Report in - x36HP SD Card Problems/Corruption

[mule1075]

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

Just letting you know but this happens to my HP-1 from time to time. I know this thread is about the x36 models but it just wanted to throw that out their

Sent from my Z750C using Tapatalk

 

[JamesO]

First thing I did was to I removed and reinstalled the card a few times in the 436HP and still had the same message.

Then I put the 436HP card that had the SD Card Access Error message in my 536HP and it booted up without issues.

Then I put my 536HP card (replacement 32GB card) in my 436HP and it powered on fine.

I need to now swap cards back and see what happens.

 

[freqhopping]

Scanner model - 436HP
Card manufacturer and size - SanDisk 8GB x2, Sony 8GB
Card original or replacement - Replacements
Was card able to be recovered - Non recoverable, the internal card reader of my laptop will not recognize the Sony card at all. With the SanDisk it will recognize a capacity of 30.6MB but still will not allow a reformat.

Was problem caused by power disruptions - No, the scanner was completely powered off before the cards were removed. I've even dropped the scanner causing power loss and it continued to function fine.

Did problem happen during normal use - They failed to function after removing them from the scanner to access stored data (like audio recordings) via laptop card reader. After re-installing the card the scanner gives an error. The cards then cannot be read by the laptop card reader.
Has replacement card(s) become corrupted - Yes

 

[KSDeputy]

Why not buy a back up power supply such as I have for all of our computers? They are about $ 65, maybe less for a smaller one.

 

[JamesO]

Power drop outs appear to be only part of the problem and may turn out to be a small part of the problem.

I for one have 4 smaller UPS units and a whole house generator. My 536HP is not on a UPS as of yet, I may put it on one, but also wanted to change as few parameters as possible until we had more reports of that is happening to SD cards in these scanners.

The purposed of this thread was for people to document what SD card problems they were experiencing and to let the data and events tell the story.

So far, shooting from the hip it appears there may be a bad batch of SD cards, however, not sure we have enough info as of yet. Also not everyone has posted their experiences in this thread, I am aware of about 10 other cases that were not documented here.

But I think this is a useful thread for recording what issues users are running into.

 

[rjdj2000]

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 - Was trying to replay recorded transmissions
Has replacement card(s) become corrupted - No, replaced with larger 8 gig card

* - Was hitting 'REPLAY' button and NO response from scanner at all. I then made the fatal choice to turn off the scanner and turn back on. My usual programmed greeting did not come up but the stock greeting came up and got the SD card error. I have tried to get windows ro see the card to try to run SD formatter on it but have not been able to yet. May try to run it on one of my Mac machines to see if can get it back.

This scanner has run 24/7 since it was received back from the headphone repair about 2-3 months ago. It is on a 2.5 amp hour battery with the stock power supply charging/powering the battery. There is a logic circuit on the battery for charging. So there is 100% no chance of power loss. I will report back once I can try to recover original card.

 

[Ensnared]

Annoying Bug

SD Card Error? All I did was put in new batteries and now this radio is having a nervous breakdown! 2nd day of operation. Nice.

 

[jasonhouk]

Every time I switch batteries out in my HP1 I used to get the same issue (SD CARD ERROR). I now unseat and reseat the SD card every time I swap the batteries out with no issue.

 

[Ensnared]

Got my working and backed it up on another SD. Then, I transferred the contents to a 16GB. It is now installed in my radio and working fine. This seems to be a bug carried over from the HP-1. I've not seen any warning in the manual about avoiding this SD error. I hope this bug gets exterminated.

 

[AE7Q]

I have the BCD536HP without any microSD card issues.

I haven't followed all the threads on this, but for recovering the SD card, has anyone been able to recover it by using the "Computer Management" Windows "System Tool", and using the "Disk Management" section to create a new partition on the SD card? Be careful here to make sure you select the correct disk ("Removable", about "3.69GB") !!!

 

[rjdj2000]

Update to my SD card error. I was able to regain the card. I ended up putting the card back into the scanner and then hooked it to my iMac with the USB cable. I then used the disk utility to repair the card. It said it worked but was unable to mount it in iOS.. Here is what disc utility showed on it:

I then put the card into a ds reader on a windows machine and was able to a full write erase on it with the sd format utility...

I could then see card and write to it in sentinel, so it was reprogrammed and put back into the 536 and I changed the replay from 120 seconds to 60 seconds. It has been running fine all day.

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 - Was trying to replay recorded transmissions

Has replacement card(s) become corrupted - No, replaced with larger 8 gig card



* - Was hitting 'REPLAY' button and NO response from scanner at all. I then made the fatal choice to turn off the scanner and turn back on. My usual programmed greeting did not come up but the stock greeting came up and got the SD card error. I have tried to get windows ro see the card to try to run SD formatter on it but have not been able to yet. May try to run it on one of my Mac machines to see if can get it back.



This scanner has run 24/7 since it was received back from the headphone repair about 2-3 months ago. It is on a 2.5 amp hour battery with the stock power supply charging/powering the battery. There is a logic circuit on the battery for charging. So there is 100% no chance of power loss. I will report back once I can try to recover original card.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[ems170]

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

Scanner runs 24/7 in my office. It is on a full building UPS, so there was no power loss. This is the 2nd 536 I have that has corrupted the SD card. It was discovered during a favorite write from sentinel. The card works but will not accept formats, updates, or changes direct from the scanner. It is in a frozen state of existance.

 

[n3ouc]

SD card problem

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

The card is not locked but can not add to favorites lists and cannot update the USA database with an error coming up saying Sentinal Cannot Write to the system because of encryption failure.

Anyone have a simular issue?

