SD Card Read Error

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Nysff

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Jus out of the blue after a years+ of outstanding performance. My BCD536HP Crashes everyday now and reads “SD Card Read Error”.

First Off, WHY? Why just out of the blue?

Second, I did a full erase and firmware upgrade to the scanner last night hoping it was just a glitch and maybe a fresh batch of Software would do the trick. But this morning I awoke to it dead again with the same error message.

How does one fix this issue?
 

jonwienke

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Replace the card. Flash memory has a limited number of write cycles before failure. Replay and recording write to the card every time a transmission is received, and eventually wear out the card. A "high endurance" card will last longer, as will a larger card (max 32GB).
 

Nysff

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Replace the card. Flash memory has a limited number of write cycles before failure. Replay and recording write to the card every time a transmission is received, and eventually wear out the card. A "high endurance" card will last longer, as will a larger card (max 32GB).

Thank you. I will give that a go.
 

Xplorer00

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Jus out of the blue after a years+ of outstanding performance. My BCD536HP Crashes everyday now and reads “SD Card Read Error”.

First Off, WHY? Why just out of the blue?

Second, I did a full erase and firmware upgrade to the scanner last night hoping it was just a glitch and maybe a fresh batch of Software would do the trick. But this morning I awoke to it dead again with the same error message.

How does one fix this issue?

I'm not sure why it is doing this, but I did post on another thread about another way to backup your handset/base SD card to a spare SD Card in your card reader slot on your computer.

If you do experience issues with a failing SD card, it is a quick and easy copy & paste to have your data ready again.

Post 17 (SD Card Backup) https://forums.radioreference.com/u...2-sentinel-multiple-scanners.html#post2886535
 

kruser

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Replace the card. Flash memory has a limited number of write cycles before failure. Replay and recording write to the card every time a transmission is received, and eventually wear out the card. A "high endurance" card will last longer, as will a larger card (max 32GB).

It would be nice if there were an application available that allowed one to see how many memory cells have been blocked from use due to failure.

I'd love something like this for the different types of flash memory.
It could help predict when a card is near failure when working with the card in a computer.
I know on hard drives, if a block was marked bad, that could be seen in a chkdsk report but that info could also be reset in most cases with a format.
Flash should retain marked bad cell counts through a format so why not a utility that can show us bad cell counts. Some manufacturers may have such a utility but I've never seen it before.

A spare card kept with the radio is probably the smartest thing one can do. Just keep it updated with your favorites and profile fairly often and you should be good to go even if you don't have a computer with you.
It's cheap insurance.
 

W8RMH

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I bought my Home Patrol 2 a couple weeks after they were first introduced (what, 3 or 4 years ago).

When I first received it I replaced the 4GB 'el cheapo' card with a 16GB Class 10 SanDisk card. I use it every day, update the DB every week, and have created and downloaded dozens of favorite lists. I use it at home and on the road with the FLs and the DB, and I have never, ever, had a memory or card issue.
 

jonwienke

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I know on hard drives, if a block was marked bad, that could be seen in a chkdsk report but that info could also be reset in most cases with a format.
Flash should retain marked bad cell counts through a format so why not a utility that can show us bad cell counts. Some manufacturers may have such a utility but I've never seen it before.

Flash memory uses "wear leveling", which means that the user does not have access to physical sectors, only logical sectors that are dynamically mapped to physical sectors by the flash controller. The mapping is done in such a way as to ensure writes are spread out among physical sectors as evenly as possible, to maximize the life of the card. Any time the controller detects an error in a physical sector, it marks it as bad and removes it from the pool of usable sectors. There are extra physical sectors so that the full rated capacity of the card is available even though a certain number of physical sectors have gone bad. Once the "extra" sectors have all failed, you start having card errors visible to the user.

Manufacturers don't allow users to see the logical-to-physical sector mapping, because that would expose the proprietary algorithms used by the flash controller, and let the user see card errors the manufacturer would rather keep hidden. There are also security issues with allowing that level of access to the hardware.

So the utility you want would be manufacturer-specific, and will probably never be made.
 

Nysff

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Just an update. I turned off the Replay Option for now until I can reformat a new SD Card and so far that seems to have solved my SD Card Rear Error for now.
 

jonwienke

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You're living on borrowed time. Replace the card ASAP. The scanner still writes when you shut it down.
 
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