[scottbomb]

First, a little background.

I've had my Curve 8320 for just over a week. Everything was fine until it started freezing... every time it was left alone for more than about 2 min.

I scoured the crackberry forums and did some experimenting. The common theme seems to revolve around the SM card - NOT MEMORY. My Curve consistently hums long just fine between (the lowest I've seen) 6 MB free and (the highest I've seen) 14 MB free.

The problem doesn't seem to be the SM card itself, but how the OS responds to what we do with it. Blackberry developers, please take note.

I transferred about 4 GB of music to an 8 GB card and everything was fine for a couple of days. Then I decided to not use my BB for an MP3 player and I formatted the SD. I then transferred about 5 GB of pics from my PC. This was over 4000 files. Everything seemed fine at first. That's when the freezing started. Was it images vs. mp3s? I don't know because I didn't use it to play songs. However, when I was working with image files, the BB seemed to choke when it came time to load the WALLPAPER, even after a batt pull. The proof of an image prob. came later when the device would boot up with the default background, not the one I had set.

Someone here on the forum (sorry, but I don't have the time nor the patience to look it up again tonight, it's getting late...) said that the problem seems to revolve around the RATE at which the computer transfers the files to the SM in the BB. I think he hit it right on the nose.

It didn't matter whether I transferred 16 or 4000+ files (these are LITERAL numbers...) to the Curve. I tried it both ways. I've done this experiment (rapid transfer of multiple files) more than once. Same bad result every time. This is the root of my hypothesis.

The only thing that seems to work is to transfer ONE FILE AT A TIME. Time consuming? Oh yeah. I use MS SyncToy with my $20 thumb drives and they don't even hiccup. There's no way I'm going to try THAT (again) with my BB. At least not until the OS gets this issue fixed.

Therin seems to lie the problem. Shipping with a miniscule 250 MB, it seems that the Media Card is just an afterthought that was given little attention. This opinion is reinforced by the fact that I had to buy a file manager app just to navigate the **** thing. Sorry RIM, but the "Media" app is for kids. Ditto "Roxio". People like me prefer to just connect to the PC and treat it like a hard drive (and a modem!!). We also like easy access to our folders. I can the the difference between music and photos and I know how to drag-n-drop, thankyouverymuch.

That's all.

P.S. T-Mobile is teh shizznit.

[plunkingtom]

Have you tried putting pics in different folders so all do not try and load at once… that answer probably does not fit your problem. Your memory I believe needs to be 14 to 16 mbs minium to not lag or freeze. Look into ways to free up memory or to manage memory. I think there is a 101 on it. To add files to your card I would use a card reader...

[xliderider]

Sorry, I could only manage to read half of that post.

The memory card most likely needs to be reformatted again, or one or more files on the card is corrupted.

Another real possiblity is the picture files are too big for the Curve to handle w/o freezing. I had a similar problem when I transferred pics from my 5MP digicam that was taken at the highest resolution setting. After I dropped the resolution on the pics, the Curve easily displays the files without freezing and taking forever to display the pics.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Tws49]

I agree 6-14 mgs free is way to low I try to keep at least 18mgs free at any given moment

I also agree that the media app in the blackberry is very lacking Im looking for a third party app that will give me total folder access

(retired IT dir.)

[scottbomb]

Well, it's back to constantly freezing again. I loaded all my personal documents from the PC (only about 2+ GB onto an 8 GB media card) and it was doing fine for a couple days. Suddenly today, the freezing started. It was fine when I was using it or when it was plugged into the PC. After the backlight went out, when I would hit the spacebar to bring it back, it could come on but frozen up. When I put it in standby, give it a minute or two and try to bring it out of standby and it won't. I did multiple resets & battery pulls and nothing changed.

T-mobile tech support suggested I reinstall the OS so I did. It still froze up. Finally, I took out the media card and now it's fine. Don't really know what to do from here except format the media card and place on the files on it that I use most and see how that works. T-mobile said I could exchange it. We'll see.

[scottbomb]

And the saga continues. I put the media card back in and tried to format it with the BB. When I clicked OK on the "this will erase everything" warning, it froze up. Bum SD card?

[xliderider]

If you have a card reader on your PC, try reformatting the card on the PC, then reformat the card on the BB.

[scottbomb]

I will get to the bottom of this if it kills me.

No card reader, but I'm thinking about buying one.

I do not believe there is anything wrong with the BB except perhaps for some software bugs the programmers overlooked.

This morning, I reformatted the media card. First with a PC connected to the BB and then agan letting the BB do it. I then transferred just a handful of pics (already sized to use as BB wallpaper) and a .xls file. It worked fine all day. When I got home tonight, I transferred some .pdfs. So far, all is well.

What I was trying to do before was sync ALL my personal documents with the BB. These are over 4000 docs, some of which I would never use on a BB anyway. Specialized extensions and some .exe files, for example. Perhaps the BB was looking at all those files and froze up while trying to associate them? My reason for doing this is simplicity. I use MS SyncToy to keep the docs on the home PC and laptop in sync, as well as some thumb drives. Even though I would never open some of those files on the BB, the simplicity of using the sync software to keep all the same docs on the BB as I have on the PC would be choice.

This doesn't explain why it was freezing last week over a folder full of about 4+ GB of pics. Unless, of course, it was having trouble creating thumbnail database files for the hi-res pics (which accounts for most of the inventory). It does this in the background, as I noticed a database file was built for every pic folder.

Interestingly, it never had a problem last week when I stored about 4 GB of music. Obviously, it knows how to deal with .mp3 files and it doesn't have to build a thumbnail for each of them.

This reinforces my hypothesis of the BB freezing when it's having difficulty dealing with files on the SD card. In a perfect world, it would ignore those files it doesn't recognize (.exe, .ccs, .msi, .bct, and other specialty file types my PCs use). It would also not hiccup on large images when building thumbnail databases.

I'm curious to hear from others on how their BB acts when loaded with file types it doesn't recognize.

[slolx50]

I am starting to have the same problem with mine. It will load the standard wallpaper pic when it starts up and sometimes lock up there and sometimes it locks when i try and unlock it.