SD card not recognized by S3

[swirls13]

Just got my S3 today through Verizon. Got my 8 gb card out of my old LG Vertex, had all the apps on it, plugged it into my S 3, nothing showed up. Playing music and viewing my gallery shows my pictures and music, but using es file explorer shows no trace of my sd card. I don't want too just format the card, since I have music and pictures I want to keep. The version if android I was running on my old phone was 2.2.2 would that cause any compatability issues? Any help on how to use my sd card without formatting would be greatly appreciated

[FoxKat]

Different versions of Android, going back to 2.1 shouldn't have any issues. The file system hasn't changed. I would back the card up onto the desktop PC, then place it into the S3, format it resident in the phone, then restore the data back again to be sure.

[skennelly]

+1. It is never a bad idea to back up your sd card to your pc anyway.

[bsweetness]

Just got my S3 today through Verizon. Got my 8 gb card out of my old LG Vertex, had all the apps on it, plugged it into my S 3, nothing showed up. Playing music and viewing my gallery shows my pictures and music, but using es file explorer shows no trace of my sd card. I don't want too just format the card, since I have music and pictures I want to keep. The version if android I was running on my old phone was 2.2.2 would that cause any compatability issues? Any help on how to use my sd card without formatting would be greatly appreciated

While reformatting the card is always a good idea when changing phones, since your phone is reading your media files on the card, you don't absolutely have to format it. You can get by without doing it.

There are two things going on here. The first is that ES File Explorer doesn't navigate to the root directory of the phone by default. This is a problem because the OS handles the actual SD card in a way that you're not used to coming from 2.2.2. The S3 reads the internal memory as the SD card and reads the actual SD card as an extension storage area. ES File Explorer does not take this into account, so it's reading the internal memory as though it's the removable SD card.

Here's what you need to do in order to see your microSD card in ES. Open ES File Explorer, tap menu, and then settings. In the settings, scroll down to the option that says "Up to Root" and select it. Next, tap the back button to go back to the folders in your internal memory. From there, tap the "Up" button at the top of the screen. Now, open the folder named "mnt." Your microSD card is the folder named "extSdCard." Open that up, and you'll have access to all of your files.

ES File Explorer makes things much harder than they need to be in order to get to the external microSD card in the S3. I would recommend using either Astro or the stock My Files app for file browsing. My Files is the most straightforward way to access the microSD card, but it's also limited in features. Astro has many more features, and can be set to automatically open directly to your microSD card (exSdCard).

You also said that you "had all the apps on it." The S3 doesn't support moving apps to the SD card, so your apps won't be able to use the app data that's on the microSD card. With some apps, you can copy the data over to your internal storage, and it will work. But I wouldn't count on that working with too many apps.

[cr6]

The developers are in the process of getting their app, App2SD, compatible with the S3 so we'll be able to move our downloaded apps over. It's a bit frustrating I agree, but it's being worked on. Its currently working fine on the European models, so it shouldn't be much longer. :thumbup:

tap'n

[HomePC]

Maybe this should be a separate thread, but there aren't too many out there regarding the external SD Card.

I too, have SD Card issues. My 16GB card wasn't recognized by the S3; it told me to insert a card. I tried pulling the card, reformatting it on a Windows PC using the exFAT file system. The card still was not recognized by the S3. I finally deleted all partitions on the card, using the Windows PC, and the S3 still would not recognize it.

Finally, I re-enabled several bloatware apps that I had disabled by the App Manager. That seemed to fix the problem. I was able to mount and format the card with the S3. I'm guessing some app is working very closely with the driver for that SD Card slot. On a related note, I had "Advanced Task Killer" installed and set to run every hour with a kill level of "SAFE" and a security level of "LOW". My card would periodically unmount. I'm guessing the ATK killed some important process. I have since, reconfigured ATK to not run at all. It is still installed though.

BUT!!!!,,, since then, my card has unmounted twice but I manage to get it remounted...... Once the S3 said the card was damaged. I won't store any info on it until things settle down. I have an 8GB card laying around, I may give that a shot to see how it reacts.

[whotheheck]

I had the same issue. Here is the fix: Use a mem card reader for your sd card on a windows machine. Open a command prompt, but run as administrator. At the prompt type: chkdsk x: /r (x: is the letter of the drive your mem card reader happens to be, so it could be g,h,j,d, etc.) and then hit Enter and just let it run it's processes. Once done, just pop the sd card back into your phone and all is well. Enjoy!