Corrupted SD card in use as internal storage, how to transfer data to new card?

[Polyphake]

Hi there,

I m getting grey hair here! Having issues with my SD card. Its is formatted as internal memory, which seemed a handy extension for my phone memory. I am doubting that by now though.

Problem is as follows:
FP2 stopped being able to write to the card, I couldnt take & save pictures, see/download the pics on whatsapp, install new apps etc. After a reboot and emptying the caches of Kamera/WhatsApp i.e. they would work for a few minutes until i got a message stating “couldnt write to card / couldnt save image / data not on SD card”, depending on the app. Storage space internal and on SD is used 25% max.

After a bit of research i figured my SD card must be corrupted (Kingston 32GB), so i went to get a new one (Lexar 64 GB, 300x, uhs 1). Now my trouble starts.

How do i get my files from my old SD card onto the new one. I m using a Mac (10.6.8), trying to stick to open source software.

Did a manual backup of oldSD with AFT. > inserted newSD into phone, formatted, try to connect to computer to transfer data back > no connection to be established (yes, i enabled MTP)

tried using card reader > no SD card or internal memory anywhere

…

meanwhile my conclusion seems to be that using SD cards as internal memory is a pain when this part of the system crashes/corrupts. do i really need to reinstall everything manually? (no, i do not have a nandroid or full system backup, just some synced files, foto backups, etc…))

any help or shared experiences are appreciated. I am a newby to smartphones, dont really wanna root, but i m not afraid of terminals with good instructions though.

my specs:
FP2
Android 6.0.1
no root acces
vs.
Mac OSX 10.6.8

[ben]

@Polyphake

cards as internal memory is a pain when this part of the system crashes/corrupts. do i really need to reinstall everything manually?

Probably yes. The problem with the SD card as internal storage solution is that - afaik - there is no way to tell which data is on the card and which is on the real storage. I don’t recommend using the SD card as extension for the internal storage for that reason. Many manufacturers even disable that option. I think on the FP2, it’s not necessary, instead simply store media files on the SD card formatted as external storage. Most media apps allow that.

If I were you, I would backup my important data asap and then reset the FP2. It’s a hassle, but this way you get a fresh experience.

[Polyphake]

Hi Ben, thanks for your thoughts.
I was hoping to be able to locate the files of the SD card with a backup programme/file manager or smthg. I managed to view the (hidden) files on the phone/SD separated with Titanium (but since it needs root access i skipped using it), and it seemed that apps, media, and other files i produced/copied/transferred were all on the SD, the rest on the phone itself. AFT did show me only the SD card files strange enough. maybe its got to do with access privileges. Learning about the structure here, but seems like an unhandy solution to me indeed to use SD as internal storage. I ll still try to find a workaround for now but it seems i gotta go for a reset indeed…
Happy for other options to try though.

[Friek]

Hi,
I had the same problem. What I did: copy & paste all the files I could find from my phone to my PC. Make a backup of all apps and move to PC. Then uninstall all the apps, insert the new SD card and reinstall the apps. Then copy & paste the app folders back onto the internal storage of the phone.
REgarding camera and OSMAnd I move the storage folder of the app to the external storage and then copy & pasted everything.

[Kevin_Pugh]

For what it’s worth, I had problems with a 64 Gb SD card, it kept getting corrupted over time, eventually it need reformatting. A straight data SD card by the way. In the end, on a Windows 7 machine I made a 48 Gb partition on the 64 Gb SD card and the problem went away. It was a SanDisk card, but had a similar issue with a Lexar 64 Gb SD card.

[BertG]

Did you use it as internal storage as well?
The size of the SD can not be said to be the general cause for your problem, as you can see in this thread:

List of compatible microSD / SDXC cards for FP2

ATTENTION!! This wiki is just a list by FP2-users. It is there to share experience with MicroSD cards. It is nothing official by Fairphone. Fairphone does not sell any of these cards. Which MicroSD cards do work and which do not? Fairphone does not have the capacity to test MicroSD cards and is not in a position to endorse the use of brands or types of cards. So I hope that the community can help to make a nice list of good MicroSD cards. Although Fairphone is said to support MicroSD card…

I have a SanDisk 256 GB card up and running perfectly fine.

[Polyphake]

Finally - I did give in and setup my phone anew. It did indeed seem to be the most reliable solution.

So, for future reference to you guys & gals with the same problem, I did the following:

• backup with google drive (yeah, i know. big G sucks. it was helpful here though)
• manual backup miscallaneus files on my computer with AFT
• reset to factory settings (takes a while)
• change SD card (handy list of working ones to be found in the forum)
• format and install SD as EXTERNAL memory (also took a while and several tries ?!)
• startup google drive on the phone, reinstall backup
• reinstall manual backup

notes:
-restoreing all the apps (80+) took 1-2 hours

• reinstalling apps stalled halfway until opening play store again

thanks for all the help so far.
Everything seems to work fine again. Only bummer is that the backup of several apps only goes back to the date when my SD started crashing, since the backups (from whatsapp i.e. ) are to be stored on the SD. If you encounter this problem, fix it right away, it only gets bigger.

ciao,
Jakob

EDIT: so i absolutely recommend to use the SD card as EXTERNAL storage to avoid running into this problem.