TMobile MDA Wizard & 4GB Mini SD card

[Guest mdatmuser]

Hi,

I bought a 4GB Mini SD card (SanDisk brand) for my TMobile MDA Wizard 200 (USA model). I knew the phone would at least see 2GB of the card and had wishful ;) hopes of possibly having the MDA recognize the entire 4GB. I am aware of possible conflicts with earlier serial numbered versions but since my S/N is fairly recent (HT642xxxxxxx), that issue shouldn't come into play in this instance. I tried reformatting the card with Ingvarr's utility WM5torage.cab but it fails to go beyond the ACTIVATE step and then the phone locks up requiring a soft reboot :D . Is there anyone out here using a 4GB mini SD card with this specific model? Or, has anyone else experienced the same problem? I've also heard and read much of the debated comments about 4GB mini SD cards being fake but have also read many users successfully using 4GB cards in HTC phones. Any input or suggestions would be appreciated, especially from anyone involved in the industry itself. Since I got an exceptional deal (only paid $26.00) on the 4GB card (+ SanDisk mini adapter), if my phone can only see 2GB, I'm still ahead of the game...but the dough isn't the issue....using the extra 2GB is.

Cheers!

[Guest mdatmuser]

Hi,

I bought a 4GB Mini SD card (SanDisk brand) for my TMobile MDA Wizard 200 (USA model). I knew the phone would at least see 2GB of the card and had wishful ;) hopes of possibly having the MDA....

attention: I've been had :D ...I've been duped :( ....ahh, but ignorance is no excuse :) . My suspicions were correct, my 4GB SanDisk Mini SD card does not exist...it is indeed fake, a genuine counterfeit! The largest Mini SD card that SanDisk manufactures is 2GB (this fact came direct from SanDisk toll free in USA 1 866 726-3475). Sooo, I guess my initial post is a mute one. As I am grateful that at least 2GB is indeed seen by my MDA, I am very concerned about the cards integrity as under magnification, the back or pin side of the card looks quite ominous. The card I bought was advertised as a Samsung brand but when it arrived, it was a SanDisk. At first, I thought, cool, better yet. Now I remember that axiom, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. :)

[Guest xeno1]

I was actually about to ask this very same question since I just purchased a 4 gig card off of ebay. Now I'm kind of hoping that I didn't fall for the same scam and get another 2 gig card also. I don't know where you bought yours from either though. I haven't received it yet to let you know if it works in the MDA (or find out I got scammed too) but according to www.mobymemory.com/ a 4 gig miniSD has been tested and supposedly does work. As soon as I get it, which should be in the next day or 2 I would think, I'll let you know if it does or not.

[Guest mandt]

As I understand it for the card to be recognised properly it must be Single layer construction (SLC)

A lot of the 4GB Cards out there are Multi layer, and are not recognised properly

[Guest xeno1]

Oh, and if the one I bought does end up being the real deal and it does work in my MDA I'll also provide you with a link to the guys ebay store that I bought it from. Using "buy it now" and including shipping I only paid like $47 or $48 for it. The brand name on it is U-Tek which I'm not really sure if that's a decent brand or not because I've never really heard of them before, but it does have a life time warranty on it.

Edited February 27, 2007 by xeno1

[Guest xeno1]

Ok, one more post. I did a little checking and found out that U-Tek is a pretty good name when it comes to memory cards. Apparently up until recently their cards were only professional grade i.e. for professional photography, etc. which is probably why I had never heard of them. As for the SLC part that mandt mentioned, that part I wasn't aware of and the ebay seller I bought it from doesn't list the specs as far as thats concerned. I guess I'll find out when I get it. I'll let you know though.

[Guest arp]

This subject is very strange... I also bought a 4GB miniSD to mobymemory for my MDAVario and he does not work... PDA freeze! Already they had changed for a new one that I received has 2 days and not work too! But it has people that they say that works!

I don't understand! Somebody can help, can be formatting type problem? I already teste FAT16, FAT32, 2 partitions...

[Guest mdatmuser]

I am going to paste the response I got directly from SanDisk and it should shed some light on this topic. I found the response quite informative and explains things in a bit more detail. At the end of their message, SanDisk enlightened me to a web site specific to SD Cards. I have not had an oppourtunity to visit the site yet but I will definetely do so shortly and most likely save the site in a reference fav folder. Again, what is to follow is verbatim, direct from the horses mouth...SanDisk Corp.

