SD card the root of many problems

If you're new to Whistler like I am with my new 1098, I am finding the SD card is insanely fussy. Out of the box it came with errors on power up that had me going to the back of the manual to learn I need to reseat the SD card in the slot. (okay, bouncing around with shipping I guess).

Then I'm wrapping my head around this EZScan software, OO programming, and inventing a new organization to what/how I scan. Constant weird connectivity issues between Win7 and Scanner, lots of little things that were starting to make me second guess this purchase. Scanner would suddenly not power up, with an error that says Waiting For Main Unit, (reseated the head, the card, 30sec powercycle yadda yadda).

I was appalled at the boot time also when I did get it powered up. Just setting up 2 scanlists with maybe 100 conventional freqs in it, it didn't start scanning until 30 seconds after boot. "Prepping my scanset" , "configuring stuff", "out to tea" etc. was all I saw on the screen before finally yawning and deciding to scan.

I finally took the SD card straight to my Mac, formatted Fat32, put it back, reconnected to PC, Prepared Card for Use, copied config again, and now everything works like a charm. It scans about 8-10 seconds after boot (still crappy to my Uniden experience but I understand). It talks like a champ to the PC, writes configs fast etc. So format and try again if you just keep hitting brick walls.

I'm a sysadmin of 17 years and scanning for 25 years, this 1098 already has me swearing more in its 10 minutes of actual on-time than a year of my microsoft servers at work. Don't get me started on RR database format and its organization (at least for California).

I am very critical of my radios. Once I wrestle this beast into submission I will be reviewing it here from the perspective of a hardcore mobile user in Northern California who monitors conventional only (only 1 analog trunked system in 220 square miles).

The Unidens have SD card problems as well. I think these manufacturers are using cheap/small cards to save costs.

I purchased a SanDisk 32GB Class 10 card when I first got my BCD436HP and have not had any problems.

The format option ("prepare card") available through EZScan isn't a good one. You learned an important lesson that many others have had to be helped with -- format the card properly using a good utility that does a true deep-level format. I had a lot of trouble with an SD card shortly after getting a relative of your scanner under the RS brand 4 years ago. I even replaced the card, which "cured" the problem. I later went back and did a good format on the original card, loaded it and put it in the scanner...it has caused zero issues in the last 3 years despite having been updated many times since.

The boot time has nothing to do with the amount of data on your card.

It is related to the SIZE of the card .. it is about 1 sec per GB. That is the time til you get to the Whistler logo.

On my 1095 it is about 17 seconds til it actually scans in addition to the above.

Hope that helps you out.

I've seen it take quite a bit longer to boot up with larger cards. To add to that, from what I've seen, the startup (and switch from program to scan mode) time can also be increased considerably when there are large number of conventional frequencies in your programming. I'm not quite sure why this is the case.

Having said that, I record everything - all of the time and haven't found a really good reason for using large cards - even less important if you don't record. The database and VScanner programming do not take up much data at all. Recordings are pretty small (kbytes). The one exception is if you use the (control channel) data dump to disk option which can create many 4mb files a day.

My recommendation is to get and use as small an SD card as is really necessary. 4Gb (maybe even 2Gb) is just about right if you don't use any write to disk options while listening.

EZ Scan and the object oriented concept can take a little time to get used to - anything new will regardless of the software or vendor - excepting maybe Apple products... However, the object oriented concept provides additional flexibility for creating scanlists (and scansets).

W8RMH said:

I purchased a SanDisk 32GB Class 10 card when I first got my BCD436HP and have not had any problems.

Click to expand...

I'm pretty close to picking up a WS1098. So I can't speak from experience with the scanner, but you beat me too it. I was going to suggest that a good quality, known manufacturer class 10 card should fix these problems.

KE4NYV said:

I'm pretty close to picking up a WS1098. So I can't speak from experience with the scanner, but you beat me too it. I was going to suggest that a good quality, known manufacturer class 10 card should fix these problems.

Click to expand...

I did the exact same thing with my Uniden 436 upgrade to a 32GB Sandisc and it loaded alot faster than the chip it came with.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions to a real Sandisk SD. I have some spares for my cameras I might slap in there if the 4GB card that came with it so much as looks at me wrong. However a second-per-GB boot time seems scary, especially when I don't need the space so much. Do you 32GB SD owners experience 30sec boot times?

I come from the BCT15X world which are champs for me mobile and for my live scanner, so this is my first SD-memory scanner. I didn't realize the newer Uniden stuff were SD based also. I needed the remote head for a new vehicle that does not have a dash friendly to my 15X.

