well it is not the ram, as auggy (I think) had me do a memory test, which I ran for 12 hours with no errors. there is no new USB device. I am using the card reader built into the laptop for the first time. I did open up a thread at the Toshiba forums, and they replied saying that it was not the driver as it had been extensively test with hardware before release, I don't know whether I believe that or not. but they said it could be a defective card reader and to do a factory restore to see if the issue persists. doing a factory restore seems to be their answer for everything.
is there some kind of test I can run to make sure the card reader is operating properly?
I don't think it is the car it self as all 32gb are accessible and there are no bad sectors detected. That, and the card is brand new. name brand and not knock off.