8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

Hello,

N800, firmware 4.2007.26-8

I just added my name to the list of people who've had their N800 make their memory cards unusable:
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1204

My brand new N800 has just trashed my brand new Transcend SDHC. I'm hoping that the memory chip is not physically damaged though. My suspicion is that the MBR/Partition Table has been blanked out or corrupted, which makes the card look as though it has 0 MB capacity. Am I wrong about that?

When I put it in to the N800 I get a message that says
Memory card corrupted or unformatted

Can someone send me a copy of a working MBR backup file from an 8GB SDHC card?

There are instructins about making an MBR backup here: http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/ddcommand.htm

I'm new to the N800, but I guess you could back up the MBR from a card in the external slot of the N800 to a card in the internal slot with
dd if=/dev/mmcblk1 of=/media/mmc2/backup.mbr

Then post backup.mbr as an attachement here? Is that possible?

Steven

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

It doesn't sound like your card is unusable, but just corrupted, and can be reformatted.

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

Even though your card may be reformatable now, you will eventually wind up losing the ability to do so. I had the same exact problem and it progressively gets worse.

SoSorry...

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

In any case, you're officially having a hallucination: According to Nokia spokesdrones, your problem does not exist because they're not having it.

Or, you bought a card off a bedouin in the Sahara desert and put it in your blender instead of your N800: it's not Nokia's fault. So there.

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

remember, there is no spoon...

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

Hope it works for you - here's my MBR from a Transcend 8GB SDHC.

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

Thanks everyone, Yabbas in particular.

Unfortunately, that didn't work as I expected.

I dumped your backup.mbr on to my card with
dd if=/media/mmc2/backup.mbr of=/dev/mmcblk1
and that worked fine.

Then I switched off the N800 (Switch Off! menu option), rebooted, removed the card, rebooted, and plugged the card in. The "Memory card is corrupted ..." message was shown, but that's OK.

Back in the terminal as root again, I did
sfdisk /dev/mmcblk1 -V
which told me
Warning: partition 1 extends past end of disk

Hmm. If it doesn't get the size of the disk from the MBR, then where does it come from? Maybe it isn't a problem ;-)

I plugged in the USB cable connected to my Windows machine, and started the Panasonic SDFormatter V2.0 program from
http://panasonic.jp/support/global/c...formatter.html

That made me excited because it initially showed my card size as 7.49 GB, but then when I tried to format the card the process quickly failed and reported the card size as size 497 kB.

I repeated the process chosing different options for the formatting in SDFormatter, but the results were always the same.

Oh well. Where on the SDHC card is the size reported? That seems to be what is wrong.

Certainly my card isn't repairable with a simple format. Searching around the web I've seen similar problems reported with SDHC and other devices (eg this report of an 8GB card turning in to a 5GB one - Transcend branded again: http://discussion.treocentral.com/sh....php?p=1326269), but I haven't seen any way of making the cards big again :-(

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

I had also a 8GB SDHC card that was recognized as 6,5GB after a read/write error in external slot (N800)! I had no chance to get full size again (also tried sd formatter from panasonic). My dealer exchanged this card!
Now, I am using only the internal slot, because my external slot corrupted three 8GB cards :mad:

My advice: contact your dealer!

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

Thanks for the heads up on this. I have a PNY 8GB card plus a 1GB card, and since reading this thread I realized I haven't even used 500MB of space on both of them together. So I took out the 8GB and tucked it in a drawer, put the 1GB on the outer slot, and I put the original 128MB card back in the internal slot.

Hopefully, Nokia can duplicate and fix this problem before I need more space.

Thanks!

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

sjmac - I can report exactly the same behavior you are having. The dd idea seemed like a good one, and indeed it did finally show the card as being just under 8GB again, but as before, as soon as anything tries to physically read or write the card, it comes to figuring that it is about 500kb in size, and fails.

Can anybody suggest anything lower level than this to try? I have a card reader coming in the next few days but i'm not holding out any real hope at this point - I think if this problem works in incremental stages, then my card is about as far gone as they get.

Nokia - I repeat my plea, if you're so convinced that the majority of users issue is FAT32 corruption, please detail the method we should use to recover these cards, as countless users here have posted that all obvious methods aren't working. How are you going to explain it to the non-tech types that buy these tablets from PC World to browse the web and copy their music collections to? People here with extensive, moderate and novice (me) linux skills alike are stumped.

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

Try running TestDisk (Christophe Grenier's App) on the SD card and see if it fixes the partition tables.

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

Aha -- interesting utility. It let me change the Cylinders, Heads and Sectors, and then write the data back to the disk.

The broken disk shows C,H,S as 1024,1,1. I changed these to 1024, 255, 63 for 8GB, (which I think is right), and then used the Write MBR option to put the new info on the disk. Again, the information didn't stick. Removing the USB device (N800), and then plugging it back in again, TestDisk showed the 1024,1,1 values.

For some reason, I can write that info.

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

I just wanted to add my 2 cents.

I had this problem on 2 8GB cards (just returned the first one, and now I have been able to reproduce the problem on the second card).

I wanted this card to be ext3 format, and had succeeded at doing so. The card got corrupted when copying many files (mp3s). Reformatted again as ext2, again similar corruption after a few files were copied. Reformatted again as vfat. Got further this time, but after about 20 mp3s the disk showed corruption.

So it doesn't matter what the file system, the cards can be corrupted regardless!

Craig...

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

All this corruption talk is scaring me. I have an 8Gb internal flash card, a PQI model, that is so far fine. I was going to buy an external card for a full 16Gb but now I'm worried. Seems like most of the reports are related to the external slot. We need to do a survey that asks the following questions.

