HTC Droid Eris :: Suddenly Starts Saying SD Card Is Missing

I just signed up on this forum the other day on a whim and a thread thats still floating hereabouts. I thought I'd never have any questions because lurking solves most of that. I've long since learned that forum participation, while entertaining, is very time consuming if not relegated strictly to office downtime. Alas I have a problem, and I beseech this wise forum for wisdom.

Righto, so I love my Eris and have had barely any problems. Sure it lags a bit but I'm not rooted so its my own fault. I've had a problem the last two days with the SD card. Basically my phone suddenly starts saying the SD card is missing. Which is total BS since its still in there like a good little card. So like any reasonably technical person would do I popped it in and out. Lo and behold it works again. I think nothing of it and go about my business until it happens again later that day. Wtf right. So i pop that sucker out again, and reinsertion cured the problem.

At this point I'm slightly annoyed but just happy that my Eris works reasonably well. Seriously I had just finished telling someone, I could see myself keeping this phone even if I could upgrade. But the problem recurred even worse.

This morning all was well and my Eris woke me up to a bright sunny day. Except after a bit of browsing online suddenly my SD card flips out again. But heres the catch, reinserting didn't help. Reinserting it twice didn't help. So again like any reasonable person I powered it on and off. Didn't help. I then powered it off, took out the card. Waited, then put it back in then powered up. Didn't help. Folks this took a lot of patience because I have some classes to go to today, and not a lot of time to mess around. I then powered down, powered up, and then reinserted again once everything settled down.

Didn't help... In fact the problem got worse. Now its telling me the "SD card is empty." "Well this is frelling great", I thought to myself. I desperately reinserted to an even worse message. "The SD card is damaged and needs to be formatted." At this point I'm rapidly losing faith in this Eris that has kept me all the way since December. Reinserted once again... and didn't help.

I wasn't about to give up, after maybe a few more times it finally reads and I hastily backed up the card to my desktop. I'm relieved but unnerved. My first inclination is to whine to Verizon. Afterall they did swap this phone out 3 times already in the past, I had this weird restarting problem which they couldn't figure out. I had to run countless tests on my own which were never conclusive, but seemed to be related to app installations. It eventually went away so I stopped complaining Late May and got this 4th phone. Meaning I had my original, swapped out once, swapped out twice, swapped out thrice.

So this could be the opportunity for a new phone. Do I want a nice new model, yes. Am I willing to keep my Eris, also yes. As you all know its very aesthetically pleasing and conveniently portable. I'm trying to figure out what I should do next.