Computer-knowledgable people: what's wrong with my SD card?

Fassa Albrecht · #1 10-30-2011, 06:24 PM

I use a micro SD card to transfer stuff between my smartphone and my laptop, including a load of music which I like to listen to on my phone when out of the house.

Anyway, over the last few days the music stored on this SD card has completely and utterly mucked up. My entire Level 42 mp3 library was deleted and I had to restore it from my laptop, and I've found that within albums single tracks are being deleted. It's also messed up artist information, rendered some files unplayable and moved tracks completely to other files.

Pictures on the SD card are not safe either. I've lost two pictures this week and I didn't delete them or do anything to cause them to be deleted.

Anyone got any idea what's going on? There's been no water damage, no shocks to the phone or anything I can think that would cause a malfunction. But the problem is getting worse and worse.

James Hart · #2 10-30-2011, 06:31 PM

media fails... perhaps it's time to replace the microSD card?

Also, USB microSD card readers are known to 'eat' media. Use a USB cable and mount your card as a hard disk while it's installed in the phone.

seventhson · #3 10-30-2011, 07:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by James Hart

media fails... perhaps it's time to replace the microSD card?

yup.

OldDog52 · #4 10-30-2011, 07:30 PM

Bad media. Those things are not very durable. They should not be relied on as primary storage (not saying it is in your case; just saying).

Fassa Albrecht · #5 10-31-2011, 03:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OldDog52

Bad media. Those things are not very durable. They should not be relied on as primary storage (not saying it is in your case; just saying).

Eh, I was thinking of getting a bigger SD card anyway...I've managed to fill a 2GB card and it's not big enough.

oerk · #6 10-31-2011, 05:07 AM

You _could_ try formatting it - maybe it's just a corrupted file system. But it sounds more like hardware failure to me.

tk421 · #7 10-31-2011, 06:13 AM

try cleaning the contacts, if that doesnt help, pitch it and get a new one.

seriously, a 16gb uSD card can be had for under $20 if you shop it a little.

Strohsx · #8 10-31-2011, 09:45 AM

Time to replace the card, by no means should you ever use any sort of flash memory as a long term storage solution. Back up what's left to a good external hard drive or optical disc and buy a new one.
You can almost never recover any data on flash memory, once it's corrupted to deleted it's gone forever.

Pilgrim · #9 11-01-2011, 08:58 PM

Yup, back up early and often. And don't forget to back up the backup.