# Keep burning out SDs - need advise ....



## garryo (Aug 23, 2011)

Since I have learned that most developers are now here - I hope I can get resolution here

I am the following setup on my Charge

Voodoo based kernel; regular and over clock
Sd card read fix patch
EE4 fully stock up to date
CWR 4.x.x.04 - the one without voodoo options

This is my second incident with card going bad. The first time I used it for two weeks and card became unreadable. Tried reformat from the phone and on CWR level without any success.

On second ocasion phone worked also two weeks without any issues - till I suddenly got on power up "bad card" pop up. Tried to reformat - failed.

I booted into CWR and to my surprise I was able to browse the card. I deleted cache, Davlik, boot part, reapplied voodoo and ovclock kernels, reapplied card read error pathch - in all possible sequences without much susccess. I do not have voodoo controls under my version of CWR (too bad) and since I do not have memory card - I cannot download and install 3rd party voodo control to try to enable and disable and see if it makes a difference.

I am sure that I will get it working eventually - but would like to ask our opinion AFAYK what is going on? I hate having to lose my cards with pics and data with is not backed up regularly. This is my first device I lost an SD card.

I am assuming that it is related to the voodoo Linux based file system. do you think running a full stock on a voodoo has anything to do with it? Some people suggested that it might be related to a different FAT 32 block size......

For reference - two more posts related to it:

http://forums.androidcentral.com/verizon-droid-charge/111200-wiping-sd-card.html
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=16713292#

Thanks in advance


----------



## jdunne (Jul 21, 2011)

Not quite following what your current system build is. But further more, I see some oddities. From what I understand you're running a stock ee4 build. But if your cwm does not have any options for voodoo, that can create an issue considering you're using a voodoo kernel. Update cwm. Next I saw the word overclock. Any gummycharged rom will preform above expectations. And unless you're building 3d models or huge spreadsheets, there's really no reason to overclock the charge. That could be a major thing leading to the death of your cards. Your phone can be demanding too much from your sdcard which will lead to failure. Everything has a use limit from mouses to phones. Mice have a number of clicks they're tested for before they go bad and phones are no exception. The only thing a overclock is doing is speeding up your phone's death. But enough of that rant. Last thing is your sdcard patch. Were you having issues with read-only on your card? If not, that patch was pointless. If you have not already, I would back up your phone and trade it for a replacement. Your problems could be as simple as a bad connection between the card and phone suchs as a defect.

Left something out. Have you tried downloading voodoo controls off the market?

Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk


----------



## garryo (Aug 23, 2011)

I will try to answer your questions.

Latest cdm does not have voodoo controls since they do not report them correctly (per developer). I am running version 4.x.x.4 It does support Voodoo control - but by using apps from Market. But if you card is bad - you cannot install apps from market = no control over voodoo. I had had two apps controlling Voodoo installed - but no way to access while phone does not recognize the card.

I use overclock to LOWER CPU clocks since my battery life sucks and phone tend to run hot under normal usage. I cap my CPU at 800 Max and that helps with it.

I understand that GummyCharged or other ROMs will provide similar voodoo controls - but I steered away from custom ROMs since battery life reportedly affected by them. I decided to take a slow road, just get a root first (update kernel) and worry about ROM later.

I have never had issues with sd card read errors before, but just tried SD card patch since it was part of my restore zips library on the card itself. Remember that I could access card in CWM but not while booted from the phone....

I understand that SD cards have limited life but I am puzzled what exacly happen. Since I have stumbled upon many posts that Verizon did have issues with SD cards and several posts about different block size format on 32GB SDs - I believe there is more to it than just reaching of limit of writes that burns out a card

I hope that it explains...


----------



## jdunne (Jul 21, 2011)

Okay. A lot more clarification. First, custom roms if anything give you better battery life since alot of them remove bloatware that runs un-needed services in the background of your phone. For instance, on my GummyCharge GBE, with heavy 4G use I still end up with around 20% battery life before I plug in my phone at night.

I was also unaware imnuts took out voodoo controls from cwm. But if you don't want to download the other method of controlling the kernel's lagfix, there really is no point in having it. Are you running a ext4 filesystem?

As for the memory card issue, here's some backlight: the charge shipped with a samsung made card that is "technically" inferior to the one that shipped with the thunderbolt. HTC slapped in a newer version of the sd card made by SanDisk which some charge owners report getting a noticeable increase when the thunderbolt card is put into a charge.

Since you seem really bent on keeping battery life, I'd recommend looking into an extended battery instead of modding the phone to not use as much juice. Also, don't forget that this can all just be a hardware malfunction due to a defective card, reader or phone.

Here's my ideas for you:

1. Try reformatting the card using a card reader attached to a computer and then seeing if you're still getting the same issue.

a. If you don't have the same problem, then it was just a formatting error.

b. If you did get the same issue, take the phone back and see if Verizon at the least will replace the card. But if you still have this issue, you're better off just getting a new charge.

2. If the above didn't work, try flashing (hate to say it) one of the Humble rom's (if you can find it via google. There's been some controversy over his builds). He's tried to make his roms geared toward the battery-life conscious. Stick with a froyo build since that's what the developer community really has down. Gingerbread is still kinda iffy until the devs get a source from sammy.

3. Finally: Install the voodoo control panel from the market and try enabling lagfix from that. If you're still getting the SDcard error, reapply the sd card patch. Also, could you have somehow changed the chmod of the card to not allow read/write access?


----------

