PSR-800: New SD Card simply won't work

So I went out and got new microSD cards for my two microSD based scanners (PSR-800 & BCD536HP) on the advice of some RR folks.

Picked up the Transcend Information 16GB High Endurance microSD Card with Adapter (TS16GUSDHC10V) off Amazon. Programmed them both/each with the adapter. The 536 took it flawlessly, however, the 800?!?!? Not so much. Have yet to get the scanner to accept it. I get the dreaded Error 03-01 "General error initializing file system". It simply will NOT take. I've formatted this card and an older one the same exact way and the older one works. I thought maybe the card itself was bad so I set it up for the 536 and no issues whatsoever.

Has anyone else had this issue with this card? Can the scanner even accept this card? Should I just stick with the older brand/type that works with the scanner and just buy a new one of "it"?

Did you format with your computer? Whistler scanners need to be formatted FAT32. Most computers do not normally format with this system. Use the EZ Scan software to format the card, or download and use SD Card Formatter.

muskrat39 said:

Did you format with your computer? Whistler scanners need to be formatted FAT32. Most computers do not normally format with this system. Use the EZ Scan software to format the card, or download and use SD Card Formatter.

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Yes. Because the card is larger than 2 GB I formatted the card as FAT32 with a cluster size of 32kB. I did use the SD Card Formatter, then the EZ Scan software. Do I have to use both? If not, I did not try just the formatter or just the software. You would think the EZ Scan software would reign supreme for this purpose.

This isn't a huge surprise - there have been multiple reports over the years of some SD cards not working in scanners.

Bad card or incompatible. get a slower speed card like a class 4 or class 2

Yeah. Two small points:

Most memory cards are formatted exFAT these days. That keeps cell phones and other devices and larger size cards happy. They could still be FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS as well, depending on size, source and purpose. If you want cards that can be moved around, you try forcing the format to FAT32 or exFAT and see which devices tolerate that or not.

Second point: If you had a microSD card, it could not be large than 2GB in capacity.
The SD card standard stops at 2GB in size. Typically because of format issues.
If your card is larger than 2GB and not more than 32GB, it is an SDHC card. HC=High Capacity.
If your card is larger than 32GB, it is an SDXC (eXtended Capacity) card, and probably exFAT.

The companies that call all of the cards "SD" cards, are only confusing everything. To make it worse, devices often take SDXC cards--but with different size limits, often 64GB or 128GB and rarely 256GB. But the SDXC card size limit is actually 2TB in size, and will be exFAT format by default.

Too much information, right?(G)

Making things worse, there are a lot of counterfeit cards being sold online. Some of the makers have software available (free download) that can verify a card to make sure it really is theirs. Some Amazon vendors were selling a "256GB" USB drive for two years--and shipping an unreliable 8GB drive instead.

Good info here guys.

Rred, thanks for the rundown. Those things I did not know and I also think the advice pertaining to the class 4 card is probably right, as that is the card that is currently installed and working in the 800. I have to go get a identical backup.

Thanks all!

Jake68111 said:

Good info here guys.

Rred, thanks for the rundown. Those things I did not know and I also think the advice pertaining to the class 4 card is probably right, as that is the card that is currently installed and working in the 800. I have to go get a identical backup.

Thanks all!

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Get a name brand like scandisk regardless of what is in your other scanner. The cards that came with the scanner are generic and I read a lot of failures or issues with them....not sure why whistler still uses them in the trx series other then just for profit...if the customer has to go out and buy a good card and antenna....why not just include them from the start?

The PSR 800s are funky at times but I always have had good luck with SanDisk cards of just about ANY size

Wackyracer said:

Get a name brand like scandisk regardless of what is in your other scanner. The cards that came with the scanner are generic and I read a lot of failures or issues with them....not sure why whistler still uses them in the trx series other then just for profit...if the customer has to go out and buy a good card and antenna....why not just include them from the start?

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According to a conversation that I had with Whistler scanner support they started "about a year ago" supplying only SanDisk brand SD cards in their new scanners. I can confirm that my new TRX-2 just came with a SanDisk 4GB Class 4 SD card. In the TRX-2 user manual Whistler also recommends using SanDisk brand SD cards (see page 25).

All that being said I recently found a very good deal on a genuine SanDisk 8GB Class 10 SD card for my TRX-2 (for a spare card). It's $6.99 with FREE shipping included: SanDisk Ultra 8GB Class 10 SDHC Memory Card Up To 40MB/s- SDSDUN-008G-G46 | eBay

BTW, Sandisk, like many brands, has a big problem with "some internet guy" selling counterfeits. And they have software that can be downloaded from their web site, which can read the sd card and confirm if it is genuine.

Free. Easy. Confirms the card is genuine, or not.