My N800 Broke 2 Sd Cards!!!

[sl13ntb0b]

Hello everyone,

i bought my N800 a few weeks ago, and I love it so far, its no perfect but the one thing thats its supposed to do (surf the web) it does quite well!

As I got more confident with the device I installed a few programs as gpodder. After installing gpodder and running it for the first time i discovered that you need an external memory card to run the program, so i got myself a brand new 2 GB Sandisk Extreme II (with USB connector) and stuck it in to my N800, all went well until a few days ago, the N800 couldn't recognize my SD card anymore (the error message was something like this: "corrupt or unformatted memory card") and I couldnt even format it with my N800! I stuck the card in my Pc card reader and was trying to format it when i reallized that even my pc could not recognize the card... Well at that point i thought that the card was broken and as I had another SD card in the drawer I stuck that one inside my N800, all seamed well untill this morning when lightning struck again!!! After loading some music and a video on to my SD I stuck it in my N800 were accidentally I must have moved the little leaver that locks the SD card (I realized this only after getting the card out of my N800) and voilla the card had the same problem as the other one!!!!!

Can someone help me?

I knew that the SD drives in the N800 are not compatible with the lock function on any standard SD card, but how is it that if i accidentally move the leaver to "lock" and write on the card that it gets all screwd up?

Thanks in advance!

Love my N800

[timsamoff]

Please see if this bug is what you are talking about:

https://maemo.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1204

If so, can you log your report there?

Thanks,
Tim

[geneven]

I had a corrupted SD card and after I bought a card reader today, I discovered that I also needed to run a special SD formatting program in Windows. Just Google Format SD and you will find several. The one I used was from Panasonic, though I don't have anything Panasonic. In order to run that program I also had to install some Microsoft program that was easy to find. After I did that, I reformatted my 4GB Transcend card, no problem.

[timsamoff]

Before everyone goes out and formats all of the cards that their N800 thinks are corrupted, please try this first:

https://maemo.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1204#c1

Tim

[Mara]

I was wondering if I'm the only having these memory card corruption issues... I have experienced this problem with 1GB RS-MMC card (that I used without any problems on 770 before), 2GB SD card (that is now corrupted so that none of my devices (N800, Nokia phone, SD card reader) can recognize it... I'll try this SD card formatter later today to see if it fixes it....) and several times with my 4GB SD (non SDHC) card. I never had any of these issues with 770 before?

[sl13ntb0b]

Hi first of all thank you very much for your kind help. I have read the posts you guys linked but i couldnt get my sd cards to work. The major problem is that i cant get them to read under Windows Vista, so i cant reformat them. I downloaded the samsung program and it works with other sd cards i own but the ones that were broken by the n800 are not recognized by windows.

I am stuck, maybe someone could give me some advice... I would hate to throw my new Sd away!

[Tabster]

I have also had a Transcend SD 2GB card lose half of the available space due to bad sectors. All was fine until I was using Maemo Mapper one day and it froze saying the card was read-only.
I stuck the card into my card reader but Windows was not able to save it.
I will take a look at the SD format option mentioned above..

[geneven]

In my case, Windows also thought the card was unreadable, so it doesn't seem to be the bug you are concerned about.

[Mara]

Just to confirm that my 2GB SD card that broke when in N800 can not be formatted using the Panasonic SD formatter. This is because Windows does not recognize the SD card and reader at all... so it can not access and format it.

Oh well... I was hoping to get the card back to working condition... :(

[zerojay]

Almost each and everytime I've seen a broken flash card, it's always been because of two reasons:

a) card was not unmounted before removal
b) card was in the middle of being written to when card was removed

Usually, a is recoverable by reformatting. B, however, can be a lot more damaging and permanent. This isn't N800 specific - this is for anything that uses flash cards whatsoever.

[Mara]

I want to disagree in the case of N800... I thought too that the corruption was due to removal of SD card etc in the first couple occurences that happened. But when the 2GB card corrupted and became not recoverable it was inside (internal slot) N800 and I was using Maemo Mapper. All of a sudden the Mapper started to complain file not found or similar... Before trying to remove and replace the card I tried to look for the memory card content using the N800 file manager and it showed the memory card as grayed out... so it wasn't recognized by the N800. After that I tried to remove and reinstall the card and I have not been able to do anything with that card since then.

[sorrender]

:( Same problem here, and also with Maemo Mapper. So, now I don't want to use maemo mapper until somebody fixes that problem. The memory card slot is the external, and it's a 2GB transcend.

[geneven]

These reformatters were probably written before Vista, so I'd want to try one under XP before I concluded it didn't work. My sd card became unusable while on the vine, not after being removed. It could have to do with Maemo Mapper, which in general seems well-behaved to me. I will keep using Maemo Mapper and see what happens.

[gnuite]

Are all of these problems with SD cards (as opposed to MMC cards)?

Also, to anyone for whom their cards died while Maemo Mapper was running: what brand of SD card are you using? Transcend?

[Mara]

My 2GB SD card was a cheap Topram brand from eBay... thus it "could" have died just because of its "quality", or lack of... :rolleyes:

I don't think Maemo Mapper is the reason for these issues, other than it probably gives a good workout for the File System due to frequent reads/writes. I believe the N800 kernel has some bugs/issues that cause these corruption problems.

