Dear all,

I have just purchased a 6GB Sandisk microSD at The Carphone Warehouse in London (£ 59.99). However, I can't get it to work in my BB 8300.

I have tried the following:
-First, format in PC (works fine, shows FAT32 format and 5.7GB capacity).
-Then format in BB. This does not work, and re-formatting the card in the 8300 produces a 1.6GB capacity instead of 5.7GB.

One problem might be that I'm running a relatively old OS, 4.2.2.75. Is anyone aware that the use of SD cards above 2GB is OS dependent?

Can anyone please help?

Many thanks,

Quinten

As far as I remember, the highest capacity card that will work with the Curve is 4GB.

I believe the Largest the Curve will support is 32GB!!! now what will the software support currently Im not sure

The same thing happened to me last night with my new 8320 and SanDisk 6GB card. I had to use a partition program to merge the 1.6GB partition and unallocated space back into a single 5.7GB partition.

DavidE
davidenglish[.]com
beepzoid[.]com

I had purchased the 6GB card thinking it would work with the 8320. If you check out the SanDisk website SanDisk | Compatibility | Device List, it states the 6GB card is compatible with the 8300.

DavidE
davidenglish[.]com
beepzoid[.]com

That's odd, I look at the link you provided and there isn't even a 6GB listed under the 8300, maybe that's why it doesnt work.

Here's a way to have it show up (at least on my computer).

Start at the SanDisk home page: SanDisk | Home.
(1) Click "Mobile Products."
(2) Click "SanDisk microSD™ and microSDHC™ Cards."
(3) Click "SanDisk microSDHC™" 6GB."
(4) In the "Compatibility" box near the bottom of the page, choose "Mobile Phones" and "Rim."
(5) Click "Go," and it should list Blackberry 8100 (Pearl), Blackberry 8300 (Curve), and Blackberry 8800.

I don't think word has filtered back to SanDisk that the Curve isn't compatible with the 6GB card.

DavidE
davidenglish[.]com
beepzoid[.]com

I'm hoping that with the next OS update it will address issues with the 6GB MicroSDHC card, I've held off on buying one because of the issues I read about on a couple different forums.

I feel your pain...

Unfortunately I think you are the victim of a confusing design of their site that also tricked me. I did exactly what you did last week and came to the same conclusion, but then I saw a different page that listed the cards compatible with the 8300 series and it did not list the 6GB card. I was confused by the discrepancy at the time. But, here is what I finally realized is happening:

Given the sequence you went in, the page in step (5) would appear to be saying "the product on the page you came from is compatible with the following phones", but that isn't what it is saying. The device fields in step (4) have the caption "Find a SanDisk product that is compatible with your device:". In step 4 you only narrow down the device type and manufacturer. When you got to step (5) you were presented with 3 phone models and those model names are clickable links. You then need to click on one of the links and you will be taken to the page that lists which cards are compatible with that device.

Unfortunately, following the sequence you used, one is easily led to believe that you've ended up at a page listing the devices that are compatible with the product you came from. But, going from step (3) to step (4) you actually lose association with the product and end up in a generic compatibility guide.

I notice that today the links don't work in the way that your script suggests that they do in so far as after clicking (2) the option to click (3) no longer exists - instead you end up at (4) directly. You can enter the values you indicate in that step and end up at (5). At that point, since you never went through the page in step (3), there is no tendency to believe that you are looking at a device compatibility list for the 6GB card - the visitor is now, never having seen any product pages so far, more likely to click on the "8300" link and find the list of compatible cards and see that the 6GB is not listed.

Does that help clarify things?

Yep, that makes sense.

It's no big deal, as I'll probably use the 6GB card in some other device. With an adapter sleeve, you can convert it to an SDHC-compatible miniSD or SD card.

DavidE
davidenglish[.]com
beepzoid[.]com

Has anyone tried the 6GB MicroSDHC card with the latest OS for the BlackBerry 8320 v.4.2.2.175 (Hong Kong CSL)? If so do you have issues with using a 6GB MicroSDHC card or has that been corrected?

I have upgraded to the 4.2.2.175 OS (Hong Kong) and the problem is still the same. The only work-around for this problem is formatting your card to read 6gb. In order to transfer files to the card, you have to remove it from the bb and put it into a card reader. Your computer will recognize it now and you will be able to transfer files to your bb folder. That's the solution I found. If anyone else has any ideas, I'm willing to try them.

Have you tried doing this and actually putting more than 4GB of files on the card. I had it working this way and once I put a certain amount of data on the card it started reporting errors and I could no longer use it.

