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microSD card partially malfunctions

  • Thread starter Thread starter VegaSpace
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VegaSpace

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What would cause an Android phone's microSD card to become partially unusable? A couple days ago my phone has started up with a message that the card is missing, even though it's plugged in. I rarely move the card so I doubt the connector is worn. Apps installed on the card crash as soon as they're launched. The card can no longer be written to, but photos and podcasts stored on it can be viewed and played. Videos on it can be played through the photos app but can no longer be played through VLC, a video player.

What's likely to fix this? Reformatting the card? Replacing it?
 
VegaSpace said:
What would cause an Android phone's microSD card to become partially unusable? A couple days ago my phone has started up with a message that the card is missing, even though it's plugged in. I rarely move the card so I doubt the connector is worn. Apps installed on the card crash as soon as they're launched. The card can no longer be written to, but photos and podcasts stored on it can be viewed and played. Videos on it can be played through the photos app but can no longer be played through VLC, a video player.

What's likely to fix this? Reformatting the card? Replacing it?
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if you setup on your phone so that your sd card is your internal storage, that means the the phone will be reading and writing onto the card as the app runs. this will in turn wear out your sd card faster as it is doing more reading and writing then the card is used to handle. this is why most current phones do not have the ability to format the card as internal any more.

i would backup everything on your card to the your computer and the either get a new card or reformat it.
 
It's not likely but not uncommon for a microSD card to fail. None of them will last forever. But a lot of that has to do with their background. A knock-off will be manufactured using lower-quality components under minimal quality-control standards while a major brand-name card will be backed by its source. You pay a little more but in the long-term you get a more reliable product..
But all that's just supposition.

-- What phone model do you have and what storage capacity is your card? Older phones may not support newer, larger cards so that could be a factor.

-- Is this card a brand-name or a generic one, and how long have you had it?

-- You referred to not removing this card very often but when you do is it always a matter of always dismounting it properly first before actually removing the card from your phone and from your computer/laptop? Not dismounting it 'might' be a cause to some corrupt to the file system so in that case you could try reformatting the card.
 
1. Unmount the SD card or power your device off
2. Remove the SD card
3. Reinsert the SD card
4. Let us know what happens

if this doesn't solve your problem, try the steps above, repeating steps two and three several times.
 
The phone is a Motorola Moto G4. The latest Android version is 7.0 and the updater says it's up to date, so there are probably no more updates for this phone. The card is a SanDisk Ultra 128 GB microSDXC I (10). I set up the card as internal storage. I think I got the phone and the card on Christmas 2016 and the card worked fine as internal storage until a few days ago.

I followed steiny's advice to turn the phone off, remove and insert the card, then turn the phone back on. The phone no longer displays the error message of the card being missing but everything the phone does that depends on the card continues to malfunction as it had before.
 
If you set the card up as internal storage, it has essentially become added as additional media storage to your internal storage. The card itself is reformatted with a different file system (ext4, the same file system as the internal storage) and it's been encrypted with the encryption key tying it directly to your G4. Being 'part' of the internal storage the Android install on your phone now in a sense considers that card to be a permanent component so don't bother trying to use your phone without the card in place. Also, because of the encryption it isn't usable on any computer you mount the card in anyway so just leave it as is.
Since it is now incorporated into internal storage you can only see the distinction using Settings >> Storage menu. Any third-party file manager app won't see the card as it's own separate media any longer.

If you prefer to return the card to being a removable, external one again, you have to reformat it using your phone's Settings >> Storage menu option.
 
I got all my photos off of it. Everything else I care about was already backed up to the cloud. I tried reformatting it as removable storage. It said the reformat worked but I couldn't write anything to it. I tried reformatting again as an extension of internal storage but it said the reformat failed. I ordered a new SanDisk "Endurance" card.
 
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