32GB or 64GB MicroSD cards for Galaxy S3

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darkkain

Senior Member
Aug 3, 2012
114
28
64gb because it has exFat format :) 4gb+ file won't be a problem. I have got the same one.
 
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destynova1988

Senior Member
Jun 11, 2012
65
15
São Paulo
I picked up samsung galaxy s3 today and looking for a good sd card. i am considering these two options:

SanDisk Ultra 64 GB microSDXC Class 10 UHS-1 Memory Card 30MB/s with Adapter SDSDQUA-064G-U46A

and another by Samsung

Samsung 32GB High Speed MicroSDHC Memory Card


samsung one seems like a good deal, compared to pricey sandisk.

Hi,
I bought mine from amazon a few months ago and costed me 78$ $54 Class 10 64GB Micro SD
You should get a 64gb card, because you will have a lot of space for yout stuff and you can format it as exFat!
 
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Ricey

Senior Member
Jan 9, 2006
308
116
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3
64gb because MOAR IS BETTER! :D I formatted mine to FAT32 because from what I've read and experienced with my other devices, it's just safer that way. I've had issues right off the bat using exFAT on some devices (mostly Samsung) or gradually the card will become corrupted (I've lost about 3 full microsd cards full of data so far). From what I've read this is due to Samsung using a half baked implementation of exFAT. exFAT is a patent-pending, proprietary file system created by Microsoft, so if Samsung, or any other OEM wanted to use the full implementation they would have to pay licensing fees. So while you can format it to exFAT using a PC, the way Samsung devices handle it there is high chance of it getting corrupted.
 
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rvpals

Member
Apr 30, 2011
33
1
64gb because MOAR IS BETTER! :D I formatted mine to FAT32 because from what I've read and experienced with my other devices, it's just safer that way. I've had issues right off the bat using exFAT on some devices (mostly Samsung) or gradually the card will become corrupted (I've lost about 3 full microsd cards full of data so far). From what I've read this is due to Samsung using a half baked implementation of exFAT. exFAT is a patent-pending, proprietary file system created by Microsoft, so if Samsung, or any other OEM wanted to use the full implementation they would have to pay licensing fees. So while you can format it to exFAT using a PC, the way Samsung devices handle it there is high chance of it getting corrupted.

How do you format with FAT32? Just using format option in Samsung S 3?

I've been experiencing problem where from time to time, it just corrupt and give me SD card error, and refuse to mount it. I have a 64GB Sandisk Micro SD on Verizon S 3.
 

Ricey

Senior Member
Jan 9, 2006
308
116
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3
How do you format with FAT32? Just using format option in Samsung S 3?

I've been experiencing problem where from time to time, it just corrupt and give me SD card error, and refuse to mount it. I have a 64GB Sandisk Micro SD on Verizon S 3.

I used my laptop's built in SD reader that supports XC cards and just formatted to FAT32. You can use any PC program that formats. I personally used an app called guiformat (http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm). It's a simple app specifically to format stuff to FAT32. I've heard you can simply use the window's formatter but I've also read of some people that had issues with that.
 
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missmonet

Member
Oct 1, 2012
22
1
32
D.C
help lol

hi, Im a noob. Im getting galaxy s3 today. I been reading threads and searching within the tread but someone say something some one else says something else. so Im confused! especially since im noob. Which one is it for god sake!!! lol

Q. Which is class is better? I hear on other threads a class 2 or 4 is good but a class 6 and 10 is not necessary because for a higher speed the manufacturer use the randoms speeds, access speeds to make it faster. That class 10 don't necessarily means better,class 10 is too fast for for the phone that it will freeze or ppl having problems. You need a class 6 for apps2sd or Data2sd.

