I was given a Huawei Y6 Elite to replace an LG Optimus L9 which died, not sure if that's relevant, but FYI, the Y6 has "720p" video that looks like it was taken with a 20 year old VHS camcorder....
Anyway. The Huawei claimed to support up to 64GB cards. I thought this was great, because my old 32GB card was almost full, and so I went out and bought a Strontium Nitro 64GB card. It came formatted to exFAT which after copying all my files to, the phone didn't recognise. I used the phone to format the card. It formatted it to FAT32. I copied all the files again. Everything seemed fine...
A few months later, I started noticing problems. Some photos I took did not show up in the gallery, although I could read them OK with the file browser. A while later, MP3 playback started skipping, or VLC would just stop playing the file. About the same time, I started getting constant errors about the camera database being broken.
CHKDSK said the filesystem was bad. I copied all the files off, with the intent of formatting the card and copying everything back. Some files did not copy properly, and were corrupted, but not completely. Some MP3 files for example were 90% OK, but had random bursts of 'digital' static throughout them.
I was able to copy the important files without corruption - after freezing the card with freezer spray and re-inserting it whenever it started copying files badly.
I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that the card's controller was failing. I bought a new card, this time an Apacer R85 (also 64GB microSDXC) and once again, formatted to FAT32, copied all my music etc to it, and started using it.
It seemed to work great for a while, until one day I tried taking a photo and the phone told me it was using internal storage. I tried to change it back to the SD Card, and found that the card was not even detected any more. Not just bad filesystem, but it acted as if the card wasn't even there!
Now, the funny thing was, the computer would read it, while the phone wouldn't. I wondered if the phone had gone bad, but found that it could read other cards.
At that point, I began searching Google for information about 64GB SDXC cards and FAT32. Most posts were about people having problems formatting them due to Windows' insistence on exFAT.
I did find a few which referenced some 64GB cards claiming that FAT32 was not supported or not recommended due to reliability issues. No card I have ever purchased has said this. The same listings on Amazon for such cards no longer have this disclaimer message, though it certainly seems to have been present at some point, going by screenshots, internet archive etc.
I wondered if it was just a way for manufacturer's to deny responsibility for corrupt files... but maybe there's truth to it?
But back to the Apacer card - this one acted a bit differently. When trying to copy files from it, some worked perfectly. Some cause an I/O error, and the card completely drops out and has to be reinserted in the computer's card reader.
I wondered then, if it was a problem with cheap cards. The Strontium and Apacer cards had both been some of the cheapest 64GB cards I could get at the time. While buying cheap cards seems to have worked perfectly up until now for me with anything 32GB and smaller, I do wonder if a doubling of capacity in such a tiny (microSDXC) form factor could just have made the cheap 64GB cards unreliable, compared to <32GB cards.
So, I bought a 64GB Samsung Evo+ for twice the price of the other cards. This time, I didn't let the phone format it, though. I put it in my Linux machine, and formatted it myself. I noticed the partition table had a 17MB free space at the start of the disk, and the rest was exFAT. I formatted the exFAT partition to FAT32 with a full format, leaving the free space alone. I wondered if perhaps the card needs this space to operate properly, and if the other two cards had issues because the phone may have removed this free space. Also wondered if the phone's quickformat may have been a problem...
So we shall see what happens now.
But in any case, I haven't been able to find a conclusive answer with an official explanation to this apparent "64GB SDXC \ FAT32" question\issue anywhere... does anyone here know what's up? Is it impossible to use FAT32 properly on these cards? Does it cause actual damage? (Can't see how that's possible, but you never know)
Anyway. The Huawei claimed to support up to 64GB cards. I thought this was great, because my old 32GB card was almost full, and so I went out and bought a Strontium Nitro 64GB card. It came formatted to exFAT which after copying all my files to, the phone didn't recognise. I used the phone to format the card. It formatted it to FAT32. I copied all the files again. Everything seemed fine...
A few months later, I started noticing problems. Some photos I took did not show up in the gallery, although I could read them OK with the file browser. A while later, MP3 playback started skipping, or VLC would just stop playing the file. About the same time, I started getting constant errors about the camera database being broken.
CHKDSK said the filesystem was bad. I copied all the files off, with the intent of formatting the card and copying everything back. Some files did not copy properly, and were corrupted, but not completely. Some MP3 files for example were 90% OK, but had random bursts of 'digital' static throughout them.
I was able to copy the important files without corruption - after freezing the card with freezer spray and re-inserting it whenever it started copying files badly.
I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that the card's controller was failing. I bought a new card, this time an Apacer R85 (also 64GB microSDXC) and once again, formatted to FAT32, copied all my music etc to it, and started using it.
It seemed to work great for a while, until one day I tried taking a photo and the phone told me it was using internal storage. I tried to change it back to the SD Card, and found that the card was not even detected any more. Not just bad filesystem, but it acted as if the card wasn't even there!
Now, the funny thing was, the computer would read it, while the phone wouldn't. I wondered if the phone had gone bad, but found that it could read other cards.
At that point, I began searching Google for information about 64GB SDXC cards and FAT32. Most posts were about people having problems formatting them due to Windows' insistence on exFAT.
I did find a few which referenced some 64GB cards claiming that FAT32 was not supported or not recommended due to reliability issues. No card I have ever purchased has said this. The same listings on Amazon for such cards no longer have this disclaimer message, though it certainly seems to have been present at some point, going by screenshots, internet archive etc.
I wondered if it was just a way for manufacturer's to deny responsibility for corrupt files... but maybe there's truth to it?
But back to the Apacer card - this one acted a bit differently. When trying to copy files from it, some worked perfectly. Some cause an I/O error, and the card completely drops out and has to be reinserted in the computer's card reader.
I wondered then, if it was a problem with cheap cards. The Strontium and Apacer cards had both been some of the cheapest 64GB cards I could get at the time. While buying cheap cards seems to have worked perfectly up until now for me with anything 32GB and smaller, I do wonder if a doubling of capacity in such a tiny (microSDXC) form factor could just have made the cheap 64GB cards unreliable, compared to <32GB cards.
So, I bought a 64GB Samsung Evo+ for twice the price of the other cards. This time, I didn't let the phone format it, though. I put it in my Linux machine, and formatted it myself. I noticed the partition table had a 17MB free space at the start of the disk, and the rest was exFAT. I formatted the exFAT partition to FAT32 with a full format, leaving the free space alone. I wondered if perhaps the card needs this space to operate properly, and if the other two cards had issues because the phone may have removed this free space. Also wondered if the phone's quickformat may have been a problem...
So we shall see what happens now.
But in any case, I haven't been able to find a conclusive answer with an official explanation to this apparent "64GB SDXC \ FAT32" question\issue anywhere... does anyone here know what's up? Is it impossible to use FAT32 properly on these cards? Does it cause actual damage? (Can't see how that's possible, but you never know)
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