Database Info

[Q] Dropbox cannot export to SD card

Hi,
Despite its claims, Dropbox will not display my External SD card when I chosoe Export->Save to device.
Yes, I've gone into the Settings and checked "Display Advanced Devices"
I've also made sure my SD card is mounted and writeable. The My Files application is able to move a file from Dropbox to my SD card and the Music player can play music from it too so I know that A)The card is working and B)My device can see and use the card correctly
The problem is inside Dropbox itself but their technical support people are just making me jump through hoops, sending them screenshot after screenshot of other applications saving to the SD card i.e. they think there's something wrong with the device, not their software.
Has anyone else had similar trouble?
Could someone who has managed to get this working take a look at their external SD card contents and see if they have an folder on there for Dropbox anywhere?
Cheers - Brad

By writable, do you mean "The card isn't locked" or "I've rooted and disabled the KitKat external storage security measures"?
Sent From My Samsung Galaxy Note 3 N9005 Using Tapatalk

I mean the card isn't locked. I know there are Android security measures that restrict things but DropBox say that they can write to an external SD card, presumably in their own allotted area. No rooting should be necessary.

netizensmith said:
I mean the card isn't locked. I know there are Android security measures that restrict things but DropBox say that they can write to an external SD card, presumably in their own allotted area. No rooting should be necessary.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That used to be the case in the first few months, yes. However recent updates to Android made that impossible. Quickpic, ES and VLC run into te same issues. I'm on an older firmware version and they work in exactly that manner, but those on a newer update have found that it no longer works.

That's incorrect.
I just downloaded Smart File Manager and used it to copy a document from internal storage to my sd card. I did this 1 minute ago so it definitely works on the latest android OS version for Note Pro 12.2
When you copy you can only copy to a specific location on the SD card:
/storage/extSdCard/Android/data/com.smartwho.SmartFileManager/files
Any attempt to copy to any other location on the SD card will fail but the folder above is "owned" by Smart File Manager so it is allowed to copy there. Dropbox would have its own location on the SD card too but on my SD card there is no folder that looks like it's owned by DropBox. I suspect that is why it is failing.

Following today's system upgrade my SD card won't mount

I've had my Idol 3 for a couple of weeks now and I just love it . . . so do my 'green' friends! However . . .
My Idol 3 got a major upgrade today, and now the phone won't permit mounting of the SD card . . . home of many apps!
The option under Settings/Storage is not greyed out, it's just that when I tap 'Mount SD card' nothing happens. I'm also getting a continuous notice, i.e. "SD card safe to remove".
The card was not removed either before or after the upgrade, but since I have had the above problem I have done reboots, restarts and hard reboots, and and have removed and replaced the card a couple of times . . . . I'm at a loss on this one!
Does anyone have any suggestions that will help me get the SD card mounted please?
Many thanks!

Just maybe a very strange coincidence here. I have been using the same 32gb sd card since I bought this phone and never had a single issue with the card or the phone (related to the sd card). This morning I checked to see if there was an update, I did not download or install it (since I'm rooted) but man ever since that moment I have been having f-ed up sd card issues. The same types of problems with it randomly unmounting the card and telling me the card is safe to remove, finding the card unmounted and touching the Mount button does nothing and just now I removed the card and my Chromebook is asking if I want to format it... WTF?
All this makes me wonder if Alcatel secretly installed some updates in the background today even though I did not intend for a system update. Hmmm.

I had similar issues with a sandisk microsd.....with it randomly losing everything on the sd....I switched to a samsung microsd and the issue went away so I think it's just very picky with the cards and you should try different manufacturers...also fat32 seemed more reliable than exfat. Samsung and Adata are two I had good results with outside sandisk which I previously considered the gold standard.

Thanks folks.
At this time I don't think it's an SD card issue unless the update corrupted it.
I mean, it was fine before the upgrade guvnor!

phototraveler said:
Thanks folks.
At this time I don't think it's an SD card issue unless the update corrupted it.
I mean, it was fine before the upgrade guvnor!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Backup the data to pc...format the card in the phone...copy the data back.

Same happened to me on the first OTA update and on this OTA update. I took my SD card out, put in a computer, copied all my files to a desktop folder, re-formatted the SD card, moved all my files from the desktop back on to the SD card once the format was complete and the phone mounted the card no problem. Total PITA and will consume about an hour and a half of your time to do all this. Not sure why this keeps happening on OTA updates, but next time, if Alcatel releases another OTA update, move all your apps back to the phone and remove your SD card prior to initiating an update. Only think I can think of?

