a fairly bulletproof, but very simple, mode that allows you to do various things on your tablet (it gives you very low level access to the tablet - powerful but dangerous). I'm pretty sure it will still be working. How you get into fastboot mode depends on your tablet; you'll need to google it. And how you access it in fastboot mode is fairly different on windows. So I'm not the best adviser. But please be careful - it's easy to brick the tablet in fastboot mode, you need to make sure you completely understand any steps you might take, especially any that might write to the tablet (of course, reading from it is safe). And of course the simplest alternative is simply to completely reinstall the tablet (sorry, I forget the android term for this). That should restore things OK, but it will mean you lose all your data and will have to reinstall all your applications.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, Urilabob. The command df had an effect!
Shows Filesystem with figures for Size, Used, Free, and Blksize (4096), next to each of the following:
/dev, /mnt/asec, /mnt/obb, /system, /data, and /cache. The figures are all different except Blksize.
/mnt/sdcard is not shown.
Does this tell you anything useful?
I have never been able to access the tablet from my laptop with Windows 7. My son’s laptop has an earlier Windows, so I checked today and found that his Windows Explorer finds the tablet (as 2 disks, A and F) and asks “Please insert a disk into Removable Disk H:” (and same for F.
By the way, this problem started when I downloaded the (automatic) firmware update direct to the tablet, not via laptop. But the wifi signal was weak, and files may have been corrupted. I have since downloaded the complete, latest firmware to the laptop (with strong wifi signal), but do not know how to get it into the tablet!
Have not yet done anything on adb or fastboot modes. Will Google adb tonight.
Not worried about losing data or apps.
Thanks again, Brian.
I'm guessing that your tablet is rooted? If so, do you have an app like superuser? I remember having to go through some options to give my file explorers access to my SD card. You may have accidentally set you SD card to be off-limits or something. If you haven't already done it, see if giving an app like ES File Explorer superuser access will help.
Also see if you can enable USB debugging. For my nook color, I have to enable in order to access usb mass storage for one of my memory units. See if you can access your internal SD card content through USB debugging.
cannot access internal or external storage
SacTappingUni said:
I'm guessing that your tablet is rooted? If so, do you have an app like superuser? I remember having to go through some options to give my file explorers access to my SD card. You may have accidentally set you SD card to be off-limits or something. If you haven't already done it, see if giving an app like ES File Explorer superuser access will help.
Also see if you can enable USB debugging. For my nook color, I have to enable in order to access usb mass storage for one of my memory units. See if you can access your internal SD card content through USB debugging.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your thoughts. My tablet is not rooted. And I cannot enable USB debugging, because Settings freezes when I tap Developer Options to get to USB debug. I am just learning about Android - seems to be 2 partitions on the internal storage, one about 2.6GB with apps and other things on (which is accessible), and the other partition must be about 13GB, but has not been accessible since the automatic firmware update.
Sounds like the update caused you issues. If you have everything backed up with your Google account I recommend that you do a factory data reset and see if that fixes your issue.
cannot access internal or external storage
MissionImprobable said:
Sounds like the update caused you issues. If you have everything backed up with your Google account I recommend that you do a factory data reset and see if that fixes your issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Factory reset would be great, if it worked, but it does not function.
Can you exchange the device?
Brian44 said:
Factory reset would be great, if it worked, but it does not function.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK, so from your df listing, it's clear that sdcard is not getting mounted. That's a pretty low-level function that is failing. The fact that factory reset also doesn't work suggests (doesn't prove) that the sdcard partition at least has a corrupted filesystem, and quite possibly the partition itself has been corrupted. Could a spotty OTA update do that? I'm surprised - I would have thought they would use fairly high level functions for OTA updates, precisely because any drop-out could cause corruption if you use low-level disk access. But who knows - the mysteries of google? Another possibility is that the sdcard is physically bad, and maybe the update just caused you to get into the bad region (with the dynamic memory mapping in flash memory, once something goes wrong it's almost impossible to figure out what). At this point, I'd be going back to the distributor if possible (you said it was new, right)? I think even if you were an android guru, and knew exactly how to do a complete rebuild from scratch, you would be risking that the device itself is faulty - and that the rebuild would mean you couldn't prove that the device was at fault (rather than your rebuild)...
