sd card corruption

[eyecreate]

Has anyone had issues with the partitions on their sd cards becoming corrupted more than would seem normal? This happened to me today for the fourth time in less than a year, forcing me to do partition recovery.(and subsequently, losing some of the data)

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Take a look at this:


http://pandorawiki.org/SD_compatibility_list


And this:

 

[eyecreate]

Take a look at this:


http://pandorawiki.o...patibility_list


And this:


http://boards.openpa...d-demystifying/

I have always just used gparted to partition my cards. Also, it seems my card isn't on the compatibility list. Maybe I'll need to add it as flaky.(will do more testing)

 

[Linux-SWAT]

For cards =< 32G, you have to let a 4M empty space at the beginning of the card. I myself also put 4M at the end.


>32G, it's 16M.


It may not suffice if the card is really flawed.

 

[Prometheus]

I assume you're sure that it's a genuine card?


I would bet that it's a Class 6 or Class 10, at any rate. I had such issues with a Verbatim card (which should be listed on the compatibility list), and eventually it just up and died due to the poor quality of its controller and presumably the flash as well. Not what I expected from a high-end brand, at all.


If it's a flaky-but-legitimate card (as mine was), your best bet is just to invest in a known-reliable one. I went with some SanDisk Class 4s myself, and the problems immediately stopped and never returned, after that.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

I'll add my cent, saying that all SanDisk cards are marked as green.

 

[Prometheus]

^ SanDisk manufacture all of their own components and ensure that their cards are consistent. A great many manufacturers don't, and thus the "same" cards can actually differ in performance and behaviour by the batch.

 

[Grench]

Funny - I consider Verbatim to be a 'budget brand' for media. It's still banded though - so a step above generic.


The only time I ever had corruption on my machine was when I drained the power out of it by having my wife's phone charging from my USB port, while playing a game, while listening to music, while overclocked to 800Mhz, with booting from the SDXC card, with a /swap partition on that same SDXC and the music playing from the same SDXC.


In my extreme example the unit lost power while actively read/writing/supplying current. I wasn't too shocked that the card got errors.


I re-partitioned, re-installed and re-stored data to the card and it's working fine.


Cards that I have had 100% success with on the Pandora:


Patriot 16GB SDHC Class 6 cards (four of them).


Patriot LX 32GB SDHC Class 10 cards (three of them). In my humble opinion, the wiki entry is flat out wrong on these.


Kingston 32GB SDHC Class 4 card (one of them - was noticeably slower).


Lexar Professional 128GB SDXC Class 10 card (one of them - not quite as fast as the Patriot LX cards, but the space is enormous.


I haven't had a card fail on it. I've used everything I could throw at it from a 128MB SD card, 4GB SD (not SDHC) card through MicroSD cards in adapters. No issues, but those were mostly just data migration bits.


Your experience may vary.


So - what brand and model card are you having issues with?


I have noticed that gparted.pnd doesn't always work - no idea why. However if you can work from the command line and have an idea of what you're doing, you can partition cards and format them any way you want to.

 

[eyecreate]

Funny - I consider Verbatim to be a 'budget brand' for media. It's still banded though - so a step above generic.


The only time I ever had corruption on my machine was when I drained the power out of it by having my wife's phone charging from my USB port, while playing a game, while listening to music, while overclocked to 800Mhz, with booting from the SDXC card, with a /swap partition on that same SDXC and the music playing from the same SDXC.


In my extreme example the unit lost power while actively read/writing/supplying current. I wasn't too shocked that the card got errors.


I re-partitioned, re-installed and re-stored data to the card and it's working fine.


Cards that I have had 100% success with on the Pandora:


Patriot 16GB SDHC Class 6 cards (four of them).


Patriot LX 32GB SDHC Class 10 cards (three of them). In my humble opinion, the wiki entry is flat out wrong on these.


Kingston 32GB SDHC Class 4 card (one of them - was noticeably slower).


Lexar Professional 128GB SDXC Class 10 card (one of them - not quite as fast as the Patriot LX cards, but the space is enormous.


I haven't had a card fail on it. I've used everything I could throw at it from a 128MB SD card, 4GB SD (not SDHC) card through MicroSD cards in adapters. No issues, but those were mostly just data migration bits.


Your experience may vary.


So - what brand and model card are you having issues with?


