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Help sd card causing freezing on original droid

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paleogirl10k

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Ok-I have an original droid that i bought used after i killed my droid R2D2. It was working great with only normal issues until about two weeks ago. Then it started running very slow and/or freezing. I got a "low memory" message, checked, and found my phone memory only had like 15mb of available space.Then I read somewhere I should keep 100mb of free space on my phones regular storage to keep it running smoothly. So I went in and moved all the apps that i could to my sdcard, which has plenty of storage (6+ free gb), and got my phones available storage up to 80mb. This seemed to solve the problem for about a day, but then the power got low, and it froze again.

Since then, it will sometimes work ok, and sometimes freeze, with no rhyme or reason. When it freezes, I have to pull the battery to restart. Sometimes it restarts and works, sometimes it restarts and freezes. By accident, yesterday, I discovered that when I pulled out my sdcard, my phone started working again. Working great actually. Absolutely no problems freezing, or running slowly.

Further research has shown other people have experienced this problem. For some, they had corrupted files on their sdcard. In other cases, it seems moving apps to the sdcard was the problem. I've also read where the sdcard itself can cause the problem if not properly inserted, or its making a poor connection. I have found the sdcard does have a "sweet spot" where it seems to be least likely to cause freezing. Not sure if this is because the card came from a different droid version? I have downloaded all my pics to my computer, and shifted my vital apps back to my phoneas storage. Worried that my phone will freeze again, I am prepared to erase and reformat my sdcard, as i've heard this can help. However, ive also read where doing this from my phone may or may not help, and may cause further problems.

Help! Should I unmount the sdcard, and reformat from my phone? Should I try to delete all the files either using my file expert app or through my computer? I do have a couple of mp3s that i downloaded from an app i had to remove because it was allowing adware, and in other cases, corrupted mp3 files are the cause of the problem. I do not own an sdcard reader, and would rather not have to buy one (not even an option till next week). Any thoughts?
 
If you can get a card reader (even just borrow one from someone who has one) and format it form your computer, that would be helpful. I've seen first hand (and second hand) where many times the first time that you try to format these sdcard it fails, and you have to try more than once before it works. Since your phone works decently well when the SDCard is not present, removing it (physically) and formatting in another device would be beneficial to you since you'd still have the use of your phone.

Of course, you'll be without the SDCard in your phone for a while (and I highly recommend that if you do it from a computer that you avoid using any sort of 'quick' format method).

It could be any of those, but usually it is because of corruption of some sort on your SDCard. ALSO check and see how many call you have in your call log and / or SMS in your SMS log - they eat memory as well.

To make backups of (and then clear) both of these logs, use SMS Backup and Restore and Call log backup and Restore - but you'll need the SDCard to make these backups, since that is where these two apps save to.

There is a Pro version of SMS B&R that is basically ad-free, but has a couple of enhancements. There is also an add-on for SMS B&R that auto sends an email of the log to you.

I just had another thought - it could be the apps that you moved themselves - in that they may be running services in the background and thus eating up your phone's RAM.
 
The OG is pretty rock solid, I have one that my four year old has been using for games for the last year. If I read your post correctly your SD Card is essentially blank now. If so, I would format through the OS.

You didn't mention if you were rooted (or I missed it). If you are interested in this, let me know and I'll walk you through it and get a custom rom on it. That will also increase performance over stock. Especially on a device that old. I normally don't say you should root, but in this case, I am familiar with the phone, its age, and what is available for it to make it more like a 1.5yr old phone instead of a three year old phone. And it is already out of warrenty.
 
Yeah, I've had the device since drop day myself, had it rooted within a couple of months and have tried pretty much every ROM out there, ending with CM7 through most of 2011.

ROMs are only as good as the user - if the user keeps too many things in memory, the phone's limitations still kick in, About the best I could do (pre-CM7) was to use apps like Swapper 2 and avoid moving to SD apps that ran services on boot, along with memory customizations and OCing. YMMV.

Then again, I also kept anywhere from 100-130 downloaded apps installed on that phone at any given time, so...you get my drift. User experiences will vary based upon a number of different factors.

With CM7 I was forced to trim out a lot of apps b/c the phone simply did not have enough install space, and like I said before, app that ran services on boot never played nicely when being moved to the SDCard.
 
I do think the sd card is the culprit... I hadn't changed anything yet as Im still trying to figure out the best way to go about this process, but just this morning, after days of working fine, i got freezing again. All I did was power off my phone and turn it back on. Absolutely nothing else changed, but it started freezing anyway. Pulled the sdcard out. Working again.

As far as I know, my phone is not rooted. I changed nothing from how i got it, and i changed nothing on the sdcard. Just took it out of R2 and put it in the phone thats having problems. Im only runing like 30 downloaded apps. I did notice a large file assoc with my dialer, but im not sure how to clear the logs. I dont really care if the log info is backed up, so long as i dont lose any contact info.
 
Go back and read my first reply - I mention an app for backing up SMS and one for backing up your call log. both apps, written by the same developer, also allow you to delete your call log and SMS log respectively.

Neither requires root.
 
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