I need help. I've had my N800 for over 2 months now and suddenly the 2GB memory card I have in the Internal Memory slot has decided to become read-only. This surfaced about a week ago when I couldn't download software updates, but I didn't diagnose it until a couple days ago as a read-only issue.

The flip switch on the side of the chip is not set to 'Lock' and the 'Read only' box (viewed in File Manager) is not checked, either. Rebooting after removing and replacing the chip makes no difference, either.

Has anyone seen this? Any ideas?

UPDATE -- I've started a new thread for this issue:
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...381#post140381

- is the card read-only when you attach your N800 to your notebook or desktop? and do you have a swap file on the card?

- i'd:

1. back up the data from the card

2. reformat

3. re-load the backed up data

I had that too recently. It turned out that the file system was corrupted. I fixed this using fsck but this is not trivial. reformating is easier.

Thanks for the advice. I don't think I have a swap file on that disk. I'll go ahead and copy the data and then reformat.

BTW, it's read-only in every instance. Self-contained or when attached to the laptop.

Thanks!

this might be a little worrying. which version of the n800 operating system are you two using. if it's a pre n810 (2008) version then you may be victims of the sd corruption bug. if you don't have the 2008 os running it would be a good idea to download it and flash.

john

I have had this happen a few times. It's a nice reason to have two sdhc cards with plenty of gigs on them; if one turns read only you just copy everything to the other one and reformat. I have an N800 with os2008. I did this just yesterday; I have no idea why it happens from time to time.

This happened to me, too. I have an N810, so it couldn't be something odd about an SD card. I suspect it was the rtcomm Internet Communications Software development update that did it, but I can't prove it. After reading the various discussions here, I decided to re-flash the device, *and* re-format the internal card. I did that via the control panel's option to clear the memory. That fixed it. I don't have the nerve to re-install the rtcomm update to really see if that is the culprit.

I'm glad I remembered to write down the license code for my upgraded Maps application! I also had to re-download the maps, which thankfully worked OK. Other than that, this procedure fixed the problem. In a way, it was refreshing to go through the exercise of wiping the device and starting over. Made me confident it could be done, and life goes on!

This happened to me a few weeks ago on a N810 soon after I had tried to install rtcomm. The internal card was mounted read-only.

Because I had swap enabled, I had to:

back up data from card
re-mount card with read-write priveleges
turn off swap
reformat card

Okay, it seems I'm in the middle of a troubleshooting opportunity, so I'm not going to reformat just yet. Maybe I can help find what's going on.

Here's some new data:
1. I also installed the rtcomm update recently, so that remains a possible culprit.
2. I checked out the SD card on my laptop (in a usb card reader, not in the N800 attached to the laptop) and voila! It is NOT set to read only and I was able to delete a picture file with no problem.
3. I just noticed that there IS a swap file on the card. I don't remember doing that, but I haven't kept copious notes.
4. Unable to remove the swap file using Control Panel

This happened to me several times. I have n800 with the latest os2008.

Try switch off your IT then open the back cover and push the internal memory card downwards towards the bottom of the IT as though you are going to reinstall the memory card. Switch back your IT back on. This trick normally works fine for me.