So im thinking a class 6 would be good for me since I use apps2sd alot, roms, I will download some music, vids and movies. 32gb class 6 SanDisk - Mobile Ultra 32GB microSDHC Class 6 Memory Card bestbuy sale 4 $30 has anyone body tried it?
Can someone who really knows tech stuff about sd cards answer plz

Thank you, sorry for all the questions...:eek:
 

Ricey

Senior Member
Jan 9, 2006
308
116
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3
hi, Im a noob. Im getting galaxy s3 today. I been reading threads and searching within the tread but someone say something some one else says something else. so Im confused! especially since im noob. Which one is it for god sake!!! lol

Q. Which is class is better? I hear on other threads a class 2 or 4 is good but a class 6 and 10 is not necessary because for a higher speed the manufacturer use the randoms speeds, access speeds to make it faster. That class 10 don't necessarily means better,class 10 is too fast for for the phone that it will freeze or ppl having problems. You need a class 6 for apps2sd or Data2sd.

So im thinking a class 6 would be good for me since I use apps2sd alot, roms, I will download some music, vids and movies. 32gb class 6 SanDisk - Mobile Ultra 32GB microSDHC Class 6 Memory Card bestbuy sale 4 $30 has anyone body tried it?
Can someone who really knows tech stuff about sd cards answer plz

Thank you, sorry for all the questions...:eek:

I've personally been using Class 10s for my devices and haven't had any issues as long as it's formatted in FAT32.
 

stan.s

Senior Member
Aug 29, 2010
739
107
NYC metro
The difference between the sdhc cards and the sdxc cards is that the xc are intended to be used on usb3 systems so that they can take advantage of the speed. This is important when you are loading the card with your music library or unloading it with your photos. (and you don't do it mounted inside the phone.)

A Sandisk 64GB sdxc class ten card won't get the 30mb read speed advertised. It gets regular class 10 speed, the gs3 has no speed improvements when using this type of mcard. Here's a speed test in the phone of the Sandisk 64GB sdxc I got the other day.

IME, exfat is sensitive to power level change and anything that stalls or disrupts any read/write operation. However, if the phone says that it is damaged, just put it in to your adapter and a pc with exfat support and run chkdsk /f (with the fix options selected).


ezu9ymyh.jpg


Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2
 

prinzhernan

Senior Member
Sep 3, 2010
1,663
255
Hi. I'm getting the SanDisk 64gb class 10 tomorrow. So formatting it using the phone will make it FAT32? As previously mentioned in the thread it isn't worth formatting to exFAT, right?

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2
 

sankar24

Senior Member
Nov 24, 2010
183
26
chennai
Hi. I'm getting the SanDisk 64gb class 10 tomorrow. So formatting it using the phone will make it FAT32? As previously mentioned in the thread it isn't worth formatting to exFAT, right?

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2
The default system as far as I know in SGS3 is exfat. Use a free downloadable tool by name mini tools and format the card to fat 32. I have a 64 GB micro sd class 10 sandisk. I have no problems using it . My 32 gb card was running out of space because of music files If you are getting a new card you can do a surface test with the tool i mentioned above so that you know whether it has any defective sectors. It does take some time though.
 

stan.s

Senior Member
Aug 29, 2010
739
107
NYC metro
The default system as far as I know in SGS3 is exfat. Use a free downloadable tool by name mini tools and format the card to fat 32.

This is correct, it formats exfat on the 64Gb. I did this yesterday and using myTerminal app, the mount command shows that the card is formatted exfat.

Now, it's an interesting thing, exfat is a licensed format, and Samsung paid for a license, however anyone with a rooted phone has some sort of Busybox installed which replaces most of the exfat commands with Linux standard ones.... is this better or worse?

I have a question for the people who have formatted fat32, how big is the space on the 64Gb? on exfat it's 59.47Gb what's yours?
 

prinzhernan

Senior Member
Sep 3, 2010
1,663
255
The default system as far as I know in SGS3 is exfat. Use a free downloadable tool by name mini tools and format the card to fat 32. I have a 64 GB micro sd class 10 sandisk. I have no problems using it . My 32 gb card was running out of space because of music files If you are getting a new card you can do a surface test with the tool i mentioned above so that you know whether it has any defective sectors. It does take some time though.


