Bad memory on Kobo

[BensonBear]

Think I have to return my Kobo of nearly one month if they will take it back at Best Buy.

I have had many many problems with the very flaky software and poorly document interfaces and development tools but the most recent appears to be that the internal flash memory has become defective. After various innocuous operations the database was reported in the nickel output as being corrupted, and then the log I had it create was itself corrupted. I could not get things working again without an entire factory reset.

I could not always unmount the dos partition to check it for errors, despite killing nickel and not finding any other program that was accessing it. However sometimes I could, and it reported various errors, which it seemed to be able to fix. Also the dosfsck on my desktop system which I could run without mounting the filesystem would detect the same errors and it too could fix them.

But new errors quickly cropped up, just while attempting to read a book.

So I wiped out the file system on the dos partition and created another one. Things chugged along while I factory reset, installed 1.9.17 firmware, tweaks, content, fonts. Came up okay.

However, dosfsck reveals after this that the boot record and its backup do not match. That in the past was the first error that typically existed before the whole thing started looking bad.

The only explanation seems to be faulty flash memory, unless anyone else has any other idea in a day, I am going to take it back if I can. Given that I started from the beginning with a totally reformatted file system, and still got errors very soon, it seems unlikely to be software.

Not sure if I will get another despite being quite eager to see if I can get done what I was trying to.

Update: after this checking, read a bit of a book, went in and checked again, my desktop dosfsck finds error in KoboReader.sqlite, and indeed sqlite3 command line finds that it is malformed. Hardly anything was done to anything in the meantime.

[ottdmk]

I'd definitely try for a replacement. Sounds like a defective unit to me.

[PeterT]

Well in all honesty, I really doubt that Kobo intends you to hack to the extent that you have been...

[BensonBear]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Well in all honesty, I really doubt that Kobo intends you to hack to the extent that you have been...

Probably not, but I don't see how anything I have been doing would corrupt the file system at the level of the FAT table. I am using only OS certified ways of accessing the file system, and also it happened even on a pristine new file system and a factory reset Kobo, updated straightforwardly to the newest firmware.

However, I am thinking now there may be some problem with my usb system on my desktop. It has shown a couple of other peculiarities although no other usb flash devices have been harmed. I can't figure out how to diagnose this with any degree of certainty.

[BensonBear]

I have tested the flash memory extensively and found that there are no bad blocks anywhere on it that can be detected. Also, I used it altering the file system a great deal for a couple of days with heavy use through telnet and ftp only with no problems.

Not sure who or what to blame for the apparent USB problem. The linux version on my desktop os (Fedora 15) definitely has problems with USB from time to time, not being able to safely power it down. The Kde Dolphin file manager also has a bug whereby it says "safe to remove" when in fact it has received an unreported error message that the removal had failed. In this case it has unmounted, but it has not powered down and ejected. In theory I think one should be able to remove without an eject, but empirically, apparently not. (I mean, the OS should have completed all its buffering and stopped all other legitimate access to the drive before it unmounts. Obviously if one is writing the drive other than through the file system, one could cause problems after an unmount, but otherwise, I would have thought not).