N95 8GB v20.0.016 - mass memory failure #3

Question

For the third time my N95 8GB has managed to corrupt its mass memory ("mass memory corrupted") - only this time, I am unable to reformat it at all!
The problem behaviour is as follows:
Used the phone last night to take several pictures, accessing the Gallery at one stage to find and delete one picture. This afternoon I look for the photos to review, and the '200902' folder (images for February) on the mass memory has no subfolder and is empty. However, I DO have a video saved on the phone from the 7th of February!
This afternoon I am able to take as many pictures as I like and they are saved correctly in the gallery and the 200902 folder. I had used about 5.2GB of the mass memory at this point. (It may be worth noting that I would occasionally get the message 'Gallery: Memory full' whilst browsing the gallery, but never at any other time).
At this stage, the mass memory is still fully populated, so I thought it would be best to cut my losses and take a full phone backup. The backup process fails, with an error along the lines of having lost connection with the phone.
I check file manager to see what's going on, and the following message appears on the memory card page: "(no data)".
All previous times the handset corrupted its memory, the trigger seemed to be a reboot of the handset. (Contents were lost upon returning to File Manager after a reboot). Having not rebooted the phone at all in the last 24 hours, I was surprised that the memory card contents had apparently disappeared without any application being launched and apparently no new data writing attempts being made. Perhaps the read operation for the backup caused the failure? But this still does not explain how all my February photos were deleted.
Without any obvious way of getting to my files, I rebooted the phone, returned to file manager and was greeted by the familiar: "(mass memory corrupted)".
As mentioned previously, when this happened before I was able to format the memory via Menu -> Tools -> Utilities -> Memory -> Format. This time, I receive the message: "Mass memory is in use by other application. Continue anyway?". I select 'Yes' - but the handset simply returns to the memory screen and "(mass memory corrupted)". This still happens even after a reboot.
I have performed 'Factory settings' reset via the phone menus, a 'hard reset' via code *#7370#, a format by holding *, 3 and the call answer button whilst powering on the phone - none of these prevent the 'Mass memory is in use' error from occurring. I have also attempted to format drive E (mass memory) but this just returns an error code. When I attempt to upgrade the firmware, the process fails every time after ~3 minutes saying that the connection with the phone has been lost (the warnings about upgrading do state that the mass memory should NOT be encrypted, so I presume that it being inaccessible is equivalent to this).
I cannot see any way to format the 8gb memory so that I can make it usable once more! The phone was not dropped or damaged in any way in the last 24 hours, yet it seems that something must have physically changed inside it?
The only parallel I can draw between this incident and the previous one is that both times, the memory was around 2/3rds full (around 5.5GB). I am wondering if perhaps the FAT table outgrows itself and dies?
My 1 year warranty expired 3 weeks ago - I am hopeful my network operator will be able to provide a replacement and that this phone just has a 'bad' memory chip - it really is a superb phone barring this infuriating corruption problem mine seems to have!
If anyone could shed any light on a solution it would be much appreciated
Thanks,
Alex
Message Edited by dazz19 on 15-Feb-2009 11:43 AM

Answer 1

In the end my operator agreed to replace the handset for me after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. In my opinion the problem was caused by a faulty memory chip.
Alex
p.s. - the old handset was sent to the operator for repair and they were unable to repair it, only offer a refurbished replacement. With the greatest of respect, it's good to know my case is not unique!
Message Edited by psx9 on 12-May-2009 01:10 AM