This is correct, it formats exfat on the 64Gb. I did this yesterday and using myTerminal app, the mount command shows that the card is formatted exfat.

Now, it's an interesting thing, exfat is a licensed format, and Samsung paid for a license, however anyone with a rooted phone has some sort of Busybox installed which replaces most of the exfat commands with Linux standard ones.... is this better or worse?

I have a question for the people who have formatted fat32, how big is the space on the 64Gb? on exfat it's 59.47Gb what's yours?

Thanks for the reply guys. As I'll be using files bigger than 4gb exFAT would be the best choice. I've read in some threads though that this file system corrupts in the s3 over time, she was the card fills up. I don't know if this is true since it was only mentioned thrice in 3 different posts. Can anyone verify this?


Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2
 

stan.s

Senior Member
Aug 29, 2010
739
107
NYC metro
Thanks for the reply guys. As I'll be using files bigger than 4gb exFAT would be the best choice. I've read in some threads though that this file system corrupts in the s3 over time, she was the card fills up. I don't know if this is true since it was only mentioned thrice in 3 different posts. Can anyone verify this?

My old 32gb is mostly standard stuff that I keep from phone to phone (like contacts backups music). So I have a copy on my desktop. Anyway, I had 29Gb filled on the card as a normal condition with Nandroid backups and TI backups.

When I was transferring this to the new 64Gb card, I was trying to use a 4 port USB OTG with the old card in the USB stick adapter. I fumbled with the power supply to the 4port and the phone didn't like it and unmounted the card, and wouldn't mount it again. I put it into my desktop with an adapter (on XP you need a patch for exfat from MS) and ran a chkdsk /f on it (took some time as I don't have USB3). The chkdsk finished (I made a backup to the desktop since some of the nandroid was new.) and put the card back into the phone. It worked for a few hours, I was listening to music on the card. The battery ran low, and I shut down to swap batteries and the card wouldn't mount again and claimed damaged and needed a format. Since I had everything backed up (and still had the old card, too), I just formatted it in the phone. Used the OTG to get the data back on from the old card. Everything's been good since 30+ hours without turning the phone off. But as I write this, I swapped batteries (full shutdown) and when I rebooted, the card wouldn't mount (and doesn't say that it's corrupted).

It also takes more than a minute (maybe two or so) to mount the card when the phone boots. This also makes it totally unusable for applications being stored on it or data for applications on it or for swapping apps like App2SD where it links the external card to the internal card and visa versa. If the app tried to access data on the card while it's being checked, it may not have the code to support the error returned. If the app needs to be running at bootup, few are going to wait until the card is ready, and the os will query for the card. I know that this was a problem on GB, and is one of the reasons so many oems are including more very fast internal storage in the phones.
 

prinzhernan

Senior Member
Sep 3, 2010
1,663
255
Just got my card an hour ago. Right out of the box I tried copying a bunch of files and I encountered an error. Reformatted it using windows and now it runs fine. So I guess it would be best to format it again and not use it right out of the box.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2
 

stan.s

Senior Member
Aug 29, 2010
739
107
NYC metro
fwiw. I kept trying to mount the card, and finally got to the point where it said it was 'corrupted'. I put the card into a windows box without problems, could read the data, etc. Ran a chkdisk /f to find and fix any errors, no problems. Tried to put it back into the phone and it still wouldn't mount. Gonna give Samsung a call since it works in Windows, it either Samsung or Busybox that's the issue.
 

stan.s

Senior Member
Aug 29, 2010
739
107
NYC metro
fwiw. I kept trying to mount the card, and finally got to the point where it said it was 'corrupted'. I put the card into a windows box without problems, could read the data, etc. Ran a chkdisk /f to find and fix any errors, no problems found, once again. Tried to put it back into the phone and it still wouldn't mount. Gonna give Samsung a call since it works in Windows, it either Samsung or Busybox that's the issue.

I ran a chkdsk /f again, no errors. Then I downloaded the sdformatter from the sdcard working group. https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_3/ this is a free formating program that will make sure you have formated to the sdcard org standards. You can not choose the file system. You can choose to do different types of erase as a part of the format.

