Author Topic: Nand Bad Block Summary = "ng!" -- Cause For Alarm?  (Read 2764 times)

ian.finder

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Nand Bad Block Summary = "ng!" -- Cause For Alarm?
« on: May 23, 2006, 01:30:16 am »
So, I was playing around in the D+M menu on my "new" used "less than 10 hours" sl-c1000 from ebay (yes, I have my doubts-- for other reasons as well)  
and I ran the NAND Bad Count from the sum menu. I got the result you see attached (that line of interest is "8 4 0 4" if you can't see-- block 8, 4 init, 0 after, 4 total bad blocks)

Anyhow, the ominous large, red ascii "NG!" is concerning me-- should it be?

Thanks in advance--

[ EDIT - I just realized I should have put this in the hardware section. Sorry!    ]

Ian

P.S.: As a new member, and someone who's beginning to love these Sharps (replaced my debian-powered libretto 50ct), I hope to more active on these forums in the future, and once I get familiar with the platform, I hope to contribute to development. (Installing the cross-compilers now on my desktop). Either way, I was very happy to find this site, as it seems to be an invaluable resource!
« Last Edit: May 23, 2006, 01:33:47 am by ian.finder »
Workhorse: SL-C1000, pdaXrom beta, Socket bluetooth, SMC wifi
Pampered nerd toy I'm afraid to take out of the box: SL-C3200, running the original ROM until I have some free time.
Sold: SL-5500 (Fun but useless), iPAQ h5555 (My first Linux PDA. Also useless-- CLI work without a keyboard doesn't work too well.)

stbrock

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Nand Bad Block Summary = "ng!" -- Cause For Alarm?
« Reply #1 on: May 23, 2006, 07:26:07 am »
Quote
Anyhow, the ominous large, red ascii "NG!" is concerning me-- should it be?

[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=128133\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Subject to correction by the real experts on the forum, I have had that error routinely, the number of blocks (4 in my case) has remained the same rather than increasing, and it hasn't caused a problem. I think that it means that some small number of blocks in memory are bad and have been flagged and are not used. The only consequence I've seen is that I have sometimes found it necessary to specify a couple of MB more memory for the root partition than usually recommended when flashing a new ROM or I will get boot errors.

ian.finder

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Nand Bad Block Summary = "ng!" -- Cause For Alarm?
« Reply #2 on: May 28, 2006, 11:23:04 pm »
Quote
Quote

Anyhow, the ominous large, red ascii "NG!" is concerning me-- should it be?

[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=128133\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Subject to correction by the real experts on the forum, I have had that error routinely, the number of blocks (4 in my case) has remained the same rather than increasing, and it hasn't caused a problem. I think that it means that some small number of blocks in memory are bad and have been flagged and are not used. The only consequence I've seen is that I have sometimes found it necessary to specify a couple of MB more memory for the root partition than usually recommended when flashing a new ROM or I will get boot errors.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=128164\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Thanks for the response-- I haven't had issues yet, and hopefully I won't. *Fingers Crossed*
on the other hand, my new 3200 shows no bad blocks. Hopefully it will stay that way, and the 4 on the 1000 stay within normal tolerance.

In the meantime, on a related note, I'm perfecting a little script for a few roms (cacko, pdaxrom-- one version of each tested so far) that moves and links frequently accessed files (logs, etc.) to another storage medium (harddrive, sd, etc) to prevent internal flash wear. I might add a ramdisk portion that's saved at shutdown too. If people show interest, when it's done and tested, I'll release it. It's nothing most of us couldn't do on our own, but hopefully this will make things "quick and painless."
« Last Edit: May 28, 2006, 11:24:44 pm by ian.finder »
Workhorse: SL-C1000, pdaXrom beta, Socket bluetooth, SMC wifi
Pampered nerd toy I'm afraid to take out of the box: SL-C3200, running the original ROM until I have some free time.
Sold: SL-5500 (Fun but useless), iPAQ h5555 (My first Linux PDA. Also useless-- CLI work without a keyboard doesn't work too well.)