External SD Getting Corrupted (I think)

[davidw]

I have been exercising my new Telos and using the external SD alot. I have been flashing a number of firmware versions, performing wipes and resets, and doing backup/restore using TWRP. All of the firmware, TWRP, backups, and such are stored on my external SD.

All seems to go ok for a while and then crap starts happening like backups/restores/flashes that will not complete, boots that won't complete, and the like. I have always powered off the unit before fiddling with the SD card itself. But when I insert it into a Windows system, Windows often reports there are "problems" on the FAT32 drive it contains. So I have started to wonder...

I have tested the card very completely on my Windows system to ensure that it meets minimum specs and that all can be written and verified properly. So I no longer think the card itself is bad (although I had my doubts at first). So no I am wondering if the problem is me or the Telos or the Android or the TWRP. I think the Telos may be different from all my other devices (Samsung phones, Minix Neo X5) in that it seems to have a true sleep state (indicated by the red LED) and I wonder if the problem has occurred when removing the card in this state by accident.

Has anyone else had issues with their external SD? Has anyone got any recommendations about how to best handle it? Thanks

[davidw]

I have been very careful and now I think I know what is messing up my external SD card. Sometimes when the Telos boots (I have seen the same with all the firmware I have tried so far), the device either locks up before or during the boot animation or it gets to display the home screen and then is found to be locked. By locked I mean hung, completely unresponsive to anything including keyboard/mouse, remote control, ping from another computer, etc. There is nothing one can do at this point save pull the power cord. I have found that when I do this and then move the SD card to a Windows computer, windows reports a "problem" every time. Now there may not be an actual problem in that chkdsk /f /r does not report any errors of create a found folder with lost clusters converted to files. But Windows does seem to recognize that something happened. It does NOT ever report problems if I cleanly power off the Telos from the shutdown menu before pulling out the SD card. So when I do see Windows complain I am not 100% sure, even though chkdsk finds nothing wrong, that all is ok with the files on the card. If these boot failures leading to power cord pulls are not solved, then I cannot rely on my external SD and it makes me wonder about the integrity of data on the internal storage as well. Not at all comforting. Rats!

[RISCy Dude]

Have you tried going to settings/more settings/storage and unmounting the USB storage or external SD Card?

May also be able to do if from the notification bar.

[davidw]

But if the device suddenly hangs, these is no way to unmount.

[RISCy Dude]

Yes, you have me there.
That is an irritating condition. I hope it gets resolved.
Hopefully, once your cable arrives, results from updating via PC will be better. Updating via PC gives a "clean slate" update. While it is no certainty that it will resolve your issue, I am optimistic.
Keep us posted.