Thanks both. Formatting is apparently the only way to go except that my computer wouldn't read the card via the phone.
Soooooo, I have mounted the micro SD in an adapter, and the card is currently being copied to my computer.
I'll let you know how that goes after I've done the format and copied things back.
Maybe just removing the SD card prior to an upgrade will prevent corruptions, or do you think that the upgrade 'needs' the SD card in place?

phototraveler said:
Thanks both. Formatting is apparently the only way to go except that my computer wouldn't read the card via the phone.
Soooooo, I have mounted the micro SD in an adapter, and the card is currently being copied to my computer.
I'll let you know how that goes after I've done the format and copied things back.
Maybe just removing the SD card prior to an upgrade will prevent corruptions, or do you think that the upgrade 'needs' the SD card in place?
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Click to collapse
As the external sd is considered "optional" there is no reason you can't pull it prior to doing an upgrade to eliminate the chance of it getting corrupted.
If you have TWRP flashed and your situation is like mine was you'd find IT could read the card just fine and adb access while in TWRP copied off the data for me so seems related to the actual rom.

The solution
As some of you may have expected, and suggested, I was able to resolve my issue by . . .
1 Backing up the data on the SD card
2 Formatting the SD card
3 Copying my data back to the SD card
However, the .android_secure folder on the SD card was 'locked' by the phone, so I removed it and using Windows Explorer I copied the contents - all my apps that had been moved to the SD card - manually.
If you go this route yourself, your 'favorites' that you dragged to the home screen will be missing, so you'll have to re-do that process. It only takes a matter of minutes.
I want to thank those of you who responded with suggestions that pushed me all the way to the top of my 'success' mountain. The view is great!
Now if only the upgrade hadn't corrupted my SD card in the first place. Grrrrrr!
However, for those that don't realize it, the Idol 3 is a terrific phone that is soon to increase in popularity and recognition.

phototraveler said:
As some of you may have expected, and suggested, I was able to resolve my issue by . . .
1 Backing up the data on the SD card
2 Formatting the SD card
3 Copying my data back to the SD card
However, the .android_secure folder on the SD card was 'locked' by the phone, so I removed it and using Windows Explorer I copied the contents - all my apps that had been moved to the SD card - manually.
If you go this route yourself, your 'favorites' that you dragged to the home screen will be missing, so you'll have to re-do that process. It only takes a matter of minutes.
I want to thank those of you who responded with suggestions that pushed me all the way to the top of my 'success' mountain. The view is great!
Now if only the upgrade hadn't corrupted my SD card in the first place. Grrrrrr!
However, for those that don't realize it, the Idol 3 is a terrific phone that is soon to increase in popularity and recognition.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You might consider installing syncthing and running it on the pc and phone...it uses p2p technology to sync folders between devices....open source version of bittorrent sync. Glad you are back up and running.

Cannot Access MicroSD Card within Windows

Hello,
I have a HTC A9 phone using Android 7.0. I replaced my SD Card with a larger one for more storage. I am trying to copy my music I downloaded over the years from the old SD Card onto my Windows 10 and 8 operating system. Both systems say the SD Card needs to be formated. The I receive an error "The file system cannot be recognized". I believe it might be a GPT file system, maybe I am wrong.
My question is, how can I access the SD Card and remove my music without losing it? Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you,
Peter Costa

Hello. Try to reinstall driver in pc. Or try paste card inserted in mobile. If you have SD card encryption contra changes in other devices, please turn off it Pc doesnt see you old card because SD card may be encrypted (visible only in your phone).

You are correct that the card is encrypted from being previously used by my HTC A9. Unfortunately, my phone had to be reset and the SD Card was replaced with a larger one. The encryption was not decrypted or my files removed. Now when I take out the new card and insert my old card, the phone only gives the option to format it. I have over 3000 full CD's on that encrypted card I can't get access to.
My brother helped me fix my phone but he did not know what was on the card. I guess no good deed goes unpunished. Just looking for a possible solution.

Maybe some type of data rescue or forensics company. Anyone have any ideas or maybe I am not understanding something. Any more advice.