As I said before have experienced these file system corruptions on N800 with 1GB MMC card, 2GB SD card and with 4GB SD card.

[Tabster]

My 2GB SD card was a cheap Topram brand from eBay... thus it "could" have died just because of its "quality", or lack of... :rolleyes:

I don't think Maemo Mapper is the reason for these issues, other than it probably gives a good workout for the File System due to frequent reads/writes. I believe the N800 kernel has some bugs/issues that cause these corruption problems.

As I said before have experienced these file system corruptions on N800 with 1GB MMC card, 2GB SD card and with 4GB SD card.

I agree. It seems like something in the N800 file system code breaks down when it is worked too much? A threading or permissions issue maybe?

[geneven]

My (fixed) problem was with a 4gb Transcend sd card.

[zerojay]

Probably because the tablet was shutdown without the card being unmounted (meaning a freeze or crash that forced you to remove the battery). The kernel being used by the tablet is a stable kernel - if there was an issue, it would have been found long before it made it to the N800.

When it goes read-only, it means the filesystem has been damaged in some way. I doubt that mapper caused it itself. You can just unmount the card, pop it into a Windows computer and run scandisk on it or fsck.vfat on the card in Linux. It'll be fixed and will return to working normally.

[mykl99]

I've been having lots of problems with my SD cards as well - particularly in the "removable" slot. It seems to happen when particular applications either break/die/loop or something.

Many times the card will go to pot and not be able to restore it properly - I can run scandisk on it and it doesn't find any problems, format it, etc - then magically the card starts working and all the files are there. Very strange. Almost as if one of the File Allocation Tables gets corrupted but something in a Windows machine will fix it silently.

It's getting very frustrating though as it appears to happen all the time lately.

Any thoughts on just formatting to ext3 or something rather than FAT/FAT32?

Seems like there are tools available to fix ext2/3 filesystems but no fsck.vfat. Very strange.

I realize that I wouldn't be able to mount the card in windows when plugged in through USB - but don't have a big issue with that.

[ssam]

i have had a kingston mmc card work for a little while and then go strange.

i assume that it arrived faulty but it took a while to notice.

now when ever i buy a memory card or usb drive, i test it first. a simple method i use is to copy a bunch of ubuntu isos onto it and md5sum them. then if i can be bothered leave them for a day and md5sum them again. i have never had a problem with a card that has survived that.

[gsagers]

Any thoughts on just formatting to ext3 or something rather than FAT/FAT32?

Seems like there are tools available to fix ext2/3 filesystems but no fsck.vfat. Very strange.

I realize that I wouldn't be able to mount the card in windows when plugged in through USB - but don't have a big issue with that.

I haven't spent much time with ext2/3 filesystems on SD on the n800, but used them all the time on my zaurus 5500. They do automount on the n800, and seem solid, but again, not much testing.

If you want to be able to read them under windows (including mounting via USB cardreader), check out http://www.fs-driver.org/. It gives you drive-letter access to your volumes. I've used it for a couple of years, read-write to both USB hard drives and the linux partitions on my laptop, and never had a problem. Beware though, that you will either have to use the control panel applet for the driver to unmount USB drives, or shutdown the machine to be sure you unmount cleanly. Still, a very useful application.

[N770-Freak]

My 2GB SD card was a cheap Topram brand from eBay... thus it "could" have died just because of its "quality", or lack of... :rolleyes:

I don't think Maemo Mapper is the reason for these issues, other than it probably gives a good workout for the File System due to frequent reads/writes. I believe the N800 kernel has some bugs/issues that cause these corruption problems.

As I said before have experienced these file system corruptions on N800 with 1GB MMC card, 2GB SD card and with 4GB SD card.

Do you know now, whether this Problem was N800 or SD Card related?
I was able to corrupt three transcend sdhc cards in the external slot with newest firmware 4.2007.
(http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7384).
These cards aren't recognized by panasonic sd formatter anymore!
I have also posted my problem to https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1204

[jiippana]

Hi there!

My 4 GB SDHC went to read-only mode "by itself". It occurred when the card was in the removable card slot. I was using Maemo mapper. Windows could not understand the card.

I managed to get the card writable by doing following things using N800:
- unmount the card
- create fat filesystem again in the card
- mount the card,

tested, works for me.

- Jiippana

[jwilker]

To add to the list. I toasted? Coastered? Wafered? :) my 1gb SanDisk SD.

I was applying a background image, got an error "Connection something" went to pick a different background, images folder was gone. went to file manager, and 2 out of 4 folders was gone form the card. Rebooted, and that was the end. The card was no longer recognized as existing. Tried it on my mac, who also just didn't even see it.

not sure what I did wrong, but that card is done for as far as I can tell. weird problem. Just ordered two new cards, hope they fare better.

[jackass124]

has anyone gotten their failed cards replaced by the manufacturer??...i noticed companies like Kingston offer lifetime warranties on their cards...so, shouldn't they replace the card at no cost if it fails??....cause the failures of these cards does indeed sound like a hardware failure...

Thanx

[speculatrix]

Initially I wondered whether this could be a problem with fake cards - there are a lot of fake high capacity cards sold on ebay where they simply take a small card and hack its partition table or something to make it seem much larger


However, I think that because so many people have had problems and the card totally vanishes it seems quite serious. It's one thing to have to re-partition a memory card and another for it to not even appear!