BCD436HP/BCD536HP: SD card file error on Bcd436HP

[Etannhauser]

Good evening all,
I was trying to upload a favorites list onto the scanner tonight with Sentinel. At first the program seemed to hang while trying to contact the database. I force quit the program and restarted that and my scanner. Now, on my scanner I have the following "Sd file card error, Use Sentinel "clear user date" operation to initialize sd card". When I goto the tools section and choose the Clear user data option, nothing shows up. It wont even search for the sd card, and the scanner itself wont let me go past that error screen. Did I blow up the sd card on the scanner when I rebooted the program or am I missing something. Can I use another sd card in the scanner and if so, isn't there information on that card that the scanner needs and how/where do I get that? I got all excited to work on this tonight and now I hit this bump in the road. Thanks in advance for all the help.
Ed

 

[dave3825]

When I goto the tools section and choose the Clear user data option, nothing shows up. It wont even search for the sd card,

Clear User Data is not under the Tools Section. But while you are there, do you have the BCDx36HP checked as the target model?





Clear User Data is under Scanner. Do you have Display All Drives checked? Does your PC make any noice when car reader is plugged in? Have you trued different USB ports?

 

[Etannhauser]

Thanks for the help. I did not have the all drives option checked and then it popped up when I had it in the card reader itself. I made a back up copy of it and used a new sim card with that info on there and now it doesn't give me the screen error. It didnt aske me about formatting the card before I copied the information to the card, but it seems to be reading it, but I was wondering if there is any other information that should be on the card that I possibly missed? Thanks again, I appreciate the advice Dave!

 

[ofd8001]

Formatting a SD card is not something done by Sentinel. Uniden suggests use of the SD Formatter Utility. There are those who might suggest this as cumbersome, but I do a new card this way:

Format the SD card using SD Formatter utility
Use Sentinel to Clear User Data
Write my Favorites to the scanner along with Force Write Database.

This goes much faster if you can do it in a card reader on the computer. However, once in a portable scanner, the SD card holders are fussy, so it's best to have them in the scanner.

 

[Ubbe]

I would also recommend when using SD Formatter to choose Full erase with overwrite. That will write to each memory cell to check that it isn't bad and if it finds a suspected cell it will mark it as bad and not be used again.

/Ubbe