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Author Topic: microSD card stuck in 'read-only'  (Read 1727 times)

Offline robman501a

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microSD card stuck in 'read-only'
« on: January 31, 2018, 05:38:38 AM »
Hello,
I have just recently flashed on the latest version of piCore to my microSD to give it a try but it put the card in 'write protect' mode and I am unable to put it back to normal 'rw mode'.
I've tried everything I could with diskpart on the Windows side, nothing but errors there "I/O errors" and Linux was unable to write the changes made by fdisk to the card.
The card is still new and so is my card reader adapter, there is nothing wrong with the hardware and I never changed the switch over to write protect mode.

Offline robman501a

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Re: microSD card stuck in 'read-only'
« Reply #1 on: January 31, 2018, 03:24:33 PM »
It looks like the card just decided to fail at the same time I flashed the piCore image on.
Oh well... time to go shopping. These things are cheap anyway.  :)

Offline patrikg

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Re: microSD card stuck in 'read-only'
« Reply #2 on: January 31, 2018, 10:22:53 PM »
Why not test first with the formatter.

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/


Offline PDP-8

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Re: microSD card stuck in 'read-only'
« Reply #3 on: January 31, 2018, 10:36:09 PM »
patrikg - that's what I was thinking too ...

Weird timing - I just got an education about these cards, probably more than I want to know from tkaiser over at the armbian forum.  I've never seen that kind of detail about them before:

https://forum.armbian.com/topic/954-sd-card-performance/

Actual measurements, other than just mere speed of r/w, and some good advice for those seeking the longest longevity.

The quick gist of it is that from now on, I'll be using quality cards with 32gb or higher capacities with piCore, because of the additional spare remapping capabilities, AND at 32gb or higher, many cards may have more than one controller on board to manage it.  If I feel frisky, perhaps incorporating the zfs filesystem might be in order, but I'll have to do more research to see if it actually fits the "use case" we have with tc/picore/dcore.

I think that piCore, like Armbian, is kind to sd cards, -if not more so- due to running in onboot/ram AND saving all the user data as just one mydata.tgz file to transfer.  Lovin' 'core all the more!

« Last Edit: January 31, 2018, 11:08:28 PM by PDP-8 »
That's a UNIX book! - cool  -- Garth

Offline robman501a

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Re: microSD card stuck in 'read-only'
« Reply #4 on: February 01, 2018, 07:54:18 AM »
Why not test first with the formatter.

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

I did and it failed. I also tried diskpart, gparted, fdisk and a few low level format tools. I've been working hard on it for awhile now with Windows and Linux and got the same results. Also, I tried formatting it with the android tablet and no luck.

Offline robman501a

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Re: microSD card stuck in 'read-only'
« Reply #5 on: February 02, 2018, 11:58:29 AM »
Okay, case closed.
I emailed my situation to CanaKit and explained my situation and they are sending me a replacement card for free.  :) :)