A lot of the people frequenting this list seems to be in metro areas or dealing with P25 Phase2 and/or multi-site systems and I won't have any of that to deal day-to-day. We'll see if de-sense becomes an issue.

norcalscan said:

Thanks everyone for the suggestions to a real Sandisk SD. I have some spares for my cameras I might slap in there if the 4GB card that came with it so much as looks at me wrong. However a second-per-GB boot time seems scary, especially when I don't need the space so much. Do you 32GB SD owners experience 30sec boot times?

I come from the BCT15X world which are champs for me mobile and for my live scanner, so this is my first SD-memory scanner. I didn't realize the newer Uniden stuff were SD based also. I needed the remote head for a new vehicle that does not have a dash friendly to my 15X.

A lot of the people frequenting this list seems to be in metro areas or dealing with P25 Phase2 and/or multi-site systems and I won't have any of that to deal day-to-day. We'll see if de-sense becomes an issue.

Click to expand...

definitely loads alot faster than it did with chip that it came with when I put a 32GB Class 1 SanDisc in it.

DJ11DLN said:

The format option ("prepare card") available through EZScan isn't a good one. You learned an important lesson that many others have had to be helped with -- format the card properly using a good utility that does a true deep-level format. I had a lot of trouble with an SD card shortly after getting a relative of your scanner under the RS brand 4 years ago. I even replaced the card, which "cured" the problem. I later went back and did a good format on the original card, loaded it and put it in the scanner...it has caused zero issues in the last 3 years despite having been updated many times since.

Click to expand...

Is formatting the card through windows 7 (right click on the card and format) a good way to format the card? I figured it had to be done in EZScan in order to work with the scanner. Thanks.

SD card formatter is best. Download from sdcard.org

Zamson25 said:

Is formatting the card through windows 7 (right click on the card and format) a good way to format the card? I figured it had to be done in EZScan in order to work with the scanner. Thanks.

Click to expand...

Is this as easy as using Sentinel?

stingray327 said:

definitely loads alot faster than it did with chip that it came with when I put a 32GB Class 1 SanDisc in it.

Click to expand...

I agree.

stingray327 said:

Is this as easy as using Sentinel?

Click to expand...

Sentinel can't format cards.

As for Win7 - as long as it formatted it as FAT32 you will be OK. If it formatted it as NTFS the scanner won't be able to read it.

Voyager said:

Sentinel can't format cards.

As for Win7 - as long as it formatted it as FAT32 you will be OK. If it formatted it as NTFS the scanner won't be able to read it.

Click to expand...

Not sure what you mean as I am not into this computer stuff.

muskrat39 said:

SD card formatter is best. Download from sdcard.org

Click to expand...

Thank you. I had no idea that needed to be done. Happy scanning.

Possible SD Card Solution

Hello to all and Happy New Year! I have been following the SD card thread and a possible solution came to mind. As a tech working with vehicle navigation systems, I encountered a situation that involved was a new model that hit the market. There were reports of malfunctioning units and the problem was traced to the SD card. While the card was seated, it was determined that the card was not making the proper contact in the card slot. The solution was (with the power disconnected) to remove and re-install the card a couple of times. This improved the contact between the card and the contacts in the slot. The result was that these malfunctions ceased. It seems that the SD slot contacts were "virgin clean" but were not making good contact with the SD card. This worked with the navigation units and the process should be the same with any device that uses an SD card. And remember that when it comes to memory cards, contact between the card and the pins in the card slot is extremely important. Hope this helps. And no, I did not buy a Whistler 1088 (yet). Just listening with my PSR-500 (yeah, yeah, I know).

James K

I just got my WS 1095 today. Just minutes after starting to program it, I got the error "Waiting for MAIN unit on my WS1095". Followed a few posts around to this thread. grabbed a different SD card the only other one I had was a 32gb class 10. dropped it in and programmed. The error has went away at least. So far, I have my local City working. I am hoping I programmed in a few other items correct, yet to hear anything from them yet. I know I don't have it setup perfect, but so far, it sounds good.

vontar said:

I just got my WS 1095 today. Just minutes after starting to program it, I got the error "Waiting for MAIN unit on my WS1095". Followed a few posts around to this thread. grabbed a different SD card the only other one I had was a 32gb class 10. dropped it in and programmed. The error has went away at least. So far, I have my local City working. I am hoping I programmed in a few other items correct, yet to hear anything from them yet. I know I don't have it setup perfect, but so far, it sounds good.

Click to expand...

I have had my 1095 for 1 year now. Great radio IMO.

Proper powering on and off the scanner goes a long way to avoiding most of the common errors.
Also un mounting/ejecting the SD card from Windows has to be done every time when working with a SD card, regardless if it is with a usb cable or card reader.
Otherwise eventually a person will get errors of some sort. If a person does those 2 things every time, sd card errors are greatly reduced. I cant even remember the last time my 1095 had any error.

that is probably wise tips. normally i never bother with safe eject as I normally have gave enough time for copies to finish but this running an app may keep files open longer then i am used to. I will make sure to do that.