[kjparfekt]

Anyway to format this card so the media manager recognizes the card and it actually has 6 GB of usable space instead of 1.68 GB??? I've tried everything i can think of and SanDisk has no clue. When I just drag songs in using explorer the majority of the songs don't play and I can't figure out why. It shows a correct file size but then a time of 0 seconds for the song and skips them so I'd really like to get this working with media manager.

[Riverdude]

I too had this problem with my sandisk 6gb card, and inadvertently formatted it via windows xp to give me 1.6gb.

The sollution / workaround I found was to reformat the card (using the supplied sandisk dongle and sd adapter using sdformatter v2.0 from the panasonic website.

SD Memory Card Formatting Software | SD/SDHC Memory Card | Digital AV | Product Support | Support | Panasonic Global

Once I had restored the card to 5.6gb, I was able to put the card back into my BB and it showed the correct capacity.

*NOTE: when you put the sd card back in the BB if it say that the media card needs formatting or any other error message, ignore it, go to settings - advanced - media card. Turn off media card support, back on again and then save the configuration.

If you try to access the removable drive through windows i.e as a removable drive it shows it as needing formatting so you will always need to use the sandisk dongle and adapter.

I have found that each time I remove the card to add extra files you need to repeat the above step *.

I have a 4gb card as well and none of these issues apply.

CONCUSION: All file transfers to a 6gb card need to be done through the sandisk dongle and adapter!!!

Hope this helps others.

Riverdude

[kjparfekt]

You "discovered" the solution I've posted on crackberry.com which is no solution but a temporary way to get the card unpartitioned so it shows a disk space of 5.6 GB. This does not solve the formatting issue and the card is not recognized by the blackberry media manager. Hopefully Sandisk or RIM will come up with an actually solution because as of right now there doesn't seem to be a way to correctly have the 6 GB microsdhc card formatted correctly.

[luc-mobile]

Having to use a card reader to transfer files would be no problem at all if the media card didn't sit under the battery and the Curve didn't take almost 3 minutes to reboot.

That SDHC card bug absolutely sucks. It makes a modern phone look like the lamest device ever.

[John Clark]

Originally Posted by luc-mobile

Having to use a card reader to transfer files would be no problem at all if the media card didn't sit under the battery and the Curve didn't take almost 3 minutes to reboot.

That SDHC card bug absolutely sucks. It makes a modern phone look like the lamest device ever.

Are you kidding me? 6Gb cards just came out and because a device that came out 9 months ago (or thereabouts) doesn't fully support it, you are upset? 4Gb's work. I'm sure, at some point, the 6's will work. For now be happy the 4's work.

[luc-mobile]

Maybe you're right. Or maybe not. The cards are new, but the standard is not. Maybe they should have checked that before putting it out.

But I guess my real gripe has always been the card sitting under the battery. Even if the phone rebooted in a few seconds, it would still be bad. Now, with the Curve's 2 and a half minute long reboot...

[John Clark]

FYI, all BB's take a couple of minutes to reboot. However, this thread is in the 8800 forum and and is talking about the 6Gb cards in the 8800 so really that's not an issue here. The 8800 (if I remember right since I don't have one) the SD card can be removed without removing the battery. The 8120/8130 (Pearl2) will have the card accessible through the side of the device.

However, the Curve and Pearl need to have the battery removed, as you say.

[kjparfekt]

yeah the 8830 you just have to remove the battery cover, but without the 6 gb card working with the media manager I pretty much just gave up on using it. I sat at an airport for 4 hours on sunday and just messed around on facebook, espn.com and gtalk because without the card fully working (ie limited space and song not transfering correctly without media manager working, so songs show up with a correct size but a length of 0 seconds and don't play). Until it's fixed I'm just going to pretend I don't have a 6 gb card sitting in it since i'm so tired of wasting hours trying to fix this problem. Sandisk really shouldn't have released this card prematurely and RIM shouldn't have claimed the 8830 would work with media cards up to a size of 32 GB when the 6 GB card doesn't work.

[luc-mobile]

kjparfekt, I might have something to add to your comment. I also had this problem: songs show up with a correct size but a length of 0 seconds and don't play. But is it really a bug in the phone?

I'm guessing not. I hooked the phone up to the PC again and inspected those 0-second songs. I couldn't play them from the PC either. And they didn't have any tags. Some error occurs when the songs are transferred from the PC to the Curve, so the files are corrupted.

I have a good guess about the problem, this time indeed a bug in the Blackberry: I am transferring the files via USB, directly to the phone. I mean the SD card is in the phone. I probably should remove the card from the phone and use the Sandisk USB card reader instead. That would mean the Curve is not really that much SDHC-compatible. It can read the card, but can't write to it correctly. That it can't format a 6-Gb SDHC card is another good indication of that.

I don't have the Sandisk USB card reader. I have ordered it, it's coming my way. Then I'll see if the problem goes away. Even so, it's back to the old problem: having to remove the SD card, write files, reinsert it, and wait for a two-minute-and-a-half reboot. Grumble.

[luc-mobile]

OK, my SDHC card reader is here and I am having an awful lot of a headache with it!!!

