Don't use cheapo 16GB microSD cards in the X/X2 - Motorola Droid X2

Just hoping to possibly help someone with my findings about the Droid X / X2 and the usage of slow or inexpensive 16GB+ microSD cards. I was about to factory reset my phone when I realized that a problem started after copying a bunch of videos/music to my external microSD. Sometimes after restarting the phone it would restart itself again, seemingly at random.
It seems that my microSD card, a cheapo class 4 Lexar that I pulled from an LG phone, is just not up to the task. The thing is the problem is not obvious unless you try another card. It seems the phone doesn't care what kind of card you use if you use an 8GB or less, but 16GB or higher you need to stick to a good brand like PNY or SanDisk and use class 10 or better. Anything less and the phone seems to get finicky and may reboot on its own at seemingly random times. I found that my rebooting happened shortly after Android reading the SD card when manually starting the phone.
So I figured that since people do sometimes complain of this phone doing random reboots, don't give up it could very likely be something as simple as a subpar SD card. In my case it was the entire problem.

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SD Card Unexpectedly Removed

OK so my card has been working great with no problems until about a week to a week and a half ago. Now it randomly uninstalls and gives me a warning message in the top bar that says " SD card unexpectedly removed. Unmount SD card before removing it to avoid data loss." When it does this I can no longer see my card in the phone file. I tried removing the card and formatting it in my computer and then reinstalling it. That seemed to be an improvement for about a week (I say seemed because it was a very short time). During that time it would sometimes mount and unmount on its own but always remounted.
Any advice is welcomed with the exception of dropping it in the trash.
I do not have another card to try but I would be willing if necessary to buy another. I just wanted the advice of others before I commit the money. Also does anyone know if the known issues with 32GB cards has been resolved? I may go head and get a 32GB class 10 instead if I have to buy one anyways.
Phone is running
Android 2.2
System version 4.1.83
Gingerblur 3.5 basic meaning I am running it the way it installs from XDA unmodded.
Memory PNY 16GB Class 10
There is a known issue with the contacts on the phone not "contacting" correctly with the SDCard. Some people have manually bent the contacts on the phone and solved this issue successfully. Personally I wouldn't want to do something like this myself.
How old is the card? Take it out and reseat it a few times, make sure it's getting a good connection. I have a few older cards that the edges have worn from taking them in and out of devices so much that they sit a bit loose. Could also be slightly malformed from the factory.
Same thing happened to me with a 16gb Patriot Class 10 micro sd in the atrix. I rebooted, shut down and reaseated teh card int eh phone, to no avail. Ive put it into a microsd to usb adapter tried in my comp and it wouldnt be recognized, after reinserting it a few times into the computer (running win7 64 bit), it had been recognized, but it said it had to be formatted, did so, yet the atrix still didnt recognize it at first, reinserted it a few times and than it worked, however i tried it several times in my laptop and desktop and at several occasions it wouldnt work, so i just filed for a RMA at patriot, describing the problem. Im just about to RMA the card tomorrow. After that ive put an older 8gb sandisk (class 4 or 6 i think) sd card in it and it works flawlessly again. So i just hope the 16gb card was broken and not that the atrix brakes cards ...
This happened a few days ago and I tried all the reseating and reformatting then and it mysteriously started working again. What Caelan says makes alot of sense as the very first time it happened I had the phone in my back pocket since the shirt I had on had no pocket. So I probably sat on it wrong and caused the problem. I have no idea how people are reaching inside the little metal cover and bending the pins with any degree of accuracy.
I do not currently have another card but I can take this one and stick it in my sons phone for a while and see how it does. That should tell me if it is the card at least. So what is Motos return policy...........anyone?
intimnasc said:
This happened a few days ago and I tried all the reseating and reformatting then and it mysteriously started working again. What Caelan says makes alot of sense as the very first time it happened I had the phone in my back pocket since the shirt I had on had no pocket. So I probably sat on it wrong and caused the problem. I have no idea how people are reaching inside the little metal cover and bending the pins with any degree of accuracy.
I do not currently have another card but I can take this one and stick it in my sons phone for a while and see how it does. That should tell me if it is the card at least. So what is Motos return policy...........anyone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't know of any phone returns for this. People either try different cards till one works, (and they all will if you put them in and out enough times), or they bend the pins.
Personally, I kept putting my SDCard in and out, maybe 5 or 6 times, with the phone turned on, and then all of a sudden the card registered. No problems since, but I haven't removed it since either. The card I have has been in two other phones with no issues, reads fine on my PC, in a camera, in my spycam........only issues I had were with the Atrix.
It's not the SDcards folks, but if you keep swapping them out, trying different ones, of course it will eventually work.
I wnder if anyone has tried taking a piece of plastic shim stock and attaching it to the backside of the SD card to make it a little thicker? I work in machine tool repair on the electronics end but I have access to the shim material as thin as .0001". I may try a piece like 5-10 thousandths and see if just tightening up the spacing helps. I'll post back here in a few days if it helps.
intimnasc said:
I wnder if anyone has tried taking a piece of plastic shim stock and attaching it to the backside of the SD card to make it a little thicker? I work in machine tool repair on the electronics end but I have access to the shim material as thin as .0001". I may try a piece like 5-10 thousandths and see if just tightening up the spacing helps. I'll post back here in a few days if it helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can't get shim stock .0001" thick. You can however get it .001" thick!
Good point added a zero didn't I? However if I look in the shim crib I bet I can find .0005" but it may not be the plastic. Either way I actually meant the .001 heh heh.
My phone started doing the same thing a few days ago. Did it once, then nothing for a couple of days. Last night it did the same thing a few times while I was asleep. A reboot fixed(?) it, but if I see it doing it more, back to the store I will go to complain.
OK so here is what I have doen so far. I pur a piece of plastic shim on the back of my card in an effort to se if just tightening it would work. It did not. I then took the memory card out of my phone and swapped it with my sons 8GB Sandisk. Both phones read the memory cards and are working. Makes little or no sense to me but I can use my sons 8GB but not my 16GB.
I am still open to any other ideas if anyone has any, with the exception of bending pins in my phone.
Well, hasn't happened again. I even used about 4 hours of nav over the weekend to really heat it up. Nothing. My bet is on a software glitch somewhere....
Started happening again today, and this time more than once. I think I might try and get a new phone....
In case anyone is interested it has been about a week since swapping memory cards with my son and my 16GB class 10 is still working fine in his phone and the 8GB that came with his from HTC is still woring in my phone. I don't know why or what happened but now I am afraid to spend the money on a 32GB card. Last call on ideas as I won't be updating this thread anymore unless the 8GB unexpectedly crashes.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1128038
May help some people out.