MiniSD cards only go up to 2 GB irregardless of brand. This is because in order for 4 GB miniSD cards to be manufactured, they should conform to the 2.00 SDA specifications. Hence, if they do, they no longer fall into the category of MiniSD, instead they are categorized as MiniSDHC. Please take note that SanDisk does not manufacture 4 GB SD cards and above, whether they are SD, miniSD or microSD.

Another thing which you might want to take note of is compatibility and usage. Please be aware that 4 GB SD cards without the SDHC logo does not conform to the SDA 2.00 specifications. This would mean that they the host device might malfunction if these cards are used.

For any other in-depth specifications about SD cards, please direct your inquiries to the SD Association. You may visit their website at www.SDcard.org.

[Guest xeno1]

Well, I just got the 4 gig miniSD that I bought in the mail and so far I have some bad news for us MDA owners. I put the card in and all it says is that theres no card installed. That doesn't mean I'm going to give up quite yet though. I'm going to go through mobymemorys forums and see what I can find there since they swear that it will work and tomorrow I'm going to go get me a card reader/writer that can handle a 4 gig card and try reformatting the card to see if maybe that might help. I know that the 4 gig cards are supposed to be formatted in fat32 and I was thinking that I would see if there was the possibility of maybe trying to reformat it in fat16 since thats what the 2 gig cards are. I don't know enough about SD cards to know if that's even possible but I guess it's worth a try. I think I'm going to save that option for last just in case it would destroy the card for some reason though. I'll definitely fill everyone in on how it goes.

[Guest xeno1]

Just got through reading a few posts on mobymemory and found out that yes, I can format it in fat16 and that is actually what I need to do to it before my MDA will recognize it. That gives me a little hope and there seems to be quite a few people that have gotten it to work in theirs. I also found out that even though now I need to go buy a card reader to do that (which I was already going to do anyway) once I format it in fat16 I wont be able to transfer files using the reader after that since Windows XP won't deal with anything under fat32 and anything I would transfer using the reader would pretty much end up corrupted. That just means that I'll have to transfer everything using activesync, but I think I can live with that.

[Guest xeno1]

Good News!!! Apparently the people in the mobymemory forum don't know what they are talking about. You do not need to format card in fat16. Also, I didn't need to go buy a card reader that I would only be able to use once. Even though my MDA didn't recognize my card my cheap-assed digital camera did and I used it to reformat the card using fat32 and now it reads perfectly fine in my MDA. So, yes, a 4 gb miniSD will work in an MDA.

I formatted the card using a program that I found on www.SDcard.org in the downloads section called sdfv2000.

Now, before everyone decides to go buy one of these since we now know that they will work, I ran across quite a few posts over at mobymemory saying that even when they did get their cards working a lot of them were still having quite a few different problems. That may be because they seemed to think they had to use fat16 for them to work, or because they formatted them using XP's format utility instead of the one designed specifically for formatting SD cards, or maybe something else, I don't really know. You might want to give me a few days to a week to play around with mine and give it some good use to find out if I'm going to end up having the same problems or not before you decide to spend the money on one for yourself only to find out you spent all that money for something thats more trouble than it's worth.

And, one last thing, as promised here is the address of the ebay sellers store that I bought my card from - http://stores.ebay.com/sellbuz. As far as I can tell, this is a legitimate 4 gb SDcard, not a hacked one. It came in a sealed package and the serial # on the back has a 4G in it in the same place that my 2gb card has a 2G in it.

[Guest arp]

Problem is not only PDA can recognize card! My MDA Varia recognize well 4GB miniSD from Mobymemory (FAT32 or 2xFAT16), I can put filis in it by PC with card reader bat PDA Freezes many times and more with large files like Music or Divx movies!

I can't solve problem, so I will send it back to a refund!

Any help?

[Guest mdatmuser]

Looks like folks missed Post #8. For all of you having problems with 4GB cards read the following as it was emailed to me directly by technical support at SanDisk Corp. As the experts and mfrs. state, if you have a 4GB card, it MUST have the SDHC logo designation. If it does not, your card is fake or counterfeit. As in my case, the SanDisk 4GB Mini SD card I received from eBay is counterfeit as verified directly by SanDisk.

