Report in - x36HP SD Card Problems/Corruption

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JamesO

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Starting this thread to hopefully capture info from x36HP owners that have run into some sort of SD card issues: either loss of data, corruption and possible total failure to format and use SD card.

I think it would be helpful to note the following info when reports are made.

Easily copy and past info below in reply and edit.

Scanner model - 436HP or 536HP
Card manufacturer and size - Example SanDisk 4 GB
Card original or replacement - Example "original"
Was card able to be recovered - Non recoverable, meaning unable to format/use/read
Was problem caused by power disruptions - 536HP lost power during outage/storm
Did problem happen during normal use - Making/review recordings or settings on unit
Has replacement card(s) become corrupted - Self explanatory

Maybe this is not a big issue, we will let the facts and incidents determine what is going on.

Try to keep this thread to the answers above so just the basic facts are presented.
 

JamesO

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I will be first to post my issue.

Scanner model - 536HP
Card manufacturer and size - SanDisk 4 GB
Card original or replacement - Original SD card
Was card able to be recovered - Non recoverable
Was problem caused by power disruptions - Yes
Did problem happen during normal use - No, during power loss
Has replacement card(s) become corrupted - Have not had enough time on replacement card to determine if this was a one time incident or a reoccurring problem.
 

BigDaddy419

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May 22, 2003
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Scanner model - 536HP
Card manufacturer and size - SanDisk 4 GB
Card original or replacement - Original SD card
Was card able to be recovered - Non recoverable
Was problem caused by power disruptions - Yes
Did problem happen during normal use - No, power outage
Has replacement card(s) become corrupted - Haven't gotten my replacement card(s) yet.
 

ve2fet

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Oct 27, 2009
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This is a very bad BUG on top of STILL not having the promised iOS Apps (THE reason I bought this scanner).

I was on the road yesterday evening and BOOM SD Card error right after starting the car. Can't do anything with this box now, returning with the 996XT for now.

Trying to reformat the card the scanner damanged and NO GO...

Let with a none working scanner, am I suppose to return the defective scanner with this bug?

BCD536HP DEAD just when you need it and no way to bring it back... Think about this before using it in important situations...

Will have to see who to call to get this fixed or returning the whole thing.

Card: Original
Card not recovered, full of garbage folder names, can't reformet neither
Cause by power disruption: Hell yes.
Normal use? Power diruptions is a "NORMAL" situation.
Replacement card??? From who?
 

an39511

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Feb 10, 2010
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Location
Cleveland, Ohio
Scanner model - 536HP
Card manufacturer and size - SanDisk 4 GB
Card original or replacement - Original SD card
Was card able to be recovered - Non recoverable. Could read card but could not write to it.
Was problem caused by power disruptions - No
Did problem happen during normal use - Yes, Problem discovered when trying to upload new programming
Has replacement card(s) become corrupted - No. Card has been installed for about 60 days
 

Boatanchor

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Only a few, isolated reports?

Good, I was worried this may be an endemic problem :)
 

JamesO

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There are easily at least half a dozen or more reports in other threads on this forum.

I am trying to get people to post here for themselves as I do not want to misrepresent the situations.

Overall maybe not a lot of cases, but maybe there have been situations where nobody spoke up, plus there are probably a lot of people that do not even frequent this forum. Uniden may even have a number of support cases directly as well.

But I figured we might as well get this started and see how many responses and what the situations are when cards are becoming corrupt.

Again, will let the facts tell the story.

I am hopeful the issues are questionable SD cards and not the scanner as questionable cards are far easier to resolve than something with the scanner.
 

ofd8001

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I don't know whether this will be a clue, but I thought I'd pass it along.

I know I'm pressing my luck but it is what it is. . .

In my vehicle I have a 536. It has a replacement SD card (SanDisk 8 GB) - original worked fine, just wanted the higher capacity.

The scanner is connected to an ignition circuit with the 12 Volt power wire that came with the scanner. I do not turn off the scanner at the power switch, rather it goes off when the key is off, etc.

It's been in the vehicle for going on three months and probably is powered up and down via the power wire at least four times a day or about 360 cycles.

With fingers and toes crossed while knocking on wood, I have not yet experienced SD card corruption because of power loss. (But I do keep two programmed spares in the glove box just in case).

