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uSDXC fat32 data corruption

asked 2015-12-31 10:50:42 +0200

koshman gravatar image

I finally bought the Jolla phone a few weeks ago. I immediatelly also bought a 64GB card for it. I read a lot of threads and guides on what is supported and not etc. I tried formatting the card first as ext4 which seemed to work fine including automounting, also btrfs which I had to mount manually but in the end I went with fat32, a single 64GB partition, in order for the card to be easily available for data transfer when the phone is connected to a computer. My main desktop OS is Windows at the moment and my assumption is only fat32 will auto mount and be available when connected to the computer though I may be wrong. This seemed to work fine and I was able to access the card automounted on both the phone and the computer. But I later found out media files played from the card seem to be corrupted, both mp3s, the files jump and skip when played, and movie files either don't play at all or stop after a while with an error that the file is corrupted. I tested the same files copied from the computer play fine from the internal memory and when I move those phone->SD they are bad again so it's not a computer->phone transfer issue. Does anybody have similar experience? Am I able to easily mount any other Linux native fs on a Windows computer straight from the phone? I would really liked to avoid having to take the card from the phone to transfer data. I would be fine with a 3rd party utility if Windows cannot mount e.g. ext4 card natively. Thanks!

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The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GB. If your movies are bigger, than these get chunked and therefore corrupted. On other hand, from Windoze point of view, it does not matter which format you chose for your card because between your phone and Windoz PC is used MTP - media transfer protocol.

tvicol ( 2015-12-31 13:29:07 +0200 )edit

Thank you. I am aware of the limitation and the files I am using at the moment are in the 10s and 100s of megabytes so I hope that should be fine.

I was also thinking about partition size limitation - I know Windows cannot natively create a fat32 partition over 32GB so I used the SD Card Formatter utility but am thinking whether Sailfish might have some issues with 64GB fat32 partition even though I understand this is not a limitation of the fs as such. I will probably try formatting the whole card as vfat in the phone and see if it makes any difference.

koshman ( 2015-12-31 14:07:41 +0200 )edit

Try exFat format and fuse-exfat from Openrepos. (also able to automount)

cocof2001 ( 2016-01-02 12:35:30 +0200 )edit

I switched the card from FAT32 to ext4 as I thought FS is the most probable culprit but no I am getting the same errors now with in-phone ext4 formatted card as before. I also tested the card with H2testw and it seems to be a genuine Kingston - no errors. I will probably try using it for a few weeks outside of the phone and see how it works. Thanks everyone.

koshman ( 2016-01-04 14:57:48 +0200 )edit

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answered 2015-12-31 13:32:51 +0200

chemist gravatar image

While the card is in the phone the export to any computer over USB is MTP by default, on Linux systems you may mount the card via ssh (sshfs) when usb-devel-mode is active or via wlan. If you want to use ext4 on windows you may use http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd/ that is also the first hit on google when searching ext4+windows ;)

For your corrupted files, not even Windows is capable to do MTP properly, failing transfers, corrupting files - at least, that is my experience with MTP ever since introduced. Not to mention that win7 does not even show any folders with a Jolla sometimes. For reliable filetransfer (wlan or usb-dev-mode available) I'd use WinSCP.

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Thank you. I am aware there are ways to access Linux formatted partitions in Windows and I've used e.g. Total Commander plugin of this kind in the past. Just didn't know whether these can be used also when connecting through the phone.

While I understand file transfer over this MTP in Windows is not reliable it is probably not causing the problems I am currently facing. Because when I transfer files to internal phone memory they work fine but they again end up corrupted when I transfer them from phone to card using Jolla fule manager. I'll check the WinSCP, thanks for the tip.

koshman ( 2015-12-31 13:55:14 +0200 )edit

And again, there is no connected through the phone - it is an MTP export and does have NULL/ZERO to do with what the card is formatted to as long as SFOS is able to mount, read and index properly.

You are facing problems with uSD formatted to fat32, how about moving to ext4 then? If you don't want to, did you format the card with your Jolla? I always use the system (as in Linux/Windows) I want to use a device with to format.

chemist ( 2015-12-31 14:07:19 +0200 )edit
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answered 2016-01-02 01:46:07 +0200

Laura gravatar image

updated 2016-01-02 01:48:01 +0200

I also use a uSDXC card with a single 64 GB FAT32 partition in my Jolla Phone, and it works fine. I can watch videos that are stored on the card without any problems.

Have you tested your SD card with H2testw? Some cards do have fake disc capacities. This leads to problems when trying to read parts of the files that only seem to be on the card.

Have you tried copying the files back to the internal storage? If the videos play fine again, it might help to buy another card (faster, better compatibility).

Have you tried formatting the card using another program? I formatted it several times in different ways. Some didn't work at all. Fat32Formatter 1.1 seemed to format the card successfully, but Windows Explorer and Sailfish only recognized a capacity of 32 GB, while Windows disk management showed a partition size of 64 GB. FAT32 Format (GUIFormat FAT32) finally did a good job. (If you consider downloading it from the developer's page, be aware of clicking on the picture instead of the big green download buttons - unless you want to install yourself a browser toolbar. The program itself is adfree and no malware was found by any of the engines used by jotti)

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Asked: 2015-12-31 10:50:42 +0200

Seen: 339 times

Last updated: Jan 02 '16