Best Wishes
Bob
cannot access internal or external storage
urilabob said:
OK, so from your df listing, it's clear that sdcard is not getting mounted. That's a pretty low-level function that is failing. The fact that factory reset also doesn't work suggests (doesn't prove) that the sdcard partition at least has a corrupted filesystem, and quite possibly the partition itself has been corrupted. Could a spotty OTA update do that? I'm surprised - I would have thought they would use fairly high level functions for OTA updates, precisely because any drop-out could cause corruption if you use low-level disk access. But who knows - the mysteries of google? Another possibility is that the sdcard is physically bad, and maybe the update just caused you to get into the bad region (with the dynamic memory mapping in flash memory, once something goes wrong it's almost impossible to figure out what). At this point, I'd be going back to the distributor if possible (you said it was new, right)? I think even if you were an android guru, and knew exactly how to do a complete rebuild from scratch, you would be risking that the device itself is faulty - and that the rebuild would mean you couldn't prove that the device was at fault (rather than your rebuild)...
Best Wishes
Bob
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, Bob for all your help. This seems like the end of the line with this tablet. I expected this might be the case, and emailed DinoDirect two days ago for a refund, as I am heading overseas next week and want to resolve the matter before I go. They responded that "we will contact our related department to process your case priority". I have been aware that any actions I might take could invalidate the warranty, and this has inhibited me a bit. I will forward your latest comments in support of my refund claim.
I learned some basics of Android from all this!
Good wishes, great talking to you.
Brian
Just for a great justice :victory:
Got same bug on my Gemei G6, guess it hapens after i connect dc cabel to a fully charged pad that was charged in off mode and turn on. So i just download last firmware fro Gemeitech.com, unzip it on SD card and tnen turn on pad with pressed Home and Power buttons that must be pressed untill robot with green rotating belly appears what mean start of flashin` Thats it.
Got the same issue in Huawei Ascend P-7, I just switched off the mobile, removed the SD card and turned it back on after 5 minutes ....... and that was it, all issues resolved. Just the thing was that once SD card was re-inserted, problem came up again. So i have decided to copy SD card data to PC via Card Reader and format it or get new SD card
Hello!
I am an owner of a 16GB MicroSD card, which I bought from a famous Greek store back in April 2012. Today I want to use this SD to my old X10 Mini phone. I put it and saw it worked, but when I removed it from the X10 Mini and put it back in my CM 9 HTC Explorer it wasn't recognised.
I inserted it to a SAMSUNG MicroSD Adapter and then to my PC and told me that "You need to format the disk in drive H: before you can use it". The capacity of my SD also showed up as 30.6 MB instead of 14.72GB. I tried recovery software such as EaseUS and Recuva, but none of them even recognised the SD. I tried formating the SD with several tools (Windows wizards, Low Level HDD Formatter, SD Formatter even using CWM) but everything failed.
Is there any way I can make my SD card usable again?
UPDATE : Also tried with HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool but it didn't work.
vipergio said:
UPDATE : Also tried with HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool but it didn't work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would say the card is dead.
-Mike
mcapozzi said:
I would say the card is dead.
-Mike
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nah, I think that if it was dead it would not be recognized from my PC at all.
Not true exactly, there are different failure types for SD cards:
Typical failure modes, listed in no particular order, are
Bad spot on the card (might be recoverable, maybe).
Bad spot causing the card to lock up. I.e. once you accessed that bad spot, all read attempts fail till a power cycle.
Device firmware problem causing the device to report zero capacity. This essentially renders the device inaccessible to any software.
So saying that just because it gets a drive letter that it is somehow ok is not really true.
The HP USB utility is the go-to software for fixing thumb drives with bad partition tables. You can also run "diskpart" (on windows) or gparted (on linux) to see if that is what is causing the size misrepresentation.
-Mike
mcapozzi said:
Not true exactly, there are different failure types for SD cards:
Typical failure modes, listed in no particular order, are
Bad spot on the card (might be recoverable, maybe).
Bad spot causing the card to lock up. I.e. once you accessed that bad spot, all read attempts fail till a power cycle.
Device firmware problem causing the device to report zero capacity. This essentially renders the device inaccessible to any software.
So saying that just because it gets a drive letter that it is somehow ok is not really true.
The HP USB utility is the go-to software for fixing thumb drives with bad partition tables. You can also run "diskpart" (on windows) or gparted (on linux) to see if that is what is causing the size misrepresentation.
-Mike
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your answer mate!
If anyone has any ideas, please let me know!
try using a "low level format" tool..
use google.
hosamn said:
try using a "low level format" tool..
use google.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As I told you in my OP, I tried Low Lever HDD Formater, but this failed aswell.