So the things I'm wondering about are:
1. Could it be an issue with the original 4 GB cards?

2. Is there a "difference" in types of power loss, as in loss of 120 VAC versus 12 VDC? I imagine the AC adapter has some means of transforming/rectifying the 120 VAC down to 12 VDC. Perhaps in the AC power loss scenario there might be something going on with voltage fluctuation, or maybe something in the conversion from AC to DC. So I'm wondering if the engineering folks may want to look at the AC adapter part too.
 

Eng74

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Dec 19, 2002
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Location
Kern County, CA
Scanner model - 536HP
Card manufacturer and size - SanDisk 4 GB
Card original or replacement - original
Was card able to be recovered - no
Was problem caused by power disruptions - no
Did problem happen during normal use - Updating favorites list
Has replacement card(s) become corrupted -no

The card is not locked but can not add to favorites lists.
 

JamesO

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McLean, VA
d8001, thanks your your input. Start and stop in the car is probably a bit nicer to the scanner than the Off, On, Off, On, Off, On ....... situation during power hits due to wind/trees in the power lines? But you offer a point of reference that may be helpful and insightful as data is gathered.

Eng74, thanks for posting your situation. Have heard less cases of normal use corrupting the SD card, but there have been a few. Again, every point of reference we get will hopefully give more insight to what is going on here.

I have no choice but to run on a replacement SD card, like many others here, due to not being able to recover them. We may find that having to use a replacement card alone is enough data to show this may have been a bad batch of SD cards, but we will need updates from anyone that has had SD card problems, either good news or bad news, to know for sure what had transpired over time.

Please keep the reports coming in as it should benefit all of us.
 

brucewarming

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Jun 23, 2004
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Location
Martinsburg WV.
Scanner model - 436HP
Card manufacturer and size - SanDisk 4GB and SanDisk 16GB
Card original or replacement - "Original" and "Replacement"
Was card able to be recovered - Original 4GB --- RECOVERED
Was problem caused by power disruptions - Unplugged during data update
Did problem happen during normal use - Updating data base
Has replacement card(s) become corrupted - NO
OK I want to add information to maybe help. I did unplug the USB during update, It was my first time and I thought it was frozen up (very slow) Then when I started to re-update it gave me a corrupt data. I Prompted "Clear User Data" It then did recover and update. So I abused it and it recovered. I then got a Sandisk 16-GB to use as daily use and kept the Original 4GB for a backup.
OK I have the scanner on and connected to USB computer power, I will go to move the scanner by just unplugging it from the computer (still on) it goes to internal power (battery) take it across the room and plug it in (still turned on) plug it in to usb power supply it asks me if I want to do the "mass storage" I prompt NO and it goes right back to regular scanning. OK this is NOT the way the manual tells me to do things, but..... I had to try doing it that way. So I'm lucky? or what?
 

noaim

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I'm in IT and do not take specific sides on hardware etc. so please dont flame but this is just something I found.


When playing with updating my card on the 536 I completely corrupted the card to the point that windows could not format etc. one thing I found out over the years is that mac osx has a very strong disk utility. I was able to take the corrupt card format it to ms dos. I then took the card and put it in windows using sentinel and reloaded. It now works perfect again. It was a 64gb card so I didn't want to lose it. I hope this may help some people recover their cards
 

XTS3000

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Removed the batteries from a 436HP. With fresh set installed, a SD card error popped up on screen. Removed the card and reinstalled it without any further problems.
 

benca

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Orangevale, ca
BCD536HP Corrupt SD card

Scanner model - 536HP
Card manufacturer and size - SanDisk 4 GB
Card original or replacement - Original SD card
Was card able to be recovered - Non recoverable
Was problem caused by power disruptions - NO
Did problem happen during normal use - Yes, keying in favorite list quick key
Has replacement card(s) become corrupted - used a spare card from nook to validate scanner works with a card just not the OEM sandisk 4GB.