Mike

 

[rjdj2000]

Had to report back in about my 536HP from my post above on 6/22 where I was able to recover the original card.

Last night something came onto the scanner that I wanted to replay as I missed it. Went to hit Replay on the scanner and nothing. Would not beep or even replay anything. At this point I didn't shut it down as I know what will happen. SD error same as last time, so I went into the menu and got to the replay settings. I tried to review and nothing was there. I am on the latest firmware for the 536 so I am not sure what is going on. As said before, this scanner is attached to a 12V battery that is being charged while the scanner is in use. I have ran another scanner this way for 2+ years and now this one. So there is no chance of a power dropout (which has happened in the past few days due to major storms coming through the area) but while on the battery like it is, the scanner just kept on going as if nothing had happened. I am headed out for a little R&R for a week next week so won't have time to mess with it until I get back. I think I am going to try to fallback one revision of the firmware to see if it resolves the no replay issue that corrupts the card. As I know if I try to turn it off now it will corrupt the card. Will post back if it works or not.

 

[XTS3000]

I've noticed the backlight issue others have mentioned. The backlight was set to permanent on, but would occasionally shut off after a transmission. Thought I was going crazy, but it's the 436HP not me.

4 battery changes in a row all caused a corrupt SD card message. Had to pull the card and reinsert it multiple times before the 436 came back to life in all cases.

I decided to clean the SD card and SD card contacts with 99% isopropyl alcohol and ORGANIC cotton. Do not use q-tips, they contain antibacterial coating. Since the cleaning and 5 battery changes and NO corrupt card. Cleaning the card and contacts seemed to have fixed this problem (at least for now).

 

[737mech]

Scanner model - 536HP
Card manufacturer and size - Samsung EVO 32GB
Card original or replacement - replacement
Was card able to be recovered - Yes
Was problem caused by power disruptions - no
Did problem happen during normal use - No problems just wanted more recording room.
Has replacement card(s) become corrupted -no works great!

 

[FeedForward]

The corrupted SD card reports are a sign that this system was not completely thought out in the design process. Various methods of success or failure to recover confirm (to me at least) that the SD card hardware cannot always function correctly during a power down situation. The card is known to contain the database of frequencies and zip codes, etc. But it is also being used to store other customer options, state at last power-up, and a variety of other housekeeping information that is used by the main micro controller. In some products that use external cards or EEPROMS, part of the actual software is contained in the card, which might include the country specific setup options, features available in a particular model, etc. Losing that type of information will completely disable a product.

Apparently the unit is constantly reading from and writing to the SD card during normal operation to obtain the customer programming information. Also, a certain amount of information must be written back to the SD card every time the unit is turned off. But, if there is insufficient power available either in the power supply or in a backup battery then a "write" can fail at some indefinite point leaving the card corrupted. If the formatting on the card is corrupted, you get the un-recoverable error message. You should be able to re-format the card in a PC, but re-formatting may not recover your data.

In my opinion the corrupted data problem is not due to dirty card contacts or wrong card manufacturer. As I see it, card corruption in this case is a power-down issue involving insufficient power to the micro controller if it is in the middle of a write to the SD card. Obviously the corruption doesn't happen all the time. That's the nature and the excitement of electronics design.

FF

 

[JamesO]

Nothing conclusive yet, however, it appears that there may be a mix of questionable SD cards, SD card socket connections and some unexpected power down situations.

Another issue is SD cards or any of these non volatile storage medium is not designed from constant write cycles and the writing to the car needs to be random not over and over in the same storage addresses.

So there may be a problem with the write cycles for the hand held devices.

What is interesting is my 536HP corrupted the first SD card which was non recoverable. Then the card in my 436HP would not read after a battery change. Tried removing and reinstalled the car in the 436HP, no luck, so I just for kicks swapped the cards between my 436HP and 536HP. Everything worked.

I have also had a few power outages on my 536HP with the original 436HP SanDisk card in it and I have yet to have any issues. I still have not had a chance to put my 536HP on a UPS, so it rides with what ever the power company tosses at it during inclement weather.

Had a few Off, On, Off, On, Off, On (Blips) cases lately that corrupted some of my neighbors networking gear, but no problem with my 536HP this go around.

 

[FeedForward]

I thought several owners had tried various cards and had failures with them also. If there were a bad batch of cards shipped with the units, every one of those customers would have contacted repair or at least experienced the problem and fixed it themselves. Good point about the wear leveling. I don't recall if SD cards have that feature but USB flash certainly does. That's why you should not de-frag a USB flash stick.

It would be interesting to have an SD card "drive active" led to confirm just how much data is being trasferred back and forth. Eventually for the curious it is easy to monitor the serial data line and read/write pins to the card. For those who have had a look inside their 536's perhaps they have noted a backup battery or supercap on the board somewhere? Another good question would be whether these units actually power off, or if they have a standby supply that keeps the micro running in sleep mode. It is easy to determine by simply connecting an ammeter in series with the DC wall wort's 12 volt plug and noting the current draw both in "on" and "off" modes.

Occasionally these quirky problems can be due to an incorrect POR, or power up reset sequence. The problem would appear the same as a power down issue, as the unit would be hosed while powering up. All that is pretty well beyond the customer and in the hands of the designers. Just mentioned it because there are many possibilities beyond a bad card or an interrupted write cycle to the card. Undoubtedly the de-bug committee has already thought of it.

FF

 

[freqhopping]

It's a not a power issue. Not once has power been a factor leading to my failures. Hell, a few drops that did result in cutting out the power suddenly haven't caused any problems.

And it's not an issue of excessive overwrite. All of my failures are cards I was creating to use as backups. Some had been used for other devices previously. But at least one was right out of the package.