2gb Sd Card Ruined?

[SeanLaF]

I'm having an issue, and i'm pretty sure it's my fault. I've gone through two SD cards now, both SanDisk 2GB cards, identical to eachother. I made sure they were compatible and they were (from the wiki).

I think both of them i originally tried to use were factory formatted in FAT16, I guess I'm looking for confirmation that i'm an idiot and this is what happened. When I tried to access the (presumably) FAT16 card in the GP2X it came up blank. Mounting the disc after that in OSX said the disk was corrupted. After formating in FAT32 the card is now only 967MB.

I ran recovery software in OSX and XP, scanned for any bad sectors, anything... both cards came up clean with no errors but both of them showed that they are now only 967MB. The first time it happened I didn't think about the formating, i thought SanDisk mislabeled a 1GB card as 2GB and i returned it... but i did the same thing AGAIN.

Is there any hope of recovering the lost space? I have access to windows and linux machines if there's a program to try that OSX wouldn't have access too. Could it be anything else? I'm a photographer and loaded my portfolio on both cards, which is around 150 images... along with 200+roms... is there a limit to the number of files GP2X can handle? I wouldn't think so, but worth mentioning i guess.

I'm usually not such a dork "newbie"... i promise.

thank you for your help...
Sean

 

[cwhobbes]

Im wrong, ignore me.

I thought you were formatting 1GB cards and worried they were only 967MB.

You need to buy a new card reader, that can regognize larger cards.

That should solve the problem.

 

[Shikaku]

This problem is usually caused by an old/bad SD card reader. Or formatting the SD card on the GP2X.

Please read text below this.

 

[SeanLaF]

This problem is usually caused by an old/bad SD card reader. Or formatting the SD card on the GP2X.

Please read text below this.

I guess that would explain why both cards ended up with the same formatted space... i did use the same card reader on the OSX and windows machine i was using... i don't quite understand how the card reader would inhibit this but i'll take you guys' word for it.

i'll give it a go with a newer reader tonight.

thanks

cwhobbes: thanks for going easy on me man... :lol:

 

[Simon]

Did you get these from Ebay?

Ive heard that some asian retailers are 1) producing counterfeit Sandisk or Kingston SD cards and 2) messing with the FAT tables on 1G cards so they appear to be 2G cards - until you format them.....

 

[SeanLaF]

thank you for your concern simon. no, it was just the card reader like everyone suggested...

I bought a new card reader, formatted in windows and all is well. I always thought card readers were just an adapter, turning contact points from the card into USB contacts... i guess i'm wrong and there is some circuitry going on in there.

 

[Simon]

phew! Im so glad for you!

 

[SmegPlaza]

I had a 1GB SanDisk card. Somehow it got corrupted and I couldn't recover it, not even by formatting...
Luckily it was well within the 1 year SanDisk warranty period and they replaced it

Had to send the damaged one to the Czech Republic, however !

Smeg

 

[dmoo]

I have this exact problem, but from my google searches the general concensus is that it is a physical problem with the card only reading half the memory as its still displaying the size as 2GB with 9** mb in use, neither low level formating or any disk utilities ive painstakingly tried have ever resolved the issue.

Its fustrating as the card still displays a 2Gb capacity with half of the space used :-( But cards are not too expensive.

Dmoo

 

[gmiller1018]

There are a number of SD recovery utilities available on the internet which I searched out and tried when my 512 Mb crapped out. My problem turned out to be a physical problem but here are a number of the ones I found.

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?act=S...te=%2Bformatter

 

[tomj]

I had a similar problem to this and thought that it was a problem with the card and was about ready to send it back if the card is not showing up the correct size you could try this SD Cards Wiki At the bottom I have written what I did to try and sort out the problem.