A few more items we should track

Was issue reported to Uniden Support - Yes
Did Uniden Support offer assistance - Yes, 48hrs after reported, email said to plug scanner in to pc and power scanner on to reformat card. Which is not possible when scanner will not read the SD card. Uniden support has not responded back with any further information on suggested methods to resolve the issue.
Did Uniden support resolve the issue with the x36HP- NO!
Did Uniden support offer to replace the card - NO! And they have not responded to my request for them to provide a replacement for the defective card.
 

medic29

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Champaign, IL
SD Card Failure

I cannot remember the specifics, but about 2 weeks ago I found my 536 with an error that it couldn't access the SD card. I turned the scanner on/off several times and got the same message. I unplugged the scanner and moved it into the kitchen and left it unplugged for about 30 minutes. I plugged it back in and turned it on and it began working normally. I thought maybe something happened and the power had flickered or something and the unit just needed to be disconnected from power for a time for it to reset itself.

Then about a week later I found the scanner with the same message; it wouldn't access the SD card. I thought...I know how to fix this and went through the process of unplugging it for a while. No joy. I tried longer times, etc. Then I started searching RR and found out that apparently there is an issue with these scanners and the SD cards. Not happy.

I had a couple of other SD cards lying around from phones so I went through the process of trying to make a new card. That didn't go so smoothly either. I had the USB cable plugged into the scanner and would plug it into my laptop when I was supposed to connect the scanner...that would not work. What finally ended up working was having the USB cord plugged into the laptop, THEN plugging it into the scanner. Then everything was happy. The laptop recognized the scanner and it's SD drive, etc. Very strange.

With this whole mess, on top of my experience with the scanner, if I could get Uniden to give me what I paid for it, I'd give them the stupid thing and buy me another 996XT. That unit took some getting used to, but it does circles around this scanner and it hasn't had any type of problems.
 

ki6asp

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Location
Maine
Corrupted Card Recovered

Scanner model - 536HP
Card manufacturer and size - Not sure, never removed it.
Card original or replacement - Original
Was card able to be recovered - Recovered
Was problem caused by power disruptions - No power disruption
Did problem happen during normal use - Canceled a write to scanner and corruption message appeared during the next attempt to write to scanner.
Has replacement card(s) become corrupted - Did not replace card, original still works after clearing user data
 

ems170

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Feb 10, 2004
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Location
Connecticut
Scanner model - 536HP
Card manufacturer and size - SanDisk 4 GB
Card original or replacement - original
Was card able to be recovered - Non recoverable
Was problem caused by power disruptions -no
Did problem happen during normal use - 536HP was powered down using knob. No interruption of power. When I came back and turned it on, it wouldn't read card. Replaced the card, and the scanner worked.
 

JamesO

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McLean, VA
Thanks for everyone's contribution to the SanDisk SD card mystery.

Not sure we have enough data here yet to determine a specific trend. I know there have been many other problems that were not reported here.

Hopefully we will have more reports, to include follow up reports if replacement cards were installed and how the replacements have been working out.

I have a replacement card in my 536HP running for a few weeks, but will need to wait for a while before I claim victory.
 

eaf1956

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Evansville, IN
Micro SD card issues

Scanner model - 536HP
Card manufacturer and size - SanDisk 4 GB
Card original or replacement - original
Was card able to be recovered - no
Was problem caused by power disruptions - no
Did problem happen during normal use - Updating favorites list
Has replacement card(s) become corrupted -no

The card is not locked but can not add to favorites lists.

BCD 536HP
San Disk 4 GB
Original
NO
NO
Yes

When turning the scanner off it did its writing to SD CARD thing and I was getting out of the truck and my hand turned the scanner back on. Got a SD card ERROR. Card is not readable on any computer so It can't be reformatted. Computers don't even see the card as being inserted. Sentinel doesn't find it either. (4Gb SD card ready for the trash) Only way I salvaged the scanner was to remove the SD card from my phone and use that. So now my scanner has my phones 32 Gb Micro SD card.
 

JamesO

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Location
McLean, VA
This is MY 2nd report!

So my 436HP batteries ran low, but not enough to power itself off. So I had spare batteries, swapped them out, now I get the Message SD Card access Error message.

Unfortunately I had not had time to put my spare card inside the scanner. So not 100% sure if the SD card is the problem or what is going on. I will swap this SD card into my 536HP first to see what happens!

Original SD card
Normal operation

Will update when I have more info.

Sent from my DROID4 using Tapatalk
 
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