I have noticed that gparted.pnd doesn't always work - no idea why. However if you can work from the command line and have an idea of what you're doing, you can partition cards and format them any way you want to.

I assume you're sure that it's a genuine card?


I would bet that it's a Class 6 or Class 10, at any rate. I had such issues with a Verbatim card (which should be listed on the compatibility list), and eventually it just up and died due to the poor quality of its controller and presumably the flash as well. Not what I expected from a high-end brand, at all.


If it's a flaky-but-legitimate card (as mine was), your best bet is just to invest in a known-reliable one. I went with some SanDisk Class 4s myself, and the problems immediately stopped and never returned, after that.

This is the card that I had been using:


http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0289507


except a Class 2. Luckily, I had recently been wanting to upgrade my cards and bought a 32GB class 4 Sandisk card, which sounds like it was a good decision.


Nothing more happened to me except I rebooted my system and the card wouldn't mount after that.


Also, repair hasn't gone well. Looks like not much survived intact. Partially my fault for how I handled it, though. Guess it's file forensics and then sorting time. Luckily the only thing I may be missing is a few save games.

 

[Prometheus]

Funny - I consider Verbatim to be a 'budget brand' for media. It's still banded though - so a step above generic.

Please stop trying to troll. It's not a good look, especially when you're making such laughable claims as that.

 

[Mr Rob]

Has anyone had issues with the partitions on their sd cards becoming corrupted more than would seem normal?

I'm curious what one assumes 'normal' corruption of an SD card rate would be? I just use them in my Pandora, I don't really have any other device that uses them.

 

[eyecreate]

Has anyone had issues with the partitions on their sd cards becoming corrupted more than would seem normal?

I'm curious what one assumes 'normal' corruption of an SD card rate would be? I just use them in my Pandora, I don't really have any other device that uses them.

I guess you could say I haven't had this kind of thing happen with an SD card before. My phone's sd card is still fine along with my 6 year old card in my PocketPC I found in a bin.

 

[MarioPandio]

As per eyecreates original question I have experienced a number of partition corruptions on both transcend, A data and 7 day shop SD cards (used by others here like Mr Loon with zero such reported issues). The cards are otherwise fine in normal use but sometimes after using either PNDStore or Panorama they seem fine until rebooting at which point the OS BOOT partition (ext2) has been corrupted and is not recognised and simply not there anymore.


On one occasion it wiped out the NAND install at the same time but I dont blame either app. I think my particular Pandora simply has a weird issue in its handling of its SD Slots. Something about those programs rewriting new PNDs as it updates things is getting lost in translation somewhere.


In addition this Pandora doesnt like flashing the new bootloaders for the experimental kernel with SuperZaxxon, as this causes the NAND install to lose its touchscreen entirely. Notaz suggested my board maybe faulty. Note I have yet to perform a full flash of SuperZaxxon to the NAND and have thus far only tried SuperZaxxon variants as SD Installs. So perhaps that issue will not occur when I do a full flash.


To combat this occasional corruption, I keep a tar copy of the latest FW on the second SD and simply use Gparted or dosfstools (if Gparted fails to work as Grench has noted) and re-create the ext2 partition and then untar the FW back into it, untar a copy of my home folder and I'm back in business again.


I've always hated SD cards anyway, as I've had PC's wipeout even reliable SanDisk cards before, whereas cameras etc have always had no issues.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Bad SD card readers and thin USB cables can create troubles too.

 

[eyecreate]

I am happy to let you know that, upon deciding to experiment with forensics tools I haven't used before to try and learn more about how they worked, I was able to recover my SRAM file for FF6.(what I had been playing most recently.)


I used foremost for this task and set up a custom config file to filter for the file type I was looking for. I got my information by reading a very old save I had on my computer and reading some docs online about snes sram formats.

srm y 8396 \x00\x00\x93\x84

Examining the results, I found a match that was accepted by the emulator as a valid sram that contained my data.


This process will be useful the next time(which I hope is never) I come across corruption like this.

 

[Mr Rob]

I am happy to let you know that, upon deciding to experiment with forensics tools I haven't used before to try and learn more about how they worked, I was able to recover my SRAM file for FF6.(what I had been playing most recently.)