This is exactly what SanDisk emailed to me:

MiniSD cards only go up to 2 GB irregardless of brand. This is because in order for 4 GB miniSD cards to be manufactured, they should conform to the 2.00 SDA specifications. Hence, if they do, they no longer fall into the category of MiniSD, instead they are categorized as MiniSDHC. Please take note that SanDisk does not manufacture 4 GB SD cards and above, whether they are SD, miniSD or microSD.

Another thing which you might want to take note of is compatibility and usage. Please be aware that 4 GB SD cards without the SDHC logo does not conform to the SDA 2.00 specifications. This would mean that they the host device might malfunction if these cards are used.

For any other in-depth specifications about SD cards, please direct your inquiries to the SD Association. You may visit their website at www.SDcard.org.

[Guest xeno1]

I read the post, and also went to their website. I thought the point of this thread was whether or not a 4 gb card would work in an MDA or not. The card I got came in a factory sealed container and does not have have the HC label on it but it does read as 4 gb and it does work so far but it doesn't look like I need to update on whether it continues that way or not though.

[Guest mdatmuser]

For all of you that have 4GB mini SD cards working with your phones...all I can say is that I envy all of you. In regards to my counterfeit SanDisk card, I was informed the only REAL OEM 4GB Mini SD cards all must have the HC designation printed on them. I found a site which helps someone become more familiar with fake or counterfeit cards...and hacked cards which have been overclocked. The site is:

http://www.overclockers.com.au/wiki/Fake_Memory_Cards

I found this site to be extremely interesting and revealing. I wish I had visited it prior to my buying a Mini SD card from eBay but perhaps others can find the site beneficial if not just plain interesting.

Cheers!

[Guest Sp00k]

This thread in Gadgetapps.net deals with the subject of using a 4GB card in the TMobile MDA Wizard 200 (UK model).

Scroll down to see tables for some different sizes of cards, formatted in FAT16 & FAT32, that may be of interest... I gained the most stable usage from my 4GB card by formatting it within the Wizard, using 'Resco Explorer'. Prior to this, it had a rather annoying habit of occasionally totally deleting the contents without warning. ;)

[Guest xeno1]

Well, because of all this stuff about fake cards and everything I decided to go to U-TEK's website only to find that they don't list a 4 GB SD card under their products but that may just be because they haven't updated it recently. I'm going to e-mail them this afternoon and find out for sure though. If I find out that it is a fake or hacked card I'll let everyone know.

So far though I've already put more than 2 GB worth of data on it (movies, mp3's, etc.) without any problems whatsoever. I've also ran Pocket Mechanics benchmarking program on it about 5 times which I would think would cause it to fail if it was going to. The benchmarks on it surprisingly came out almost as good as the 2 GB card I have and in some tests the benchmarks were even better.

Edited March 5, 2007 by xeno1

[Guest jakeyboy1989]

Well, because of all this stuff about fake cards and everything I decided to go to U-TEK's website only to find that they don't list a 4 GB SD card under their products but that may just be because they haven't updated it recently. I'm going to e-mail them this afternoon and find out for sure though. If I find out that it is a fake or hacked card I'll let everyone know.

So far though I've already put more than 2 GB worth of data on it (movies, mp3's, etc.) without any problems whatsoever. I've also ran Pocket Mechanics benchmarking program on it about 5 times which I would think would cause it to fail if it was going to. The benchmarks on it surprisingly came out almost as good as the 2 GB card I have and in some tests the benchmarks were even better.

Hi Im in Australia. I've just purchased a O2 Atom Exec. I am wondering if anyone knows if this phone will work with 4 GB mini sd cards? Where I can get them from? And which ones off ebay are fine to get?

On Ebay Australia, seems to be alot of fakes (they say theyre samsung, but dont give any specs) and then there is also utek, but they look different to what are listed on the ebay site/store mentioned in this thread?

Would really apprieciate any help. Cheers

Jake

[Guest jakeyboy1989]

Hi,

Ive just purchased a O2 Atom Exec. I am wondering if this phone is compatible with a 4Gb mini sd card? What brands on ebay should I go for? Where else are they available? All the cards on ebay australia look fake (state samsung flash but give no specs). There are also utek cards, but they look different to those shown/sold on teh ebay site/store stated in this thread...

Would appreciate any help!! Do they cards reall exist or should I just get a 2 GB...

Cheers,

Jake