OESF Portables Forum
Everything Else => General Support and Discussion => Zaurus General Forums => Archived Forums => Accessories => Topic started by: sigmaX on September 11, 2004, 12:51:36 am
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I installed Kathrin RC3 ... my SD stopped working in my zaurus. I just REINSTALLED SHARP ROM 1.40J just to find that it doesnt recognize my SD card either ...
It is a VIKING 512MB ...
I place it in my desktop card reader ... and there it is !!!
Anyway I try to format it (fat 16) on my desktop and I get a "Could not complete format" error the first time, but the second time it just formats it.
It seems to be the SD card !! why o hell are so fragile ?? I keep reading posts of SD cards going down everywhere on the web.
Is there any "Trick" to revive them ? Any software that can test them and give a more deep analysis of these small monsters ?
Regards,
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Maybe they're so fragile because of the size of them?
A CF card has an obviously hard shell. The SD cards bend a bit. They're thinner than floppies, and about 1/8th the area, but hold at most over 1000x the data. I know it's a bad comparison, but it gives you a bit of an idea of how small the parts inside them are.
Because of the size, they're easy to damage, and any damage effects more of the useable space on them then on a CF card.
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It may be how you (or others) use them. I keep my 256mb SD card in my zaurus at all times... The only time I take it out is to swap it with my 512mb when I'm viewing videos taken from my video cam (it uses SD also), which I do maybe every couple months...?
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I doubt it is the fact that they are flexible etc.
Someone posted a link a while back with some endurance testing of memory cards. They did rather well SD included.
I think offroadgeek is right.
It is more to do with type of use rather than abuse.
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I think if you read this artical it may suggest that it's not physical abuse that's causing problems with these cards...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3939333.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3939333.stm)
- Andy
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I think a more intersting question is this. "Why is such an unreliable and flimsy format so popular?" CF cards, which are nearly indestructible, are realy not that big. frankly, I've never thought to myself, "God, I wish these damn CF's were smaller."
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hmm, strange, I've had a toshiba 128MB, 2x panasonic 256MBs and a 1GB rebadged Panasonic, with no problems, swapping them between phone (treo 600), Sl5500D, C760, and my fujitsu p5010 with no worries over the last 3 years (well, when I first bought the SL5500D, it was 3 years ago).
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Is there any "Trick" to revive them ? Any software that can test them and give a more deep analysis of these small monsters ?
I recommend using the 'badblocks' command to test cards.
I had a lot of trouble with a "fragile" SanDisk 256MB SD card. The filesystem would corrupt itself every so often and some or all of the files on the card would be destroyed. I finally realised I could just use badblocks to check the card, and I found that only the first 108MB of the card was free of bad blocks. After repartitioning the card to only use this first 108MB I didn't have any more probems.
I ended up returning the SanDisk card and bought a Kingston 512MB SD instead. I made sure to run badblocks on the Kingston card as soon as I got it. The scan showed no bad blocks and I haven't had any problems with it whatsoever.
To run a badblocks scan (in read-only mode) on your entire SD card, and have it write a list of suspect blocks to /tmp/sd.bad, type the following at the shell prompt:
umount /dev/mmcda1
badblocks -s -v -o /tmp/sd.bad /dev/mmcdaYou can also run a read-write scan (which will DESTORY all data on your card) by adding the -w command-line switch. There is also a "non-destructive" read-write mode which will preserve your data, but use that at your own risk.
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Hmmm, here are my experiences.
C860, Katherin RC3 pdaXrom.
I bought a 1G Sandisk sd. Formatted it to ext2.
Dmesg is always full of i/o errors and "-W- Don't Delete" messages. If i copy a large file to the card it gets corrupt or I lose l files and have to remount. Havn't tried mounting with async, but running a while 1 do sync sleep 1 seems to help with big files.
Then it started complaining that it was FULL, with 500mb free. Keep in mind I,m using the original partition table with fat16 id.
Enough is enough. I did the following:
- unmounted it
- ran fdisk on it. Emptied the partiton table (press "o").
- noticed that if I created a partiton, all these wierd 0 length partitions were created.
- Therefor created 1 partition, but as partition 4. This gave me a single partition 4 with none of the wierd partitions.
- ensured id was linux
- wrote table.
- modified fstab to use partition 4, noauto
- rebooted... just in case
- formatted it to ext3
- edited fstab, set to auto
- mounted
- downloaded gentooForZaurus, a 112Mb file... IT WROTE!
- extracted it...... NO ERRORS.
ymmv , havn't tested it long enough to be sure my problem is solved but I thought this may help someone.
- Bundaberg
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I think a more intersting question is this. "Why is such an unreliable and flimsy format so popular?" CF cards, which are nearly indestructible, are realy not that big. frankly, I've never thought to myself, "God, I wish these damn CF's were smaller."
Most SD cases are the same size as CF cases, in my experience... I think it's, in the Zaurus, the fact that many people would rather have CF network card in, in most cases. In the case of other, SD only devices, I'd bet that it's just because the manufacturer wants to make the device the smallest that it can. Most people think that the smaller a device is, the sexier it is.
