"SD Card Unexpectedly Removed" - except it wasn't!

September 7, 2012 1:49 AM

Weird random SD card removal error messages on Android phone

Last summer, I would randomly get messages on my phone: "SD Card Unexpectedly Removed" or some such. Following this, the camera would not work because the phone was not reading the SD card (which had NEVER been removed, incidentally.)

Now, the message is back, but I have discovered that if I reboot the phone, the camera will work and the phone will read the SD card again. I've got an HTC ThunderBolt.

I brought the phone to the Verizon store last summer while it was going on and they had no clue what was happening. There's nothing about this online that I have found - what the heck is going on here?

Not a techie but can figure stuff out - if I need to offer more detail about operating system, etc, just tell me what number I am looking for and where to find it.

posted by deliciae to technology (7 answers total)

Dirty contacts?
posted by pharm at 1:58 AM on September 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

What happened when you used a different SD card?
posted by rdr at 2:00 AM on September 7, 2012

I find that's what starts happening when an SD card is going bad.
posted by gjc at 2:48 AM on September 7, 2012

I had a similar problem with an audio player that uses SD cards - in my case there was a 'refreshing media' message that you'd normally only get on inserting a new card.

My issue was caused by dirty contacts. Removing the card and carefully cleaning the contacts and the card slot seemed to resolve the problem.

Lower-capacity SD cards are very cheap now - it's worth keeping a spare in case of problems like this.
posted by pipeski at 3:04 AM on September 7, 2012

Contacts or dying SD card, yes. The SD card is only intermittently able to be read.

Back up your data now just in case it's the SD card.
posted by jaduncan at 3:22 AM on September 7, 2012

Nthing the bad SD card. I had exactly the same problem with my HTC Wildfire; replacing the SD card fixed the problem.
posted by oclipa at 3:56 AM on September 7, 2012

Yes to the suggestion of a dying card. Back up that thing now, while you still have intermittent functionality and start using a new card.
posted by jasper411 at 7:12 AM on September 7, 2012