Mounted phone memory card shows incorrect disk size.

[Johan Grönqvist]

Hello,

I have a phone (SonyEricsson K550i) with a 2 GiB memory card, and try to
transmit files to the card by connecting the phone via USB and mounting
the phone card as a USB disk.

My immediate problem is that copying to the memory card is unreliable.
It has not destroyed data that was previously on the card, but the files
I wish to copy do not always end up on the card.

After lots of problems I recreated the filesystem on the disk and
created a partition of size 1.9 GiB. The size displayed by "df -h" is
(after some copying) much larger than the actual size of the memory
card. (Around 6 GiB.) The command "dmesg" shows some errors like this
(lots of them)

[ 7788.752000] sdc: rw=0, want=3984117, limit=3984057
[ 7788.752000] attempt to access beyond end of device
[ 7788.752000] sdc: rw=0, want=3984118, limit=3984057
[ 7788.752000] attempt to access beyond end of device
[ 7788.752000] sdc: rw=0, want=3984119, limit=3984057
[ 7788.756000] attempt to access beyond end of device
[ 7788.756000] sdc: rw=0, want=3984058, limit=3984057
[ 7788.756000] attempt to access beyond end of device
[ 7788.756000] sdc: rw=0, want=3984059, limit=3984057
[ 7788.756000] attempt to access beyond end of device
[ 7788.756000] sdc: rw=0, want=3984060, limit=3984057
[ 7788.756000] attempt to access beyond end of device
[ 7788.756000] sdc: rw=0, want=3984061, limit=3984057

I interpret this by guessing that my computer believes the size is 6
GiB, and tries to write to a position beyond the end of the real disk.
To my astonishment, the transfer of files often (not always) works.

I do not know if the fact that I use FAT16 is a problem. I have one
partition of size 1.9GiB. Wikipedia says there is a limit at 2 GiB in
the filesystem FAT16, but I would have expected GParted to complain if I
created an illegally large partition. The internal memory of the phone
is accessible to me as a FAT16 partition, and I therefore chose FAT16
for the memory card as well.

Any help appreciated.


Thanks 

/ johan