Sandisk 1 Gb Sd Card Deletes Itself


SunSpire

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Feb 24, 2006
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When I bought my '2X I got me a 1 GB SD card from ebay. It was a lot faster than my previous 256 MB SD card but had the problem that it would randomly kill the partition and all files stored on it. Whenever that happens and I put the card into my PC's card reader it asks me if I want to "format" the SD since no partition was found.

That got really annoying after a while, especially because it was impossible to store savegames on it for longer than a few days. So in the end I bought me another Sandisk 1 GB SD card, brand new, this one is a lot slower than the other one when copying files onto it, but it seemed to work fine .... until now. It too deletes itself randomly, just not as frequent as the other. I tried FAT32 formatting several times before putting new files onto it but nothing has changed, they just keep disappearing along with the whole partition :(

Any suggestions as to what I can do to maybe fix the card would be highly appreciated. I don't want to spend even more money on yet another SD card.

"SunSpire"
 
I can't remember if flash memory is sensitive to magnetic fields. Oh well just in case it's probably a good idea not to store your card ontop of monitors/tvs/subwoofers etc.

Of course I could be totally wrong and flash memory could not be affected at all, which would render this post pointless
 
Flash stores data with Charge and not magnetic bits like a traditional HDD. So magnetic fields probably are not the problem. Maybe your card reader is corrupting the partition? Try using the USB connection straight from teh GP2X to the computer and see if that changes anything.
 
I have had one incident with a SanDisk 1GB card of mine: I had transferred a bunch of photos from my digital camera to the card, using my card reader. When I turned on the 2X and chose the 'photos' option on the main menu, everything froze so I turned it off then back on again and all of the photos but not the files(?) were deleted. What I ended up doing is creating more files and holding less pics in each file. Not sure if this is exactly what is happening to you but I thought I'd share anyway.
 
My GP2X won't even mount my 1 GB Sandisk card, no matter what I do :(
 
GeneralZod posted on Jul 13 2006 at 06:14 AM said:
My GP2X won't even mount my 1 GB Sandisk card, no matter what I do :(
You need to use an external SD card reader/writer - don't bother connecting the GP2x to your computer - results are not reliable.
 
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bacteria posted on Jul 13 2006 at 10:35 AM said:
You need to use an external SD card reader/writer - don't bother connecting the GP2x to your computer - results are not reliable.

No, I mean the GP2X doesn't even recognise it, so it's unusable :(
 
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LordFu posted on Jul 13 2006 at 06:39 PM said:
Zod, have you formated the card?


Yep, in Windows and in Linux, as FAT32 and FAT16. It works fine in both Win and Lin, but not in my GP2X. Very odd.
 
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Thank you for all your replies!

It makes no difference whether I format in FAT 16 or 32. Last night I had all my data wiped off the card once again :( I would think it is my card reader who messes up my partition, but then why does my 256 MB SD card work flawless?

Maybe I was just unlucky and caught 2 broken SD cards in a row? Too bad I haven't got the receipt for an exchange anymore :(

Are there any tools / software available that can check / fix possible SD card errors? "loads up google"

"SunSpire"


Btw. - my '2X is unmodded and card reader is on a winXP computer
 
not sure if this would effect the card in that way but are you opening up my computer an making sure you eject / unmount (right click the drive and should be in there) the card before you remove it from the card reader?
 
Since the cardreader isn't a device that slides open like a CD-rom drive, I never thought of "ejecting" it before removing the card. What I ensure however is that when removing the card it is not currently reading or writing anything on it.

I wish SD cards were as reliable as ordinary floppy disks.

"SunSpire"
 
DemonStar55's suggestion will probably resolve your problem. Windows has this bad feature called Write Caching, and even worse, it uses it on removable drives...so even when it appears to be idle, chances are that not all the data has been written. Using Eject forces the data to be written to the card and all open file handles closed before you remove it.
 
Hmm, that makes sense! ...

I'll give that a try! Might take a few days to find out for sure, but will let you know how it goes, thanks guys! :)

"SunSpire"
 
2 detective SD cards are like a Lotto jackpot.
So much troubles cuz Windows write cache... i dont believe it.
U really should try another card reader. Maybe yours is defective or cant handle 1gb SD-cards.
 
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