HP-2: SD Card Error?

[WB2UZR]

Hi All:
I just started having trouble with my couple of years old HP2. Last night, I noticed it begin to reboot itself over and over, it would shut down, power up, and resume scanning. This morning, upon turning it on, it came up with the screens that come up when first setting up, like setting location, and instructions telling me to download sentinel, etc. My favorites are longer in the scanner, it just scans the full Arizona database. Does this sound like an SD card issue, or something more ominous?

Thanks!

Scott

 

[Hit_Factor]

SD card is likely the culprit.

Get a new card, class 10 8gb should be good

Use clear user data (from Sentinel) to prepare the card. Then write to the card as normal.

 

[WB2UZR]

SD card is likely the culprit.

Get a new card, class 10 8gb should be good

Use clear user data (from Sentinel) to prepare the card. Then write to the card as normal.

Excellent, thanks, I'll give that a try!

 

[jonwienke]

Get a High Endurance type card. It uses a different type of flash memory that can handle more writes before failing. It's worth the extra $$$. A 32GB SanDisk is only $10.

 

[WB2UZR]

Get a High Endurance type card. It uses a different type of flash memory that can handle more writes before failing. It's worth the extra $$$. A 32GB SanDisk is only $10.

Good deal, just ordered that one, will even get here today!

Thanks Jon!

 

[jonwienke]

Good deal, just ordered that one, will even get here today!

Thanks Jon!

You're welcome. Gotta love Amazon shipping...

 

[WB2UZR]

You're welcome. Gotta love Amazon shipping...

Yep, it was 2.99 extra, but I MUST HAVE IT NOW!!

Thanks again

 

[Ubbe]

I believe it is not the number of writes that are the problem with SD cards in scanners. Even the chepeast SD card are certified for thousands of hours of recording of HD video, which is a couple of MB per second and a scanners audio are a couple of KB per second, a magnitude of thousand times less. It must be impossible to wear out a SD card in a scanner. It's just the quality that could differ and people writing reviews at Amazon state that their extreme cards fails just as often, and sometimes more often, than standard SD cards.

Sometimes you get a bad card and sometimes a good one. My HP-1 have been running 240s replay buffer for 10 years and sometimes manual recordings for days and I've had it at work and home and probably for an average of 5 hours a day and probably recorded 1/3 of that time. And I still use the same SD card that came with the HP-1. The SD card that came with the Whistler TRX-2 where a problem from the start and the scanner didn't work properly until I used another SD card.

That extreme SD card says it has a life span of up to 5,000 hours of HD recording and I believe standard SD cards are usually 2,000 hours.
With audio recording it should be a guarantee of 2 million hours of recording time. That's over 200 years of constant audio recording.
It's not the memory cells that wear out by excessive number of write cycles in a SD card in scanners.

/Ubbe

 

[WB2UZR]

Will I need to format the card before use? Or will the "clear user data" function be all I need to do?

 

[jonwienke]

Clear User Data is usually sufficient.

 

[WB2UZR]

Thanks again!

 

[WB2UZR]

Having trouble getting the new SD card to work now. When I plug the scanner into the PC, I get an SD card error, saying to remove power for a minute and try again, which does not work. The scanner isn't being recognized by the PC as usual. If I put the old card back in, it sets up as usual, but again with the screens you get when you first initialize the scanner (time zone zip code etc) If I try the clear user data with the old card, it shows a corrupted path error.
Any thoughts?

 

[kruser]

Do you have an external card reader to setup the card in before you put it back in the radio? That may allow it to work if there is some kind of issue going on with the physical USB interface or jack on your HP-2.
You can also use Sentinel to write everything back to the card even when it's in an external card reader after the new card is prepared.

 

[WB2UZR]

Do you have an external card reader to setup the card in before you put it back in the radio? That may allow it to work if there is some kind of issue going on with the physical USB interface or jack on your HP-2.
You can also use Sentinel to write everything back to the card even when it's in an external card reader after the new card is prepared.

No, I don't have an external reader, unfortunately. I did try another older SD card I had in my Dstar Handheld, and it did the same error. I have a couple of Chromebooks with an SD card slot, but cant run sentinel on them.

 

[fxdscon]

Having trouble getting the new SD card to work now. When I plug the scanner into the PC, I get an SD card error, saying to remove power for a minute and try again, which does not work.

Keep in mind that a brand new SD card (or a newly formatted card) will not work in your scanner until you use the "Clear User Data" function in Sentinel. SD cards from other devices will not work either, as they do not have the necessary files for the scanner to recognize the card.

Connect the scanner to your computer in the "Mass Storage" mode with the new SD card installed. Be sure you have installed a fresh set of batteries or that you are on AC power. You may have to connect your scanner to the computer first before turning the scanner on to get the scanner into Mass Storage mode.

When connected to your computer in mass storage mode, from the top menu in Sentinel, click "Home Patrol", then "clear user data", then check the box that says "display all drives". If the SD card is showing up there, select it and finish the "clear user data" process and then "write" to the scanner from Sentinel to restore your data, disconnect the scanner from the computer and let it re-boot.

.

 

[WB2UZR]

Keep in mind that a brand new SD card (or a newly formatted card) will not work in your scanner until you use the "Clear User Data" function in Sentinel. SD cards from other devices will not work either, as they do not have the necessary files for the scanner to recognize the card.

.

Understood. Unfortunately when I insert the new card, I get the SD card error, and the scanner shuts off. The PC doesnt recognize the scanner, and I can't perform the "clear user data" function. I am able to see files on the card when it's in the chromebook. My old card will allow the PC to see the scanner, but it shows a "database is corrupt, illegal characters in path" error. If I try to write to the scanner with the old card in I get a "file or directory is corrupted and unreadable" error.

 

[jonwienke]

You'll need to get a card reader for your Windows machine, so you can update the card without having to use the scanner.

 

[WB2UZR]

You'll need to get a card reader for your Windows machine, so you can update the card without having to use the scanner.

Seems like that will be the case. I was able to reformat the old card via the scanner, using SD card formatter, I was able to clear use data and wrote to the scanner and seems to work for now anyway. I am still unable to perform the clear data function with the new card, since the scanner still isn't recognized by the PC with the new card in. I guess it's off to Amazon for an external reader, or mayne Walmart, I should have one anyway.

 

[fxdscon]

Understood. Unfortunately when I insert the new card, I get the SD card error, and the scanner shuts off.

Put the new SD card in the scanner, and connect the scanner to the computer BEFORE you turn on the scanner. Once connected to the computer, then turn the scanner on.... it should go into the mass storage mode and show up in Sentinel when you start the "Clear User Data" function and check the box there that says "Display All Drives".

.

 

[WB2UZR]

Put the new SD card in the scanner, and connect the scanner to the computer BEFORE you turn on the scanner. Once connected to the computer, then turn the scanner on.... it should go into the mass storage mode and show up in Sentinel when you start the "Clear User Data" function and check the box there that says "Display All Drives".

.

I should have been more clear, that's the way I have been doing it, but I get the SD card file error, and the scanner never connects to the computer, the screen just goes blank. You cant see the card as an E drive in windows file manager either of course. It just never connects to let me connect in mass storage mode.