Can't wait until cellphones are so small that they're just a small headset (i.e. earpiece and microphone, with voice interface ).
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- noticed that if I created a partiton, all these wierd 0 length partitions were created.
That's an ARM compiler bug generating problems with the routine in FDISK that determines if a partition slot is empty. To fix this fdisk must be compiled with -mstructure-size-boundary=8 as a GCC flag.
It's quite important that you use a version of fdisk that doesn't have this problem. You may want to check out the fdisk212ae2fsprogs135.ipk on the Sharp ROM forum under the 'New version of fdisk...' thread. This should correct the fdisk issue and it has a version of e2fsck that doesn't scrap the ext3 journal if you force a check.
- Andy
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Another thing you should setup with your Z when mounting SD cards...
Add the "noatime" option to the /etc/fstab in the mount line for your SD.
This will eliminate many writes to the SD card that are done when a file is "accessed." That way when you view files like images, documents, etc. that you have on your SD card, it won't perform a write to update the access time on the file. That will give your SD card a longer life, as the SD cards will wear out faster when you write to them often.
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Ok, so my SD card seems to have just gone bad...Zaurus hanging, works fine when I take out the card and reboot but cannot restore a full backup and even putting in the card seems to bugger things up.
So I'm running badblocks -svw, and it is taking for ever. At this rate it is going to be all night, and then some. (512Mb card). Does this mean the card is completely buggered? I'm puzled as to how it can have been fine one day, and collapse the next - I didn:t even put it in the washing machine or anything, it just sits in the zaurus all day.
James
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What brand? Same deal happened with my SanDisk, so I bough Viking, and it has lasted longer but the jury is out as it has only been a few months.
Do you have another piece of hardware, like a 6-in-1 card reader or camera to check it out, or is the Z your only way of reading the SD card?
If you need to reformat it, you might be able to go to a camera store and talk them into letting you put it in a demo camera to reformat it.
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No SD card reader but will probably buy one this weekend. I'm pretty convinced the card is knackered but no harm in checking again - the card reader will come in handy anyway, getting large files (dictionaries etc) on the SD card was a bit painful.
The 860 is working fine now with just a CF card.
James
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It must be your card. I have a lexar 256 card that has survived 3 handhelds now. I've even seen it take a 1 inch static arc last winter and still work.
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My 1g SD card just bit the dust also. I am so sad! I have fdisk'd it, re formated it and many times over. But the problem is that I can never get it to stop being read only. my camera doesn't recognize it now, and neither does my card reader. But the Z reads it - just read only. It had done that twice before me, and all I did was reformat it, and it came back. But this last time - no such luck. Now, I am afraid of getting another SD card. my card was a non brand, lot 0408AD6 w/ this stamped on the card 435ha-1gbtwn. I format it with fat16.
anyhelp appreciated!
lareya
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I seem to have the same problem as jamesannan... Only I may have an idea what caused it.. First of all, my configuration:
- Zaurus SL-C860 / Sharp ROM 1.40JP
- Sandisk 512 MB SD card
- Sandisk Connect CF WiFi card
I store my music on the SD card and generally have the Sharp Music Player open. Whenever I switch the Zaurus on, there's a "please wait" message displayed by the music player, which then checks that all music files in the playlist are still there. If not, the music player removes those from the playlist.
Now I also read the bit about "noatime" in /etc/fstab, which is by default only set on the internal flash and not on the CF or SD memory cards(!). This means that on each startup (or rather: wakeup), the zaurus music player accesses all MP3s on my SD card and causes a write of the access times.
One time I was in a hurry and just switched off my zaurus before that annoying "please wait" screen of the music player was gone. Result: broken SD card... Exactly *how* broken? Well:
- fsck.vfat cannot read the /dev/mmcda1 partition
- mkfs.vfat also doesn't work
- fdisk cannot find /dev/mmcda
- badblocks does find the size of the card (495488), but runs very slowly and continues to mark *each* block as bad.
- lots of dmesg errors: see attachment.
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I have a Canon 32mb SD card that I got used with my Z. It has served me very well, and never messed up on me. As for physical stress, one time I accidentally left it in my pocket and it went through the washer _and_ dryer - still works great. There was an article on I believe /. a while ago about durability of palms... and unless I am mistaken SD cards too.
From what I've read in this post, it would seem that people are only having problems with high-capacity SD cards, and I would offer this reason: Large capacity drives (of any type) are still in their testing stages (even though the manufacturers would like you to believe otherwise). Take a look at some reviews for 500GB external hard drives some time - they aren't reliable, they crash very frequently... it's because the companies are still working on trying to fit SO MUCH SPACE in VERY LITTLE MASS (think about it - 500GB external hard drives are big, yeah, but they're actually probably LESS than 500 times bigger than a 1gb SD card.
My Advice: Give the companies some slack and buy a couple of smaller cards instead.
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This doesnt help anyone at all, but I got pissed at a 16mb card that wouldnt format as ext2 so I cracked in open with a knife. You know, to see if the elves inside were dead. It will now format and I havent had any problems since then. So if it really isnt working, try stabbing it.
Works on people too I hear.