Storage setting to SD CARD on Android reset to internal storage after reboot or update

[jeroenslotman]

Plan Premium

Country the Netherlands

DeviceSamsung Galaxy A8 2018

Operating System Android version 9 wit update October 1 2020

Several times a year my storage setting to the SD CARD is being reset to internal storage (default) without any warning. It could be during restart of the phone or app update. You will loose all your downloads (several GB) and in my case the internal storage is running out of space. 

In any case the SD storage might be not ready to read, Spotify should never fail back to internal storage without warning. This problem has been reported several times in the last decade but no solution yet.

Hope this will be resolved really soon now.

If you need any more information, please let me know.

With kind regards,

Jeroen

[Alex]

Hi there @jeroenslotman,

Thanks for reaching out about this in the Community!

We're aware of some reports of this happening, but as the nature of the issue is sporadic and involves multiple different devices and variables, such as the SD cards used, their age, firmware updates etc, we were never able to replicate reliably in order to pinpoint the cause.

We're however continuously optimizing the app and pushing new fixes. We've already seen the reports of this reduce, so we hope that this issue will be rooted out in the future with one of our general optimization updates.

Here are a few options that you can try out, as some users report that this helped them:

• Format the SD card as Internal storage
• Enable permission for storage option for Spotify. This can be accessed by going to Settings > Apps > Spotify > Permissions > Storage.
• Make sure your device has a password/PIN entry enabled for after rebooting.

Hope you find this info helpful. Don't hesitate to give us a shout if you have more questions.

[jeroenslotman]

After implementing “Format the SD card as Internal storage Enable permission for storage option for Spotify. This can be accessed by going to Settings > Apps > Spotify > Permissions > Storage. Make sure your device has a password/PIN entry enabled for after rebooting”

And a reboot of my Android phone, both storage, Internal and SD-card are being used (marked):

This looks very strange to me. After downloading some new lists there is less Internal Storage available after the download. Looks like it still does not work as it should.

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Sent from Mail for Windows 10

[Alex]

Hi again @jeroenslotman,

Thanks for the feedback.

Could you keep this configuration going for a week or so, to see if the storage switches and removes your downloads by itself.

Keep us posted on how it goes.

[jeroenslotman]

Hi Alex,

Because my internal storage was getting filled up again I clicked on SD-Card and after a restart of the app the storage setting within Spotify settings looked likes this:

This looked good to me but this morning, without rebooting the Android, I had a look in the Spotify storage settings again and the SD-card was not visible anymore 😐 

Also the option to choose between internal and SD storage was not in the main settings menu anymore. 

Decided to shut down the Phone and restarted it again. Now the SD-card showed up again and both were marked again:

From here I clicked the SD-Card again to be this the only selected storage.
Lets see what tomorrow brings?

Kind Regards

Jeroen

[jeroenslotman]

For now everything is working as expected. I downloaded 2 lists again, because I deleted all my downloads yesterday. 

The SD-card is 128GB with 74.9GB free (vrij)

Current Spotify settings (Opslag = Storage) :

Android Settings>Apps>Spotify:

I'll let you know if something changes.

Kind Regards,

Jeroen

[Alex]

Hi @jeroenslotman,

Thanks for keeping us up to date with your current situation.

If you encounter the issue again it might be worth checking your SD card for errors.

Anyway keep us posted on how it goes.

[jeroenslotman]

Hi Alex,

I have run several apps to inspect the data on the SD-card, but found no errors. Because I had the same problem, that the SD-card was not available to Spotify, within a few hours, I decided to format the media. With Spotify/Android I was not able to clear/format the disk. No errors, but the data on the SD-card was still there.

Then I switched to Windows to inspect the SD-card with chkdsk and diskpart (Command prompt tools). Chkdsk /f did not report any errors. Removing files and directories could  be deleted without errors but the folders and files re-appeared after a refresh of Windows Explorer. 

Cheers Jeroen

Format SD-card from Windows disk management resulted in an error after a couple of hours: "Windows was unable to complete the format".

With the command tool Diskpart I tried to clear the read-only attribute, but diskpart reported that the SD-card was writeable. Formatting and clearing with Diskpart did not work as well.

After all I decided to buy a new 128GB SD-card and now it looks like everything is working as it should.

It is not nice that Android, Spotify and Windows do not report any problem with the media although it is corrupted. It took my an awful lot of time and I had no justification (error message) to buy a new SD-card 

[Alex]

Hi there @jeroenslotman,

Thanks for keeping us posted and sharing your extensive troubleshooting process with the Community!

Glad to hear that everything is working fine again with the new card. Sure other users will find it useful if they encounter similar issues.

Spotify doesn't have a dedicated system for detecting SD card errors, but most of the time writing cache wouldn't be possible or function properly on such cards.

It's always better to use a dedicated software to check SD cards for errors.

Cheers.

[jeroenslotman · Accepted solution]

Found this on https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/:

"SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards have a “Protected Area” for SD Card security purposes. The SD Memory Card Formatter does not format the protected area in the SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards. The protected area shall be formatted by an appropriate PC application or SD host devices that provide SD security function"

My explanation: The SD card is limited to a maximum number of write's by design. By the end of the lifecycle of the SD-card the SD security function will set the read-only attribute in the protected area of the SD card. Android, Microsoft and apps like Spotify do not check (or can't) on this attribute. Everything seems to be alright but in fact is the SD-card unreliable and ready for scrap.

[declandevine]

This works:

https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/howto-fix-songs-on-external-sd-card-lost-after-reboot-on-samsung-...