Card Erased ... The Saga Continues...

[Han]

Hi All

My SMC card just got erased …I was playing Pinball Dreams and had selected the wrong table, so I turned the GP32 off and then on again to restart PD. And now my SMC was not readable.... everything gone *poof*... :angry:

I searched around and found that other people here have had the same problem. But has anyone managed to figure out why it happens? Could it be that my GP32 was reading/writing to the SMC when I shut it off??

Quite annoying this... but still, my card needed some cleaning. And I got so pissed off that I decided I would flash my GP with the new Beta firmware.... .... everyone cross your fingers

 

[Tobriand]

Tends to happen if the GP is writing when it powers down. But I've known it happen for no apparrent reason, also - possibly because of sliding it out of the slot too quickly and generating static across the wrong terminals or something. No idea; I don't do electronics...

 

[mr twit]

I had this problem when playing Rise of the Triad (btw, how come no one ever mentions that anymore? it kicked ass!), and someone told me a rule of thumb is to never turn the GP32 off if you have a black screen, because it is probably loading or saving something.

 

[EvilDragon]

Yep, that's just what happened to your Pinball Dreams SMC, I guess.

Turning off while the GP is writing will most probably delete it.
That's not a GP fault, it's because the cards aren't written like harddisks, they are static cards - and while the card is being updated, data can be gone if you just turn it off or remove it...

 

[Han]

Thanks for the info people.... I will try to be more careful in the future...

 

[0-bake]

and isn't there a recovery tool, or something like that? by writing one single file, the other files must be still there, aren't they?

i guess, after writing the file to the smc, the directory is copied into ram, reconfigured, then deleted on the smc (here seems to be the bad and critical part) and then re-written to the smc.
but it's just a suggestion....

anyways, the "lost" data must be on the smc, just without directory, so i guess, it must be possible to recover data....

edit: perhaps, if you use a card reader (the smc is windows drive) it could be possible for unerase-tools to get the data back...

 

[thingley]

Depends on 3 things:

How messed up the card is,
How good you are with recovery tools,
whether you have anything better to do with your life for a few hours.

You are quite right that the card could be put in a card reader and it does show up as a normal drive to every recovery tool I've tried - But for my sanity I have nearly always ended up restoring the files by other means.

 

[Mosch]

I had this problem when playing Rise of the Triad (btw, how come no one ever mentions that anymore? it kicked ass!), and someone told me a rule of thumb is to never turn the GP32 off if you have a black screen, because it is probably loading or saving something.

THERE IS RISE OF THE TRIAD FOR GP32? WHY WASN'T I INFORMED??

/caps off

I'll have to use google now. Bye.

 

[Han]

0-bake: The thought occurred to me to ... but I decided to reformat instead. I could just see myself sitting there swearing, hour after hour passing by. So a reformat sounded like the best idea for the sake of my sanity ...

 

[0-bake]

just putting back the games onto the smc isn't the deal, right. but if i imagine losing my 10 hours playing or so what savestate from final fantasy or savestates from other games i played a long time, i would puke.
na, not really. first scream, destroy somethin' and then puke...

 

[reeced]

and isn't there a recovery tool, or something like that? by writing one single file, the other files must be still there, aren't they?

Yes - if you have a card reader/writer then you can run scandskw on the SMC to recover it.

 

[GPJosh]

I had this problem when playing Rise of the Triad (btw, how come no one ever mentions that anymore? it kicked ass!), and someone told me a rule of thumb is to never turn the GP32 off if you have a black screen, because it is probably loading or saving something.

THERE IS RISE OF THE TRIAD FOR GP32? WHY WASN'T I INFORMED??

/caps off

I'll have to use google now. Bye.

http://www.gp32spain.com/archivos.php?tipo...lles&numero=314

 

[Mosch]

Thanks, but I already googled it

 

[wolly wotsit]

is RofTT a doom wad or does it run on its own