I’m not sure was this stated anywhere in the documentation. I had to find out the hard way.
I did a Factory Reset and it deleted all my 128GB of movies from the microSD card.
@Philips_Support_P, can you confirm if this is the correct behaviour? If so, can I suggest that you put up a dialog box stating this clearly and warn users before we proceed to Factory Reset.
I am annoyed because I did not expect a Factory Reset to erase my microSD card without warning.
If I had a USB harddisk connected to it, will it erase my harddisk too?
Please clarify.
Thanks,
William
Update - I just check the microSD card on my PC. The PPMax actually formatted the card because the volume label is now blank and it is now in FAT32. My card was originally formatted in exFAT. Two folders were also created by PPMax - Android and LOST.DIR.
I can confirm that the microSD card is completely erased as part of the factory reset, only in v1.0.25 of the firmware! This does not affect USB drives.
Until this is fixed, please DO NOT do a factory reset with an SD card plugged.
Also to confirm again: USB storage is NOT affected by this bug. Only SD card slot is affected.
Note that the factory reset screen does warn the user that ALL files will be erased and they should be backed up first. But I agree this is not commonly expected behaviour to erase external media as well, and will be fixed at critical priority.
Background
This was a deliberate change done only in v1.0.25 just before release. It was necessary to erase user data including internal SD card, in order to downgrade the version of Netflix installed on previous 1.0.24 firmware. Otherwise a system update can only upgrade a preloaded app, not downgrade it.
Hi @Philips_Support_P, thank you for the quick confirmation. Kindly help to put this as a critical test for every firmware release in the future. Meanwhile, may I suggest that you put up a warning post to alert all users. Thanks again.
This has bitten some other Android device vendors as well, been there, done that. Back in the early days of Android when internal storage only would store apps and an SD card was mandatory to be able o store media then Android would happily erase everything, including the SD card. In some cases external SD cards were erased due to incorrect PIN codes being entered too many times which caused a factory reset with certain security policies activated.
In this case with the PPM the SD card really should appear as external storage to minimize the risk of accidental erasure, but will Netflix and others allow offline downloads to external media then? If you change how the SD card is exposed make sure to test how the offline viewing apps behave.
This was a deliberate change done only in v1.0.25 just before release. It was necessary to erase user data including internal SD card, in order to downgrade the version of Netflix installed on previous 1.0.24 firmware. Otherwise a system update can only upgrade a preloaded app, not downgrade it.
That sounds reasonable. The question then is whether the SD card has to be handled as an internal SD card within Android (for things like offline downloads to work).
@Philips_Support_P, thanks for the clarification. I can understand the reason why you need to do that. But you need to alert users because this action can cause users to lose their data.
I think this needs to be pinned somewhere or even make a new update in Indiegogo just for this.
Or the best thing is to release an update just for this.
Seriously, this is serious because we’re dealing with data here.
@Philips_Support_P what do you think? If I’m the team lead of your team, I’ll push you to release a fix in 5 minutes
Especially that there are people having problems and usually the first suggestion is a factory reset!!! I think I’m gonna passed out if this happens to me.
Firmware 1.0.26 has this fix according to the release notes. I haven’t tested a factory reset yet however, so I can’t give you a definitive answer to your question.
I would say by all means do use a Micro SD card for travel, the chances that you will need to do a factory reset should be so slim that it won’t be an issue, and should you need to perform one, just take the SD card out first regardless, as sometimes bugs return in later iterations of software / firmware due to same or other reasons. Better to be safe than sorry!
because I did not expect a Factory Reset to erase my microSD card without warning.
I can confirm that the microSD card is completely erased as part of the factory reset, only in v1.0.25 of the firmware! This does not affect USB drives. 
Back in the early days of Android when internal storage only would store apps and an SD card was mandatory to be able o store media then Android would happily erase everything, including the SD card. In some cases external SD cards were erased due to incorrect PIN codes being entered too many times which caused a factory reset with certain security policies activated.