SD card stuck on checking

Hi guys,
I have a samsung sm-t520 which I recently resurrected with lineage os 14.1-20190104-Nightly-n2awifi. I think everything installed correctly, but after I inserted my sd card I put it as an internal storage. Later on I honestly don't know what happened, but the card wasn't being seen by the os. I am getting an sd card checking... I just wiped the system, it recognized the card for a second but after I selected format as portable, I got to where I was in the first place with sd card checking stuck. And nothing happens. I tried formatting the card through pc, but it couldn't (unable to format, I even tried with disk manager). There's nothing on the card, I tried to format in twrp but depending what I do it gives me error 1 after failed formatting. I'm not sure what I can do with it. It's a 64gb card. When I try to change the file type on the sd card twrp just keeps working on it and then it reboots to the os normally. (I'm not sure now if it's not happening randomly, really frustrating)
Help much appreciated.

dziech said:
Hi guys,
I have a samsung sm-t520 which I recently resurrected with lineage os 14.1-20190104-Nightly-n2awifi. I think everything installed correctly, but after I inserted my sd card I put it as an internal storage. Later on I honestly don't know what happened, but the card wasn't being seen by the os. I am getting an sd card checking... I just wiped the system, it recognized the card for a second but after I selected format as portable, I got to where I was in the first place with sd card checking stuck. And nothing happens. I tried formatting the card through pc, but it couldn't (unable to format, I even tried with disk manager). There's nothing on the card, I tried to format in twrp but depending what I do it gives me error 1 after failed formatting. I'm not sure what I can do with it. It's a 64gb card. When I try to change the file type on the sd card twrp just keeps working on it and then it reboots to the os normally. (I'm not sure now if it's not happening randomly, really frustrating)
Help much appreciated.
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Click to collapse
Here is a method discovered by another member here to fix a corrupted sdcard that was used as adoptable storage.
https://forum.xda-developers.com/general/help/corrupted-sd-card-adoptable-storage-t3801250
For future reference, adoptable storage has to be reversed before factory resetting or reflashing the device, then you have to go through the adoptable storage setup again.
In my opinion(many others would agree), using adoptable storage or any other similar feature that uses external as internal is not worth the hassle and exposes your important data to corruption very easily. Also, when using adoptable storage, the device will not boit if the sdcard is removed or corrupted. It can even cause the device not function at all.
Sent from my LGL84VL using Tapatalk

Droidriven said:
Here is a method discovered by another member here to fix a corrupted sdcard that was used as adoptable storage.
https://forum.xda-developers.com/general/help/corrupted-sd-card-adoptable-storage-t3801250
For future reference, adoptable storage has to be reversed before factory resetting or reflashing the device, then you have to go through the adoptable storage setup again.
In my opinion(many others would agree), using adoptable storage or any other similar feature that uses external as internal is not worth the hassle and exposes your important data to corruption very easily. Also, when using adoptable storage, the device will not boit if the sdcard is removed or corrupted. It can even cause the device not function at all.
Sent from my LGL84VL using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the information. Well, I have worked with Linux last time maybe 10 years ago so I don't really understand what is happening in this post. Is there a translation available anywhere to windows? ddrescue is available on everything but windows from what I'm seeing - great... Also, is there just a way to reset the card so I can use it in an automated way?

Samsung SD card encryption not recognized

So I have a Samsung Galaxy s10+, I recently noticed that my SD card is not recognized by my phone as encrypted. All files are there just can't open anything. I've tried restarting the phone wiping cache partition, and a few free recovery software. I can see the files and file paths I just can’t Open them. I also notice that on the sd card there is no .metaEcsFile I'm not sure if I deleted that file but I do remember deleting a .metasomething file. But it was in my recent files and I'm pretty sure it was recently created date and time wise to when I deleted it. I'm not certain if that was the cause of the problem or not as I didn't check my SD card till some time after that file had been deleted. There are 2 things I haven't done that people have said work and I'm worried they will mess up the SD card and make any data recovery impossible. One of the things is to "encrypt" the SD card which would work if there was one key per device. But I'm not sure. The other thing is to copy data to a PC, format the SD card, encrypt the empty SD card, and put the files back on the SD card.
Many people said that updating to the October patch would fix the issue I was on march of 2021 security patch when this happened and updated to October of 2022 patch. There is another update however it says you can’t downgrade so I haven’t done it Incase I need to downgrade.
Any help would be appreciated very much.
Thank you.

Never encrypt SD cards... or backup data drives.
Personally I would reformat the card and start over, unencrypted. If you don't have the data backed up you're boned to a greater or lesser extent.
Sounds like you lost the folder encryption key. They may be able to be decrypted but it will be a pain. I think each folder uses a different encryption key although I may be mistaken.
Firmware upgrades and updates can and do break Samsung's. If you insist on doing either it's imperative to have all critical data redundantly backed up first, as it always should be anyway.

get a card reader for PC, use testdisk or runtime GetDataBack for (ex)fat and try to undelete .metaEcsFile