SD card problems although formatted as portable storage

No, when mounted on a PC, all files are thre, the card is usable as expected. CHKDSK gave no errors.

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Sounds like you’s be well off copying the contents for safety and reformatting the card. What formatting does it have currently ~ exFAT ?/
I use FAT32 for Windows 11, Android 11, Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi and all my 9 SD cards are moveable without a problem.

I have not formatted the card, and I’m not willing to do so. All my SD cards are moveable between all devices without a problem, except the FP4.

Still it could be useful to know what format you have on the ‘problem’ card and if you have a spare card you could try a different formatting to see if that works across devices.

Unfortunately, I tried different ones, all with the same symptoms. No single ‘problem card’.

However, the filesystem of this specific card is exFAT.

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Are all those cards from the same manufacturer? :thinking:

I wouldn’t suggest using a FAT32 formatted card with the FP4! I had some rather problematic issues ( :de: ) with files bigger than 4GB. Those shouldn’t be writable to FAT32 but the overlay filesystem makes this possible. Once the card is removed, that file will no longer be accessible and even putting the card back into the phone won’t make it recoverable again.

Yes, I usually buy SanDisk.

Hmm, interesting, skipping through this topic it seems most reports are talking about SanDisk cards.

:wave: Who in this topic is having problems with SanDisk cards and who experiences problems with another manufacturer? :thinking:

Maybe it’s me filling up this thread? If so, please apologize.

I think the Samsung Evo has most positiv reports and yes def SanDisk seems to be most problematic

Else we have a wiki

https://forum.fairphone.com/t/list-of-compatible-micro-sd-sdxc-cards-for-fp4/81618/2

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I know about the wiki, but according to the wiki apart from me, no one else seems to have problems with their sd cards :smirk:

:smile:

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I think many had issues with SanDisk and bought a Samsung Evo instead…else looking at the wiki (after sharing :see_no_evil:) it does not cover all experience, because interestingly not 1 SanDisk is documented under problematic…so indeed not that helpful

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I did a quick (rough) count of the reported brands in this topic:

Manufacturer # of reports
SanDisk 10
Samsung 2
Transcend 1

I wouldn’t call that a SD card problem, I’d call that a SanDisk problem… :thinking:

You are right, a lot of people who initially reported having problems with a SanDisk card switched to Samsung and seem to be happy :+1:

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OK I don’t have files that big, no great videos :slight_smile: but thanks for the warning, which I ought to know :blush: I’ll reformat some for future proofing. Thanks.

I don’t even have a website that uses that much :slight_smile:

Yeap all mine are SanDisk too

Don’t know if it was just me, but I understood the wiki was mostly for working SD cards.

In the beginning, I suspected the FP of somehow corrupting the card’s file system during formatting which would have made it necessary to do a fresh format on a computer when giving it another try. Don’t know if this makes any sense but it seemed to help with my SanDisk together with the latest updates.

Well, maybe in older firmware versions, but not the newer ones. I checked the filesystem with CHKDSK on my computer: all okay.

I’ve tried several fresh formats (with the correct data format, checked this) on computer, but none helped.
Although that was before the most recent update and now I don’t know if I would want to try :sweat_smile:

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Not the filesystem but the partition table, at least in my case. For one of my Transcend cards, the Fairphone kept destroying the partition table during formatting. After creating a GPT partition table and adding an exFAT partition using a PC it works fine.
It also kept formatting my 32GB card to FAT32 instead of exFAT, that had to be fixed on a PC as well.

So something is definitely broken there, would be interesting to know what the Samsung SDs are doing differently. Are they shipped preformatted in a way the FP4 accepts? :thinking:

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I have used a SanDisk Extreme 1TB microSD card in my old Motorola Z3 Play for 2½ years with great success. I transferred it to my new FP4 this week and the FP4 will not read it. It can see all of the folders under root but the contents appear empty.

This microSD card is C10, U3, V30, 4K, A2.
Occasionally, FP4 prompts to initialize the card either internal memory or external. I have selected external and it will not read it even after an apparent initialization.

I have put a 256GB Sandisk Extreme and the handset will successfully read it.

Is there a known issue with this 1TB card in the FP4?
Should FP4 read it?

Thanks.

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