SD cards not being recognised

[br0die 2]

On 2/15/2020 at 4:29 PM, david said:

There are apps for windows that will format larger cards as FAT32:

Alternatively, once the phone formats the card as FAT32, you can take it out of the phone and put it back into the computer and copy the files.  Windows can read larger cards that are formatted for FAT32, it just won't format them with the built in tools.

Alternatively, you can try switching the phone to "File transfer" (MTP) mode and see if it shows up over the USB connection.  If not, you can also try enabling USB Debugging in the phone.  If that still doesn't show the SD card, you can set up a WebDAV or FTP server on the phone and run clients on the PC to access the phone wirelessly, over wifi.  Or, if this is a one time thing, you can upload the files to the cloud and then download them on the phone.

When the phone formatted the card, did it give you the full 64GB of space?

I will have to try that windows app then, but weird that dismgt and diskpart didn't work.

Windows can't read the card once the phone formats it. I also tried MTP, it only shows internal storage. Even with USB debugging turned on.

I could try getting the files back over wifi I suppose, though it will be slow.

[br0die 2]

OK I tried again today and got different behaviour (?).

Deleted all partitions on the card in Windows, and put the card into the phone. It didn't ask to format the card this time (?) it just did I guess, because it shows all 64GB.

I then hooked up to the computer with USB debugging and MTP, and the card is showing (but not internal storage, maybe because of USB debugging?).

Transferring the backed up files via USB.

[david 929]

10 hours ago, br0die said:

I will have to try that windows app then, but weird that dismgt and diskpart didn't work.

Windows can't read the card once the phone formats it. I also tried MTP, it only shows internal storage. Even with USB debugging turned on.

I could try getting the files back over wifi I suppose, though it will be slow.

Yeah, not sure what happened with diskmgmt and diskpart.

I am surprised Windows can't read it after being formatted.  Are you sure you picked the option, in android, to use the card to store external files, and not the one that combines it with internal storage?  The latter will format it in a way that isn't recognized by windows.  And Android won't view it as external storage, hence won't show it as separate with MTP.

WiFi, with 802.11ac isn't super duper slow.   If your router doesn't support 802.11ac, but your pc does, you can turn on the phone Hotspot and connect the computer to the phone and transfer directly over that link.  I think writing to the SD card in that arrangement might be about as fast as the SD card can be written too now anyway, due to an issue with the phone/firmware that is slowing down SD card writes.

 

[david 929]

9 hours ago, br0die said:

OK I tried again today and got different behaviour (?).

Deleted all partitions on the card in Windows, and put the card into the phone. It didn't ask to format the card this time (?) it just did I guess, because it shows all 64GB.

I then hooked up to the computer with USB debugging and MTP, and the card is showing (but not internal storage, maybe because of USB debugging?).

Transferring the backed up files via USB.

Not showing internal storage is odd.  

Glad it is working though.  You can try PTP mode to see if it shows internal.

[Adrienspawn 126]

My empty 250GB is being read as a 500GB that's 50% full. 

Not a huge deal as it works, but a bit annoying when calculating free space.

[david 929]

2 hours ago, Adrienspawn said:

My empty 250GB is being read as a 500GB that's 50% full. 

Not a huge deal as it works, but a bit annoying when calculating free space.

What make/model?

What was it formatted with? 

Have you tried to write over 250 GB to it to see if you were sent the wrong one (and really have a 500 GB card)?  Is it set as external storage, or shared with internal storage in the phone?

Edited February 17, 2020 by david

[Adrienspawn 126]

4 hours ago, david said:

What make/model?

What was it formatted with? 

Have you tried to write over 250 GB to it to see if you were sent the wrong one (and really have a 500 GB card)?  Is it set as external storage, or shared with internal storage in the phone?

Patriot and it was in my Priv before, formatted by the Pro1 after insertion, set as internal.

[david 929]

30 minutes ago, Adrienspawn said:

Patriot and it was in my Priv before, formatted by the Pro1 after insertion, set as internal.

I found others reporting this same thing online for other phones.  It looks like it is just an android bug in how it reports it.  It seems to do it with some brands of SD cards, but not others.  It only happens when you use it as adoptable (shared with internal) storage.  So it seems like nothing to be overly concerned about.  You'll just have to mentally subtract half the space when you look at that screen.  Apparently other storage tool apps will show it properly, so you could try one of those.

[kashif 350]

When i first inserted Samsung Evo 512gb sd card in pro1 it didn't read or detect it and no sd card was showing.

i take it out and tested in my Note8 and surface pro, it worked on both.

so i put it back in Pro1 and it still didn't show.

so while trying to make it work i went to sd card manager and there it showed that my sd card in not formatted in fat32 and gave me an option to reformat.

after reformatting the sd card works fine

[david 929]

49 minutes ago, kashif said:

When i first inserted Samsung Evo 512gb sd card in pro1 it didn't read or detect it and no sd card was showing.

i take it out and tested in my Note8 and surface pro, it worked on both.

so i put it back in Pro1 and it still didn't show.

so while trying to make it work i went to sd card manager and there it showed that my sd card in not formatted in fat32 and gave me an option to reformat.

after reformatting the sd card works fine

It was probably formatted as exFAT before.   That is the standard format for cards larger than 32 GB.  But for a device to read that, they have to pay money to Microsoft.  The surface pro, being a Microsoft device, can obviously read it.  The Note 8, being from a company with billions of dollars, has paid for the licensing.  Fxtec hasn't paid for the licensing.  However, Microsoft has now made the code available for free, so it should be coming in some future version of the firmware.

