When SD Cards turn bad 3

Dave · Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 8:47 pm Post subject: When SD Cards turn bad 3

Yep, as the title suggests, this is my third SD card that's gone turned to the dark side this year. It's an older 128mb card, and it's made in Japan where most of the higher quality SD cards are made.

How many of you are performing regular backups of your Storage Cards ? And by regular I mean weekly! And it doesn't just affect SD, it also affects Compact Flash, Mini-SD, XD, MMC, Memory Stick and even more so MicroDrive's!

If you are not already backing up your Storage Cards, make sure you get into a regular schedule of backing these up. Most of you already have the software available it's called Windows Explorer and ActiveSync. If you want a fast backup, just insert the card into a card reader attached to your PC and copy the data from drive to drive.

Thankfully I did have a very recent backup of this card, all I did was inserted it into my new Epson CX6600 scanner/printer it scanned in 4 pages, wrote to SD card (done it several times this way already and not had a problem), this time it wrote okay to the card, but when inserting it into the PC the FAT table is totally corrupted.

Take a look at the screenshots below:-

As you can see from the above screenshots, although Windows thinks the SD card is still 128mb in size, the files on the SD card total 7.68 GB!

Practice Safe Backups! This might sound like a cheesy 'Practice Safe Sex' school video, but it will really save you! Now I think it's time to seriously re-think replacing most of my SD cards, as it looks like they're gradually on their way out after having three starting to fail this year, it's starting to make me a little jittery!

geraint · Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 10:27 pm Post subject:

Do you use any particular software for doing backups, or do you simply drag-and-drop using Windoze Wink

Explorer?
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Dave · Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 7:18 am Post subject:

To backup the Pocket PC's main memory I use Sprite Backup which basically creates a self extracting zip in EXE form on my Storage Card. Once I've completed this (takes about 5 mins to run) I then usually just take the storage card out of the Pocket PC and put it into my card reader, and then use Windows Explorer, CTRL+A to select ALL directories, then EDIT | COPY, create a new directory on my external 250Gb Maxtor backup hard disk and then EDIT | PASTE into here. That way I usually have several backups (directories are created as dates) so I know when I did the backup.

If enough people request it I may create an all important "How to Backup your Pocket PC and Storage Card" article when time permits.

sarma · Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 8:41 am Post subject:

Why don't you use the built in backup in windows 2003 to back up the main memory to SD then use the card reader , etc?

PeteB · Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 1:05 pm Post subject: Backup with brief case

I find it convenient to set up a 'Briefcase' for each card on my PC hard drive and put them in turn into the card reader.

The first time you go into the brief case you have to copy all files and folders on the card into the briefcase. After that, just click the 'update all' option and any changed files will be updated.

If a card fails then put the new one in the reader and copy the files back.

The data gets further backed up when I backup my PC.

Regards, PeteB

Dave · Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 1:07 pm Post subject:

sarma · Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 4:08 pm Post subject:

No I am talking about the Windows 2003 program BackupRestore which I think is part of the Microsoft offering, at least it is on Medion PPC250. The program allows you to backup the whole machine to either flash memory (too small usually) or SD card. Works perfectly for me. I then simply transfer the SD card to my card reader and back it up on my PC. Admittedly it is a bit slow but I have not have a failure yet.

Dave · Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 7:47 pm Post subject:

Yes, Sprite Backup! AFAIK there's no other backup programs bundled.

http://www.spritesoftware.com/products/sprite_backup.html

Dilldog · Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 11:17 pm Post subject:

Did you try running StorageTools 1.9 (which you can get for $14.99 on Handango)?

Just wondered if it was corrupted or really toast. It's a useful program which you can run it as an trial.

kartracer · Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 12:23 am Post subject:

I had a couple of SD cards showing similar problems. I reformatted them in my iPaq and now make a point of never putting them into a card writer in a PC. They never play up if I only write to them them in the iPaq. The one I use the most is a cheapo 1GB Sandisk (yes the ones with the bad reputation), and it performs beautifully with either STPro V2 or CoPilot V5 in a 5550.
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Dave · Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 9:29 am Post subject:

mrg2003 · Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 1:44 pm Post subject: Media replcement

Buy from a vendor that offers a lifetime warranty, I have had some 256M cards replaced 5 times. I have some CF cards(4M) from 5 years ago that are still going strong.

Trevor_S · Occasional Visitor Joined: Aug 22, 2004 Posts: 3

Dave · Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 1:31 pm Post subject: Re: When SD Cards turn bad 3

wkendrvr · Occasional Visitor Joined: Aug 31, 2004 Posts: 1

I think I have a good idea of what is going on with the cards. I recently had a near miss with my Kingston 512. I specifically made sure that cached writes was turned off, but I noticed that changes that I made were not reflected on my card, and the card reader tried to access the card AFTER I removed it! If the card is being written to while it is being removed, bad this (such as what happened above) are common events. I now wait at least 5 min after my last action to the card before removing it.

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