Anyway, after the chkdisk, I tried to mount the card but it would not. I then made another backup of the data, and did a long format (exfat) with a simple erase rather than the zeroes erase. Copying the data back and lo and behold it mounted. My phone though hasn't been off since though. Since I don't have usb 3 the formatting and data transfers take hours to complete. I am going to have to get a usb3 card for at least one pc and a usb3 card reader.

Samsung was not any help and wanted me to do a factory reset.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2
 
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  • 14
    PSA RE: SanDisk 32GB/64GB MicroSDXC Class 10 UHS-I

    IF OWN THIS SANDISK 32GB OR 64GB C10 UHS-I AND YOU ARE HAVING ISSUES WITH THIS CARD
    OR IF YOU WANT TO RECLAIM YOUR 16MB BACK SEE THIS POST!


    This applies to the SanDisk Mobile Ultra 30MB/s 32GB or 64GB Class 10 UHS-I cards (the Class 6 cards did not have this issue (I believe)
    To everyone - you may have a problem with this SanDisk C10 card in your Android device (especially the Galaxy 7.7 and S2).
    Not because its C10, not because its UHS-I, but because of SanDisk's making 2 partitions.
    edit: it may be that both the 32GB and 64GB C10 cards both have 2 partitions. you may have to do this for the 32GB C10 card also.

    The old 64GB C6 card just had 1 partition, one large 59.48GB (after format) drive

    After further inspection of the C10 card, I found out that SanDisk stupidly added in an offset of 16MB at the beginning of the card
    (which might house that weird secure stuff that SanDisk has, but not necessary).
    I'll post up a screen shot (and a formal thread of this problem later)

    Basically, in order to get rid of it: (in Windows)
    - Press Start
    - type "partition", and the link "Create and format hard disk partitions" should pop up
    (alternatively, you can just type diskmgmt.msc)

    Disk Management will load up at this point. You should see a list of all the drives you have.
    - Find your 64GB MicroSDXC. You should see that it's divided into 2 sections, one 16MB "empty" partition, and one 59.45GB exFAT partition
    - Normally you could just Right Click on the partition and delete the partition to combine the empty space, but Disk Management won't let you do it in this case.

    Now, in order to format your drive so it's 1 whole piece:

    - Go to start, type in cmd
    - Right click on cmd, and select "run as Administrator"
    - command line will start w/ Admin privileges

    Here, you need to run a program called DiskPart. It helps you "clean" hard drives that have many partitions that aren't normally accessible.
    - from cmd line, type diskpart
    - a new command line program will start
    - here, type "list", it will show you a list of commands.
    - type "list disk", find out which disk is your 64GB micro (mine happens to be disk 8)
    - type "select disk #" (# is your disk you want for cleaning)
    - disk # will be selected.
    Very important: Make sure you have the right disk!
    - If you are sure, type in the word "clean". This will completely wipe out the disk that was selected.

    after that, you're done, you can exit DiskPart/cmd.

    Go back to Disk Management, and now you can see that the whole drive is unallocated.

    At this point, you can format your drive (using your Android device or Windows, to FAT32 or exFAT) and it will use up all the space (59.45GB + 16MB = 59.47GB?, lol)
    9
    The difference between the sdhc cards and the sdxc cards is that the xc are intended to be used on usb3 systems so that they can take advantage of the speed. This is important when you are loading the card with your music library or unloading it with your photos. (and you don't do it mounted inside the phone.)

    A Sandisk 64GB sdxc class ten card won't get the 30mb read speed advertised. It gets regular class 10 speed, the gs3 has no speed improvements when using this type of mcard. Here's a speed test in the phone of the Sandisk 64GB sdxc I got the other day.

