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. Barb Bowman 80,815 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-12-10T18:04:01+00:00

    I've now borrowed two other Surface 3's. They also have the same issue with the same cards. I have no issues with 64GB cards, but have issues with 128GB cards on all of them.

    There are NO drivers for cards. The host controller has a driver and it is from the manufacturer of the controller.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-12-10T18:58:18+00:00

    Interesting well I might take the plunge and get a 128 GB version of the Silicon Power microSD cards I've been using that have had no issues although I've been using 64 GB. I'm hopeful because all the other brands I've used kept unmounting, but the Silicon Power ones were just fine.

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-12-10T19:17:06+00:00

    I was using the Sandisk 128gb card (2 of them) and had the same problem. The 64gb Sandisk works fine. I eventually got a PNY 128gb card and have used it for several months now with no problem.

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-12-13T20:39:46+00:00

    I wanted to update this issue.

    I had SanDisk Ultra 128gb card in use on an android phone. It is formatted in exFat. Anyone swapped the cards and have now gone through a few hibernation cycles, restarts and one forced restart and in each instance the card still shows in explorer.

    I do see that the driver loaded by Windows for each of these devices is different. Not sure if that is the issue or not. I am including a screen shot. In the list of drivers Generic 00000 SD Card is the one that Windows installed for the Samsung Evo+ 128GB. The driver Generic SL128 SD Card is what was installed for the SanDisk Ultra 128gb.

    Not sure what that tells you. If the driver is the issue it would be nice to be able to select the driver that works for all 128gb cards.

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