1. What size and brand and speed card are you using.
2. Internal or External slot?
3. Ever corrupted?
4. When did you notice it? (after or during what activity.)
5. Ever use any Internet Tablet File tools to partition or format?
6. Ever remove the card and use in an external reader?
7. Ever partition or format the card in an external reader?..ie...not the Internet Tablet.

I've got movies as large as 1.3Gb and a pile full of mp3's on the 8Gb card. Other than that I've never done anything fancy, like partitioning the card or trying to run the operating system off it.

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

did any of you guys test you sd cards before you used them in the n800?

i had a 2gb mmc card go bad (corrupt, and could not reformat) in my 770, so i returned it as defective. since then i test new memory cards before using them.

my test is to fill the card with large files (i use linux distro iso files, as i usually have a few on my computer) using a card reader and my laptop. then i do md5sums on them. then repeat a few times, and maybe leave the files there overnight, and check they are still good in the morning.

eg: (adust the paths for your system)
i now have 2 kingstom 2gb mmc cards in my N800 that passed the test, and have had no trouble from them. i dont have an SDHC cards yet.

so does anyone have cards that passed a simlar test, and then went bad in an N800?

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

P.S. Got a scare today when the n800 file manager gave the message that the SD card was not responding. However when I closed the manager it worked fine with any application I tried. Also was able to load more media onto it over a USB computer connection.

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

First to answer your questions:
1) 8GB Patriot (2 have been corrupted so far)
2) Both slots
3) Yep, both of them
4) Noticed read/write errors when copying mp3 files to the 8GB card. I have tried copying over the USB (when mounted on my laptop) as well as via SCP (much slower) and my wireless network.
5) No, I run Linux on my laptop, and used mkfs there to format the card (when connected via the USB cable)
6) Yes, I have a SD to USB dongle, and the card is corrupt there as well
7) No, since I didn't see how that was going to help.

I am guessing that if you have successfully put 1.3GB onto your card you are probably OK. I have put my cards in both the internal and external slots, and that didn't seem to matter. I was not able to put more than about 200MB on the card before it started spitting read/write errors (as shown by dmesg.

I opened a ticket with Nokia today, and I am slowly warming them to the possibility that 8GB cards are supported (initially they said only up to 2GB cards, and they had to be Nokia SD cards at that). I pointed them to a Nokia Europe where it says that 8GB SDHC is supported. They realized I was in Canada where the Canadian website says that only 4GB cards are supported:
http://www.nokia.ca/english/products...0_features.asp

But I replied that I bought this in the US, and the US site says that 8GB cards are supported:
http://www.nokiausa.com/link?cid=PLAIN_TEXT_189093

So we will see where it goes. But I suspect they are going to come back with their fall back line that only Nokia cards are supported. We shall see.

Craig...

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

Hi All,

I just purchased my N800 online along with an 8GB SDHC card.

A prior post mentioned the Kingston 8GB class 6 card works. I ordered an 8GB A Data card as the Kingston part was not offered. When the N800 and card arrived, I installed the card, formatted it and have been enjoying it without incident.

The key appears to be that higher speed memory is required. Class 6 is rated at 6MB per second minimum data transfer rate. At this point I don't think it's a manufacturer sensitivity issue, but a speed requirement. It must be documented somewhere, eh? Well perhaps now.

cheers, vroomado

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

Internal: 2GB Patriot
External: 8GB Kingston Class-6, 4GB Toshiba
Kernel: High speed SDHC patched ever since day-1 of using SD cards.

History:
- Never corrupted.
- Never used built in NIT tools to partition\format.
- Cards were used w/ USB PC card reader and internal thinkpad x60t SD slot a couple of times.
- I have recently repartitioned the 2GB patriot card to boot from it. Done on a USB card reader on my Thinkpad x60t w/ ubuntu on vmware.

Overall usage pattern: Light. I play scummvm w/ the game files (4GB!) on the 8GB Kingston. Seldom video\audio playback. I don't use maemomapper.

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

Vroomado - I would say i've seen more corruption stories regarding class 6 transcend sdhc cards than any other, mine included, so i don't think speed is an overriding factor.

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

What brand/size/etc. of SD card have people had success with, using just the built-in N800 formatting tools?

I was just looking at the Kingston 2GB SD card (not mini nor micro). At just $22, seems like a decent price for 2 or 3 of them... but if they're going to die on me, I'd rather not bother.

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

I would have to agree, my Patriot 8GB card (now corrupted) is a Class 6 card.

Craig...

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

grrr... It's 1:45 AM on day 3 of trying to fix my Transcend 8 GB Class 6 SD card, which was eaten by my N800 (or by a crappy reader, but I think it was the tablet), and I just cant believe that something with no moving parts can be "broken"! I've tried every camera in my house (Canon S2, Pentax, Nikon, 2 Kodaks), a Mac, Ubuntu, 3 different XP machines... using every utility I could find... and no luck.

Has anyone been able to resurrect one of these cards? Thanks for any input!!

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

gparted running on a Linux PC has worked for me when cards seemed to go south. I haven't had this specific problem though, fortunately,

Re: 8GB SDHC Flash Card Experience
 

I bought a 16GB Transcend SD card for my N800, which died shortly after. I sent it back, and its replacement died just as quickly. In both cases it seemed to be hardware fault, not just a corrupt filesystem or partition table.

In comparison, my SanDisk cards have been rock solid, even under heavy use. One's been through the washing machine and dryer, and still works perfectly.

So, my solution to the problem is to stop buying cheap cards.