MicroSD card randomly unmounts itself

Anonymous
2015-05-29T17:26:43+00:00

I inserted a Samsung EVo 128GB micros-SD card into my new Surface 3, intending to use it as photo storage for my photography workflow.

However, after a fee minutes - even without using it - the drive appears to unmounts itself. It's still visible in Explorer, but clicking it results in Explorer hanging and eventually giving the error "please insert a disk" after several minutes. In Disk Manager, the drive sometimes appears, with the correct amount of space, but indicates it's all unallocated.

This issue is fixed temporarily by removing and reinserting the disk, but a short time later it unmounts itself again. I tried the disk in my older Dell Venue 8 Pro, but the issue didn't occur there.

I've looked at previous threads about similar issues on older and Pro models, and tried setting the policy for the microSD drive to 'better performance' and even tried setting up a VHD, but none of these provided a solution.

Does anyone know what I can do?

Surface | Other

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-12-10T17:34:00+00:00

    Thought I would relate my continuing attempts to find a resolution.

    At this point I have had two online chats with tech support and in each case they were ready to replace the Surface. One phone call that ended in the same way.

    Yesterday I took it in to the MS Store. The tech first says that the best SD is either Kingston or Corsair but concedes that there should be nothing wrong with the Samsung Evo+ 128gb that I have. He then tells me something that I haven't heard which is I need to download and install a driver for the card from Samsung which he proceeds to do, supposedly. The odd thing is that after he did this it was restarted and the card showed up. I put it into hibernation and when it came back up it was there.

    About an hour later after I had left the store I brought it out of hibernation and the card wasn't seen. I re-inserted and then checked the driver and it is the same old 2006 driver from MS. So I have no idea what he actually did, if anything. I was unable to find any driver for the card from Samsung in my own online search.

    So, back to square one. At this point considering trying to get them to replace it at the store. Reading various forums there is an ongoing debate as to whether this is hardware or software and I certainly don't know.

    The one valuable lesson I had confirmed by my dealings with tech support is that there is certainly no point in purchasing the extended service agreement. In 2 plus decades of using PCs virtually any issue I have run into I have solved or found the help I needed in forums or websites not related to the PC manufacturer and on those rare instances I have followed the advice of the level 1 tech support generally caused more problems and didn't fix the one they were called on.

    I did have higher hopes for the support at the MS store.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-12-07T00:17:23+00:00

    The MS generic driver is dated 2006. Could that have something to do with it?

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-12-06T22:27:07+00:00
    1. I truly believe it is software.

    That I'd certainly agree with. I disappeared from this thread when Win 10 10240 happened, as that solved the -- or at least my --issue. The Srf Pro 4 has mercifully not had that issue (others, mind).

    But I notice it's still going on. There seem to be a number of manifestations, however, e.g. : the random dismounting (which was never an issue for me), and failing to reappear after sleep (which was).

    I can only hope that the Windows 10 telemetry is providing some data towards a happy ending in this.

    All the best,

    Rob

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  4. Barb Bowman 80,815 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-12-06T17:39:35+00:00
    1. See my blog.. Unlocked LTE using Verizon. Getting that working was an adventure.
    2. ALL my 64GB cards work. Some folks aren't seeing success with 64GB Cards.
    3. I truly believe it is software.

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-12-06T17:19:27+00:00

    Barb, I'm curious why you don't want to try swapping your S3 for a new one to see if that fixes the problem?

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