    IME, exfat is sensitive to power level change and anything that stalls or disrupts any read/write operation. However, if the phone says that it is damaged, just put it in to your adapter and a pc with exfat support and run chkdsk /f (with the fix options selected).


    ezu9ymyh.jpg


    Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2
    5
    64gb because MOAR IS BETTER! :D I formatted mine to FAT32 because from what I've read and experienced with my other devices, it's just safer that way. I've had issues right off the bat using exFAT on some devices (mostly Samsung) or gradually the card will become corrupted (I've lost about 3 full microsd cards full of data so far). From what I've read this is due to Samsung using a half baked implementation of exFAT. exFAT is a patent-pending, proprietary file system created by Microsoft, so if Samsung, or any other OEM wanted to use the full implementation they would have to pay licensing fees. So while you can format it to exFAT using a PC, the way Samsung devices handle it there is high chance of it getting corrupted.
    4
    Hi. I'm getting the SanDisk 64gb class 10 tomorrow. So formatting it using the phone will make it FAT32? As previously mentioned in the thread it isn't worth formatting to exFAT, right?

    Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2
    The default system as far as I know in SGS3 is exfat. Use a free downloadable tool by name mini tools and format the card to fat 32. I have a 64 GB micro sd class 10 sandisk. I have no problems using it . My 32 gb card was running out of space because of music files If you are getting a new card you can do a surface test with the tool i mentioned above so that you know whether it has any defective sectors. It does take some time though.
    3
    I've been using the 64GB C10 UHS-1 card for a little over a month now, and I've got to say I don't have any the issues people reported (corrupt).

    This method seem to did the trick!


    IF OWN THIS SANDISK 32GB OR 64GB C10 UHS-I AND YOU ARE HAVING ISSUES WITH THIS CARD
    OR IF YOU WANT TO RECLAIM YOUR 16MB BACK SEE THIS POST!


    This applies to the SanDisk Mobile Ultra 30MB/s 32GB or 64GB Class 10 UHS-I cards (the Class 6 cards did not have this issue (I believe)
    To everyone - you may have a problem with this SanDisk C10 card in your Android device (especially the Galaxy 7.7 and S2).
    Not because its C10, not because its UHS-I, but because of SanDisk's making 2 partitions.
    edit: it may be that both the 32GB and 64GB C10 cards both have 2 partitions. you may have to do this for the 32GB C10 card also.

    The old 64GB C6 card just had 1 partition, one large 59.48GB (after format) drive

    After further inspection of the C10 card, I found out that SanDisk stupidly added in an offset of 16MB at the beginning of the card
    (which might house that weird secure stuff that SanDisk has, but not necessary).
    I'll post up a screen shot (and a formal thread of this problem later)

    Basically, in order to get rid of it: (in Windows)
    - Press Start
    - type "partition", and the link "Create and format hard disk partitions" should pop up
    (alternatively, you can just type diskmgmt.msc)

    Disk Management will load up at this point. You should see a list of all the drives you have.
    - Find your 64GB MicroSDXC. You should see that it's divided into 2 sections, one 16MB "empty" partition, and one 59.45GB exFAT partition
    - Normally you could just Right Click on the partition and delete the partition to combine the empty space, but Disk Management won't let you do it in this case.

    Now, in order to format your drive so it's 1 whole piece:

    - Go to start, type in cmd
    - Right click on cmd, and select "run as Administrator"
    - command line will start w/ Admin privileges

    Here, you need to run a program called DiskPart. It helps you "clean" hard drives that have many partitions that aren't normally accessible.
    - from cmd line, type diskpart
    - a new command line program will start
    - here, type "list", it will show you a list of commands.
    - type "list disk", find out which disk is your 64GB micro (mine happens to be disk 8)
    - type "select disk #" (# is your disk you want for cleaning)
    - disk # will be selected.
    Very important: Make sure you have the right disk!
    - If you are sure, type in the word "clean". This will completely wipe out the disk that was selected.

    after that, you're done, you can exit DiskPart/cmd.

    Go back to Disk Management, and now you can see that the whole drive is unallocated.

    At this point, you can format your drive (using your Android device or Windows, to FAT32 or exFAT) and it will use up all the space (59.45GB + 16MB = 59.47GB?, lol)