Alright, I'm a little confused. So if you put in a 6 gigger, will it only use 4 or will it not recognize it at all?

thx

I have not tried to put 6gb on it. And maybe I'm going to have trouble with it in the future. My thought is that I have a 6gb SDHC, so whenever they figure this out (find a fix). I'll be ready. The way i'm working with mine is I have it formatted to fat32 and the BB sees 5.6gb. The problem is when you connect your BB to the computer it doesn't recognize the card. When you run media manager, it's doesn't see the card either. But if you take the card out, put it into a card reader, connect to your computer, then you can drag files into the folders. Pop that bad boy back into your BB and you can play the files with your BB media player. I've read different things about what's causing the problem. I'm not getting into that now, but hopefully one day it will all work right.

5.6 is 6Gb ...
secondly you say the card DOES work in your BB. your pc does not recognize it thru the bb. make sure mass media mode is on.

DavidE or anyone,
I also put the 6GB micro Sandisk card into the 8320 and it has only formatted it to 1.6 gb. How do I reclaim the original size? Does anyone know how to get it to work on the 8320?

The only solution that worked for is this: The work around is a little bit of a pain. What I did was first format the card using a program called SDFormatter program. You can download from the internet for free. It’s from Panasonic. This will give you the 6gb back. (if you formatted with the phone, you only get 2 gb.) When you put the card into your phone now, the phone will create the folders (blackberry, music, video, ringtones, pictures). Now you have to take the card out of the phone and use a usb card reader. Plug that reader into your computer and you can download to those folders. You then put the card back into your phone and you’re good to go![/

Thanks, Mitch. I will give this a try. One question, will I be able to use the card normally after this i.e. take pictures with the phone and save them to the card, save ringtones and songs to the card?

are you able to put more than 2 GB (anything under 4GB out of 5.7 GB free) worth of data? i heard once it goes over 2 GB on your 6GB card, media card wont work properly.

Why are you formatting? I have never had to format or reformat an SD card. They always worked right out of the box, in a PPC, BB or PC.

That has been my experience, as well. You shouldn't have to format an SD card. I formatted the card as a last resort because I hoped it might solve the compatibility problems. It didn't.

DavidE
davidenglish[.]com
beepzoid[.]com

I reformatted because when I initially plugged the 6 GB card into the curve, it didn't allow me to see the contents of the "removable" drive that appears once you plug it into the pc via USB cable. It suggested that it needed to be formatted. So on the phone, I found a space to format so I did it. This is how it made it 1.6 GB. I did what Mitch suggested and used SDFormatter and it worked great. It brought the size back to 5.6 GB. Now I can use all 5.6 GBs worth of space. The only problem I am still having with this phone is that I am not able to drag and drop files into the card while it is in the phone. It is never recognized properly on a pc this way. I always need to take the card out and put it into a USB reader, which works fine. Any help on that is greatly appreciated!

This is the same situation that I have observed, however once you put over 2GB (or possibly 4GB?) it throws errors and the card is unusable at that point. I still haven't seen someone report back success using the 6GB card with over 4GB of data on it.

are u sure? how much data do u have on your media card right now?

I have 1.44 GB on there right now. I haven't tried to load up with over 2GB or over 4 GB, for that matter. I can try it just to see if it makes it unusable for me as well. Yes, I haven't heard of anyone saying the 6GB works fully. Perhaps Sandisk has a driver for the curve/6GB card when used together?.... Ultimately I think it's the phone's problem. When the card is in the phone, it never sees the full 6 GB on it while looking at it from the PC. In Disk Management, it shows 1.7 gb healthy with FAT32, and 4 GB unallocated. I think the phone just needs to fix the way it shows the 6GB to the pc. Using the phone, it shows the 6GB fine. I'll do the test to see if 2 or 4 GB make it unusable.

It's confirmed, it does make the card unusable when you go over the 1.7 GB threshold. The limit is however large the card looks like when it is in the phone and plugged into the computer ie what the computer says the size is. This can be determined by looking in Computer Management->Disk Management. The "healthy" FAT32 size is the max. If you load more than that, it will make it totally unusable. I may have to revert to a 4GB card now. I really want the pc to recognize the card when it's in the phone.

I can confirm that the 8gb Sandisk card does not work currently.



I picked one up at the Verizon store today. Formated as fat32 and loaded with 7.5gb of music on the PC and it gives an error when inserted in the BB. Formatting it on the BB results in it being formatted to 4gb size.

Oh well. I am going to return it in a few days unless someone can send me a copy of OS 4.3.1 for the 8310 to test with the 8gb card.

The 8Gb is confirmed to work in the 8130. Not sure about earlier models with 4.3 on them. .