Sony's influence over notaz has reared its head!

[Blue Protoman]

PCSX-ReARMed, whenever I run it, sets my SD card (FAT32) to read-only. Simple. I tried saving config files, and clearing the appdata folder (sans my save data), and nothing. Got another copy of the PND, nope. I can confirm that it's just PCSX-ReARMed which does this. Strange, as it hasn't before! Rebooting didn't help. When I remove and reinsert the card, though, it returns to normal. Also, some of my games which have loaded and ran very well before (such as Grandia) now won't run! I bet these two issues are linked. Any tips?

 

[Prometheus]

My understanding is that this behaviour means that you have a corrupted file somewhere on the card. When Linux runs into this, it will re-mount the card as read-only to be on the safe side. It may not actually be anything to do with PCSX-ReARMed.


You could check the card for problems (on Linux you would typically use dosfsck for this, since the card is FAT32, but I don't know how this is done on other OSes) and fix them, but if you've got the contents backed up elsewhere, it may be quicker to simply reformat it.


If this behaviour continues, it may turn out to be due to a misbehaving card (as I'm sure you know, there is an issue that's affected some of us using Class 6 or Class 10 cards, and it's the reason the SD Card compatibility list on the wiki came to exist).

 

[Blue Protoman]

My card IS a Class 10. How can I check for corrupted files on the Pandora? Might one of them be one of my PS1 games?

 

[Prometheus]

I honestly don't know if that would be the case. I've only really learned most of what I know about this because of the earlier issue with high speed cards, and there may be errors in my understanding of it.


Checking on the Pandora would be the same as on any other Linux system - unmount the card (NEVER do this with it mounted - I gather that it can cause Bad Things to happen), and then run sudo dosfsck /path/to/offending/card in a terminal. You'll need to read this thread for further details first, though - better instructions are there, and I seem to recall that the required tools aren't installed by default.

 

[Blue Protoman]

OK, I think I've narrowed down the problem to one particular file; my Grandia (Disc 1) ISO. Replacing it'll be a bit of a pain; any way to fix it? This is what's causing all my problems.

 

[Prometheus]

It's quite possibly a problem with the filesystem itself - changing that file may not fix it.

 

[WizardStan]

Pop the card onto a Windows desktop (where I'm assuming you're far more familiar) and just run chkdsk against it.


If you've found the offending file, the fastest way to fix it is to delete the file and then simply copy it back on from a known source. I'm assuming you've still got a copy on your desktop, as well. If not, you might be able to copy it off the SD card onto your hard drive, delete it from the SD card, run chkdsk, and then copy it back: Windows is a lot more... lenient... when it comes to corrupted file systems; it may work, but it may also have a few incorrect bytes which may or may not cause problems.