I used for foremost for this task and set up a custom config file to filter for the file type I was looking for. I got my information by reading a very old save I had on my computer and reading some docs online about snes sram formats.

srm y 8396 \x00\x00\x93\x84

Examining the results, I found a match that was accepted by the emulator as a valid sram that contained my data.


This process will be useful the next time(which I hope is never) I come across corruption like this.

Wow, that's crafty. Also, you're lucky; how much time have you put into FF6 by that point?


Of course, here's another plug for a solid backup system. I plug it in, mount it as storage on my laptop, and run an rsync command that copies only what has changed. Very slick.

 

[eyecreate]

I am happy to let you know that, upon deciding to experiment with forensics tools I haven't used before to try and learn more about how they worked, I was able to recover my SRAM file for FF6.(what I had been playing most recently.)


I used for foremost for this task and set up a custom config file to filter for the file type I was looking for. I got my information by reading a very old save I had on my computer and reading some docs online about snes sram formats.

srm y 8396 \x00\x00\x93\x84

Examining the results, I found a match that was accepted by the emulator as a valid sram that contained my data.


This process will be useful the next time(which I hope is never) I come across corruption like this.

Wow, that's crafty. Also, you're lucky; how much time have you put into FF6 by that point?


Of course, here's another plug for a solid backup system. I plug it in, mount it as storage on my laptop, and run an rsync command that copies only what has changed. Very slick.

I had put about 20 hours into the game. Luckily, that's about all I had done since my last backup that I couldn't recreate/find.

 

[Grench]

Funny - I consider Verbatim to be a 'budget brand' for media. It's still banded though - so a step above generic.

Please stop trying to troll. It's not a good look, especially when you're making such laughable claims as that.

Mmm - wasn't trying to troll. I truly believe Verbatim to be a borderline near-generic brand. Generally cheap in price and quality. Maybe it's a regional/US thing.


Heck, they weren't even included in Tom's Hardware SD card charts in either year that they were run:


http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2011-sd-cards/Read-Throughput-h2benchw-3.16,2703.html


http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-sdhc-memory-card-charts/Access-Time,857.html


Searches on Amazon.com for items stocked and sold by Amazon.com. Search term is ManuName 32GB SDHC. Example Verbatim 32GB SDHC. Then select down on the bottom left of the page for Seller = Amazon.com.


Amazon.com lists 3 items to search: Verbatim 32gb sdhc cards.


Amazon.com lists 157 items to search: Sandisk 32gb sdhc cards.


Amazon.com lists 18 items to search: Patriot 32gb sdhc cards.


I'm sure they make fine cards that fill a market niche. But, quite frankly, I do not consider them to be a top quality card.


Statement of an opinion is not a troll attempt.


Now, would you care to talk about how you and a few others seem hell bent on telling people that no card that can write faster than a class 4 could possibly be of any quality? And how anything other than the brand that you yourself own would clearly be using inferior chip sets? There are three of you who jump on every SD card question thread and spout out this nonsense with absolutely no proof or evidence to back your claims.


To my personal experience, the faster writing cards (class 10) also are the faster reading cards. If you purchase a regular brand from a reputable dealer, the odds are pretty good of your getting a solid card.


We have all seen the reports of, "The class 10 32GB SDHC card that I bought off of an auction site with the ink-jet-printed label sticks in my card reader and is corrupt..." Disreputable people will always market shoddy goods as if they were in the top of the quality spectrum but somehow miraculously they're priced at the bottom end - that's how they get people to bite. Nobody is going to go through the trouble of creating counterfeit 2GB class 2 media - it would be like counterfeiting pennies - more effort than it's worth.


So, my advice is to purchase a solid name-branded media from a reputable store that is large enough to purchase their product directly from the real manufacturer. At that point you have solid warranty support and are highly unlikely to get a faulty card.


Your experiences may varry.

 

[Mr Rob]

So, my advice is to purchase a solid name-branded media from a reputable store that is large enough to purchase their product directly from the real manufacturer. At that point you have solid warranty support and are highly unlikely to get a faulty card.

Or on the far other side of the argument: treat the card as a disposable resource.

 

[Asmo]

Ooer. I'd never looked at that sd card compatibility list before - until now I've used all Sandisk cards which have worked flawlessly - but I had intended stuffing the 32Gb one I got with the Pandora once things had matured enough to put in the effort to do it right. That card is a 32Gb Kingston class 4, came with my machine round about this time last year. Should I be worried?