When you say that it didn't show the first two times, were you looking in Settings->Storage, or thought it would pop up on the screen?

By "sd card manager", do you mean an app by that name?

Thanks for sharing your experience.  Almost no cards will work out of the box with the Pro1, because they will generally be over 32 GB today, and will be exFAT formatted.  If we had a short list of key tips for first time Pro1 use, this would be a good one to be on it.

Edited February 19, 2020 by david

[kashif 350]

43 minutes ago, david said:

When you say that it didn't show the first two times, were you looking in Settings->Storage, or thought it would pop up on the screen?

By "sd card manager", do you mean an app by that name?

Thanks for sharing your experience.  Almost no cards will work out of the box with the Pro1, because they will generally be over 32 GB today, and will be exFAT formatted.  If we had a short list of key tips for first time Pro1 use, this would be a good one to be on it.

first time when i was looking, i opened files and the card was not showing there as it should

yes i got an app called sd card manager that i downloaded.

well before buying 512gb, i bought 256gb and when i inserted that the pro1 detected it straight away but did asked to format it.

but later when i got 512gb and inserted the pro1 didnt detected it or popup any msg to format it.

[david 929]

10 minutes ago, kashif said:

well before buying 512gb, i bought 256gb and when i inserted that the pro1 detected it straight away but did asked to format it.

but later when i got 512gb and inserted the pro1 didnt detected it or popup any msg to format it.

I wonder what it would have shown in the Settings->storage screen at that point.  There may be some sort of but where it figures it has already dealt with the SD card and isn't expecting another one, hence no pop-up.  Hard to say.

[Kzin 32]

I have noticed that my card will stop working after some time, and a reboot will make it show again.

[david 929]

7 hours ago, Kzin said:

I have noticed that my card will stop working after some time, and a reboot will make it show again.

Mine doesn't do that.  

[Craig 1,435]

On 2/18/2020 at 8:29 PM, david said:

for a device to read that, they have to pay money to Microsoft. 

But, like you said later in your post, now exfat is open. It's in linux 5.4 kernel.  We have 4.4.  I believe it can be backported but I dunno about such magic, doubt we'll get it on stock.  Unless it comes with like Android 11 or something.

 

Edited February 25, 2020 by Craig

[FlyingAntero 871]

I have Samsung EVO microSDXC 128Gb (UHS-I, up to 100 MB/s) card and Pro1 is able to recognize it. The phone just wanted to reformat the card before I was able to use it as an external drive.

Edited February 25, 2020 by FlyingAntero

[david 929]

2 minutes ago, FlyingAntero said:

I have Samsung EVO microSDXC 128Gb (UHS-I, up to 100 MB/s) card and Pro1 is able to recognize it. The phone just wanted to reformat the card before I was able to use it as an external drive.

Are you getting 100 MB/s on benchmark apps running on the Pro1 for that card?

[FlyingAntero 871]

18 minutes ago, david said:

Are you getting 100 MB/s on benchmark apps running on the Pro1 for that card?

Not sure how I should test but I ran couple test in Androbench 5.

So, I am not able to reach 100MB/s.

[david 929]

Just now, FlyingAntero said:

Not sure how I should test but I ran couple test in Androbench 5.

So, I am not able to reach 100MB/s.

Thanks.  Around 20 MB/s sequential read/write is consistent with what I and others have gotten.  Something is making it perform well under the UHS-1 speeds.

[ivoanjo 33]

Did anyone manage to use an SD card on the stock firmware using anything other than FAT32? I'm up for whatever, I just want to get rid of the crappy 4gb file limit.

It's a bit bizarre to still need to put up with it on my multi-core phone with gigabytes of ram and a third of a terabyte in storage 😕

[VaZso 1,998]

2 hours ago, ivoanjo said:

Did anyone manage to use an SD card on the stock firmware using anything other than FAT32? I'm up for whatever, I just want to get rid of the crappy 4gb file limit.

It's a bit bizarre to still need to put up with it on my multi-core phone with gigabytes of ram and a third of a terabyte in storage 😕

Not yet. I hope they will include at least exFAT in a later update, but I would rather use F2FS instead for longer SD-card life... however, I see no high chance for the latter...

[tdm 2,322]

Lineage should support ext4 for sdcards.  I expect I'll add exFAT support at some point now that Microsoft has opened up the patents.

 

Unfortunately, I doubt you'll see exFAT on stock anytime soon.  The most likely path is for Qualcomm to add exFAT support as a standard driver in their Q kernel.  But I haven't looked to see if they did that, and I have no idea if IdeaLTE is even working on Q for the Pro1.

 

[VaZso 1,998]

41 minutes ago, tdm said:

Lineage should support ext4 for sdcards. 

It sounds good.

Anyway, is there any possibility of f2fs support on sdcard?

[tdm 2,322]

6 minutes ago, VaZso said:

It sounds good.

Anyway, is there any possibility of f2fs support on sdcard?

It seems f2fs is also supported. And NTFS, if you hate yourself. 😆

 

https://github.com/LineageOS/android_system_vold/tree/lineage-16.0/fs

[VaZso 1,998]

5 minutes ago, tdm said:

It seems f2fs is also supported. And NTFS, if you hate yourself. 😆

 

https://github.com/LineageOS/android_system_vold/tree/lineage-16.0/fs

Cool, thank you.

Maybe NTFS support was built in to have higher support of pendrives anyway.