BCD436HP/BCD536HP: Will a new store bought SD card work?

[techues]

Does the factory SD card have any special formatting or can I go to the store and buy a new SD card and have it work in the scanner?

 

[lelanjlaborde]

I bought one for my home patrol at walgreens at it works...a little bigger than factory but all the SD cards work!

 

[techues]

Thank You!

 

[Voyager]

New cards will have to be formatted in FAT or FAT32, then you use the CLEAR USER DATA in Sentinel to initialize the card, then you write your data to the card.

 

[lelanjlaborde]

I did not have to format the new card in FAT but did clear user data in sentinel and then wrote my favorites from sentinel to the scanner!

 

[LakeErieLarry]

I bought a sd card at phone store. Inserted it in myHp-1 downloaded from sentinel and all was well.
In fact it increased volume and audio was much clearer.

I did not do anything else. Buy insert and download. Still working just fine.My favorites and everything loaded on the new card.

 

[ofd8001]

While formatting a new card isn't always necessary, it can be beneficial.

Most of the new SD cards I got had utility programs on them for saving/backing up files, etc. They do consume space and if you do a lot of audio recording for future listening, the space you gain by having a "clean" SD card may be a good thing.

 

[fxdscon]

I bought a sd card at phone store. Inserted it in myHp-1 downloaded from sentinel and all was well.
In fact it increased volume and audio was much clearer.

I did not do anything else. Buy insert and download. Still working just fine.My favorites and everything loaded on the new card.

You must have performed the "clear user data" step also, before downloading from Sentinel to the new card.

You can't write from Sentinel to a new card without that step.

.

 

[stingray327]

Is it then necessary to buy a card reader and use that to initialize SD card before writing Sentinel to new SD card?

 

[ofd8001]

No - you can install the card in the scanner, then set the scanner to Mass Storage. From there you can use a combination of Windows Explorer and Sentinel to do anything needed to prepare a new card.

When you are ready to do the "Clear User Data" be sure you Display All Drives in Sentinel so the appropriate destination is selected for the files that go on the new card.

A card reader is faster and that's the only benefit of using that.

 

[N7JGN]

I bought a sd card at phone store. Inserted it in myHp-1 downloaded from sentinel and all was well.
In fact it increased volume and audio was much clearer.

I did not do anything else. Buy insert and download. Still working just fine.My favorites and everything loaded on the new card.

How could it effect the audio and volume?
Doug

 

[ofd8001]

Other than a real wild guess, I can't see any reason for a noticeable volume and audio difference.

That wild guess would be that a frequency in the database may have been changed ever so slightly and the update picked that up.

 

[stingray327]

No - you can install the card in the scanner, then set the scanner to Mass Storage. From there you can use a combination of Windows Explorer and Sentinel to do anything needed to prepare a new card.

When you are ready to do the "Clear User Data" be sure you Display All Drives in Sentinel so the appropriate destination is selected for the files that go on the new card.

A card reader is faster and that's the only benefit of using that.

Thanks...
Somehow I did just plug and play a SD card and it worked out fine. I didn't have to format it or anything like that. If I remember correctly I just put new SD card into scanner and wrote Sentinel program to it. I don't remember clearing user data.

 

[ofd8001]

You did, but don't remember doing so. There are certain files that are needed on the SD card before the scanner will work. Typically the only way they get there is through the "Clear User Data" process.

The only other way would have been to make a copy of the original SD card and transfer those files on to the new SD card via Windows Explorer. A long way around, but works.

 

[darunimal]

Not all new cards need to be formatted a simple delete in Windows Explorer can serve the same function and keep the cards original "Format" as long as it is FAT or FAT32. There has been a grand debate in the DSLR Camera world, there has also been a debate of whether Format causes a loss of speed from the original, even if formatted with the exact same format and bytes. But what is most concurred on as a format erases all info except the sequential write sequence, which will always be the same logical sequence to be written to. By simply deleting you allow deferent blocks/sectors to be used and filled and it's less likely to make one sector/block bad sooner rather than later. Format = 365 Ground Hog Days, Delete = 365 different days.

P.S. Always eject card in Windows Explorer whether using USB Mass Storage, or a SD Card Reader (out of a force of good habit). (As a cook once told me, you never put your hand in cold oil peanut, because you'd never want to do that with hot oil)