Trying to cut a long story a bit shorter: I can use my 6Gb Sandisk microSD card with the 8300 if I upload only so much data, something around 2.7Gb. The 8300 will no longer recognize the card if I upload more than that.

What is even more annoying is that if I upload too much, removing some of the excess won't fix it. Even removing EVERYTHING from the card won't fix it anymore. Once I go past that elusive limit, the card has to be formatted again or else the 8300 won't accept it even if it contains no more than a couple of megabytes. I've been struggling with it for 3 hours, I tried and tried many times and always get the same result. This is extremely annoying because I still haven't been able to figure out the exact limit, so I am exceeding it all the time, and reformatting the card all the time, and waiting for the 8300 to finish its very long reboot all the time and running into the problem again and again, all the time.

Note that I can fill up the 6Gb card completely and play media back from the card using the PC. I've done that in 3 ways:

- with the PC and USB SDHC card reader on Windows;

- with the PC and USB SDHC card reader on Linux;

- with the 8300 hooked up to the PC via USB on Linux.

That is, the only combination that doesn't work is the phone hooked up to the PC via USB on Windows - Windows will say the removable media is not formatted.

Being able to fill up the card and even playback media from it using the setups above tells me that the card is working and its full capacity can be accessed - except when the card is inserted back into the 8300.

Whenever I insert the card back into the 8300, the phone says the card has an invalid format or something to that effect.

Originally Posted by Riverdude

*NOTE: when you put the sd card back in the BB if it say that the media card needs formatting or any other error message, ignore it, go to settings - advanced - media card. Turn off media card support, back on again and then save the configuration.

I have found that each time I remove the card to add extra files you need to repeat the above step *.

I tried Riverdude's tip countless times and it never worked.

Sorry about bringing issues involving the 8300 to a 8800 thread again. I just thought I should pick from where I had left off in this exchange and share my latest experience.

I am very very disappointed.

Oh, one last problem: even after finding the right limit (2.7Gb) and actually using part of the card's capacity with the Blackberry, the media player still fails to recognize most of the albums and artists. The only way to reach all the content is browsing it from the Explore menu entry. That is not a problem to me, I actually prefer to organize everything by folders (like I already do in my Palm and my desktop), but it might disappoint some people.

[nbb007]

It looks like the Blackberry (both 8800 and 8820) use the FAT file system. This system can only address 2GB of space (this actually turns out to be 1.67GB).

When I got my 6GB card, I put it in my BB 8820 and it showed 5.7GB of space. I thought this was great, until I started putting data on the card and surpassed the 2GB limit - the BB could no longer recognize the card and it was essentially useless. I could use the SDFormatter software and start all over again, but as soon as more than 2GB of data was loaded on the card, everything went haywire again.

My final solution was to use the built-in BB format option, which creates a 2GB FAT partition on the SDHC card & just treats the card like it was a 2GB card to start with. This being the case, I suggest that you get the 2GB MicroSD card until BB releases a fix - I don't know if they ever will though - I'm not sure if you can update a filesystem format with firmware - does anybody know how to ask RIM about this kind of stuff?

[John Clark]

I have over 3 Gb of data on my 4Gb card in my Curve. It's not limited to 2Gb but 6Gb has issues.

[nbb007]

Does anybody have a 4GB card with more than 2GB of data in an 8800 or 8820? I don't understand why the BB wants you to format the card to 1.67GB w/ a FAT file system only when you use a 6GB card instead of a 4GB card. Perhaps the 8300 is able to use a different file system?

[John Clark]

I have a 4Gb card with 3.2 GB of data on it. It works just fine. It's on an 8320 but that shouldn't matter.

[mat123]

I'm on Verizon with the 4.2x version, but saw this on the blackberry support site. Could this be the problem?

KB05461

Details
A microSD media card is a small, removable flash memory data storage device. When inserted into a BlackBerry smartphone, it can extend the memory available for storing media files such as videos, ring tones, pictures, or songs. The media card is sold separately from the BlackBerry smartphone.

Currently, BlackBerry smartphones support media cards with up to 8GB of memory. MicroSD media cards with 4GB and 8GB of memory require BlackBerry smartphones running BlackBerry® Device Software 4.3 or later.

[John Clark]

That's likely it. However, 4Gb's are working fine. 6's and 8's are not. 4.3 will hopefully be out early next year.

[kjparfekt]

yeah i'm going to just rock the card with the bb format and use it as if it only has the 1.6 gb of space until a fix comes out... the searching for songs is a real kick in the ass... it doesn't even seem to want to play songs I ripped myself from my own cds... oh well, this and no camera on the 8830 is starting to actually be a major pain... especially after playing with my buddy's iphone that's definitely the hotness

[nbb007]

How do you upgrade the BB's firmware to version 4.3?

[John Clark]

Originally Posted by nbb007

How do you upgrade the BB's firmware to version 4.3?

It's not out yet. Won't be for another few months.

[rudyslb]

Originally Posted by luc-mobile

Having to use a card reader to transfer files would be no problem at all if the media card didn't sit under the battery and the Curve didn't take almost 3 minutes to reboot.

That SDHC card bug absolutely sucks. It makes a modern phone look like the lamest device ever.

AGREE 100% !!!! what were they thinking at BlackBerry to put the card under the battery !!!!!!!!!!!!??????????????