Forum Discussion

Steve62959's avatar
Steve62959
Newbie
6 years ago
Solved

Micro SD card - Roku Ultra

What size micro SD card is supported by Roku Ultra?
  • RokuMary-F's avatar
    RokuMary-F
    4 years ago

    Hi RoahCoo,

    Thanks for the inquiry.

    Adding a micro SD card allows you to expand the amount of internal memory available for installing channels and games from the Roku Channel Store. The micro SD card is not used for the storage of personal media such as photos, videos, or music.

    For full information on this, you can take a look at this link: How to increase player memory with a micro SD card | Official Roku Support

    Hope you'll find this info useful. Let us know in case you've still got any questions.

    Best regards,
    Mary

     

jasonhavens's avatar
jasonhavens
Reel Rookie
4 years ago
EdS wrote:

I tried doing a full format (as opposed to a quick format) on the sandisk sdhc card per your suggestion.  Same result.  Card is not recognized as installed. 

I've worked with a number of micro sdhc cards and sdhc cards in various devices from camcorders to raspberry pi's and never encountered a problem.  My impression is that roku is broke on this issue.  I can't explain why some people seem to be able to get it to work but there also seems to be a number of us that can't.  Is there someone from roku out there that can help with this issue?  For the time invested in this I think I could have bought a new roku box which I'm not inclined to do if I can't get this to work.

I suggest trying a few times, which is what I had to do with my second Roku unit.  My 4660RW unit quickly recognized the SanDisk micro SD and asked whether to format.  However, my 4660X unit required several attempts before it recognized and offered the formatting prompt/question.  I unplugged a few times and ejected/reinserted the card into the 4660X before it successfully formatted.

I know that some electronics can be "finicky" when it comes to these memory cards.  I suspect that the Roku card slot lacked some quality control somewhere along the way due to all of the issues that people have had.  Even so, my several attempts were worth the effort because now both Roku 4660 series units indicate that only 5% of the available 32 GB micro SD card is being used, which means that the channels presumably were occupying most of the original 2 GB of memory in each.  They both seem to function perfectly again, with no annoying reloads of channels due to insufficient memory.  I hope that this helps to resolve your continuing issues.

EdS's avatar
EdS
Binge Watcher
4 years ago

I think the suggestion to insert/release the micro sdhc card a few times sounds like a good idea.  Since my roku is several years old and a card had not ever been inserted until recently, it seems like some corrosion or dust might inhibit good contact.  I just inserted and released the card between 15 and 20 times.  The spring loaded card lock seems to grab the card nicely and releases easily by  pushing the card inward.  Unfortunately I still get the same result.  

  • EdS's avatar
    EdS
    Binge Watcher
    4 years ago

    I decided to try renojim  suggestion to insert the micro sd card while the roku box was powered up and at the home screen.  I was hesitant to do this initially because I have never live inserted micro sd cards in the past.  One release and insert and the format screen popped up.  I formatted the 32GB card and all seems good.  As expected, only a small portion of the card is used.  I had previously tried doing restarts from the menus and power cycles by pulling the cord but that didn't help.  Releasing and inserting the memory card while roku is powered seems to be the answer.  If true then I think there is a software issue for card recognition at power-up that should be addressed in a future update. 

    I may learn more when I try the same trick on my roku4 box next weekend.  I will try a factory formatted card first to see what happens.   I'm not going to take this working one out and experiment out of fear that my success might just be luck.  If live insertion of the microsd works in the second unit my confidence that this is truely the solution will increase.

    Thank you to all who chimed in on this issue.   I'm not sure I would have ever thought of inserting the card while the unit was powered, especially with the way that the hdmi cable is located so close to the micro sd card slot.  Thanks again.