Lost my MicroSD card . . .

What a bummer.
It was there, now it's not.
It was only a 16GB but has anyone else had theirs fall out?
There is a whole long thread about the fact people have lost them from day 1 given the slot is not deep enough, the cards sticks up, gets ejected and.... gone
They poorly poorly designed the card slot & that should have been a no brainer for them
Bugger!
I had all these eBooks on the card.
The full size slot on the keyboard looks more secure - maybe I'll stick with that?

[Q] External SD Card Randomly Not Working

Is anyone else having issues with the External SD card disappearing when the phone is slightly jarred (not dropped, really)? I noticed mine doing it when I first got the phone but just thought I didn't have it in very well. Now I've discovered it is happening about 50% of the time if my phone is jarred, just setting it down does it sometimes. I believe it is a loose solder joint or something of that nature; so I will be exchanging. Anyone else?
Well by the lack of response I am guessing no one else is having this problem. I exchanged the phone and the new one is working great. I am using the same external card so it was definitely the phone.

[Q] Two problems....

My droid razr maxx will not charge anymore. Looking at where the cord plugs into the phone. I can see that it looks as if one of the contact leads on the end has worn down and is kind of rounded off. Now, being that i cant charge it. Verizon sent me a new used replacement. Which seems to work fine. However, None of the pictures and downloads that i thought i had moved to my 16GB SD card when on the old phone are in fact, not on my SD card. My pictures and downloads are now stuck on what they call "Internal Memory" because i cant charge my phone.
So now my questions are; #1 Is there any way to possibly remove the battery so i can get a charge on it another way? And, #2 How do i set my default saving of data to be put on my SD card. And not in the "Internal Memory"? So i can prevent losing everything again...
Thanks in advance...,
AzMan33
Michael

[Q] Recovered SD card, now what?

Hi guys..
I recently had to format my 16 gb transcend external sd card as it was shown to be damaged by my S3. I formatted, recovered data using remo recovery. Now on checking the drive is fine. Before it showed the drive health was poor and major failure with boot sector 46 failure and all but now it shows excellent health. Some of the photos recovered were damaged, but 90% were fine. The problem is I dont know why this happened and frankly not sure if my card will let me down again. Is there a good chance for the failure to occur again?
Yes... chances are your card will fail again.
Contrary to popular belief, SD cards are not to be trusted. They have a limited lifespan (very limited), which is shortened by each write cycle made to the card. That means the more you write to each, the shorter it will last. The memory cells actually "wear".
Although the memory cells found in SSD drivers also wear, their controller know this and keep track of what cells are to be considered worn out, so nothing is written to them again. This prevents data loss, but the drive's size is always shrinking (byte by byte, over the years).
With memory cards there is no such thing as an intelligent controller, so when the cells start wearing off, the whole device MIGHT be compromised.
I really don't trust USB flash drives or memory cards that already have a history of data loss. I usually keep them for extremely unimportant tasks, and that DOES NOT include have them in my phone or camera.
Simonetti2011 said:
Yes... chances are your card will fail again.
Contrary to popular belief, SD cards are not to be trusted. They have a limited lifespan (very limited), which is shortened by each write cycle made to the card. That means the more you write to each, the shorter it will last. The memory cells actually "wear".
Although the memory cells found in SSD drivers also wear, their controller know this and keep track of what cells are to be considered worn out, so nothing is written to them again. This prevents data loss, but the drive's size is always shrinking (byte by byte, over the years).
With memory cards there is no such thing as an intelligent controller, so when the cells start wearing off, the whole device MIGHT be compromised.
I really don't trust USB flash drives or memory cards that already have a history of data loss. I usually keep them for extremely unimportant tasks, and that DOES NOT include have them in my phone or camera.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your reply.. Guess I have to go for a new one then.

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