Micro SDHC Woes

[Bartdude]

My Kobo Nia had a white screen of death (WSOD) event recently, and thanks to this forum, and particular thanks to user DNSB, I was able to recover the e-reader and get it working again.

I ended up having to replace the micro SDHC card, as the image write on the existing card failed repeatedly. I used USB Duplicator Image Writer as recommended in the instruction thread, and it failed after about 8 seconds.

I wanted to format the original disk as FAT32 so that I could do a disk scan and fix, but the Windows format command won't work on the non-FAT32 volumes.

I tried to remove the partitions from the original disk using both MiniTool Partition Wizard Free and Windows Diskpart. Both methods failed to remove the partitions

Diskpart just came up with a message that said the operation failed. MiniTool said that the operation was successful, but the original partitions were still showing on the graphic display. I ran both tools using Run As Administrator

Am I doing something wrong? Is there a different tool that would work? Or is the original SD card simply toast and should be sent to the e-waste bin? It seems that the card is recognized by Windows, and shows that most of the 16GB capacity should be available to use, so I would hate to toss it unnecessarily.

Thanks for any thoughts or suggestions.

[PeterT]

Try the SD Association tool --> https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/

Sent from my TB350FU using Tapatalk

[Bartdude]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Try the SD Association tool --> https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/

Sent from my TB350FU using Tapatalk

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately the formatting failed using this tool as well.

[DNSB]

That would suggest that the write life of your µSD card has expired and it has gone into a read only mode. You could create an image from it and write the image to a new µSD card if you wanted to preserve the serial number, etc. of your Nia.

For some advice, see MicroSD-card has become readonly on the Raspberry Pi forums.

[Bartdude]

Originally Posted by DNSB

That would suggest that the write life of your µSD card has expired and it has gone into a read only mode. You could create an image from it and write the image to a new µSD card if you wanted to preserve the serial number, etc. of your Nia.

For some advice, see MicroSD-card has become readonly on the Raspberry Pi forums.

Thanks for the reply. The disk does not show "read only mode" as active in Diskpart, but it certainly behaves as if write capability is disabled. Presumably I'll just have to toss it.

I don't think that I'll pursue creating an image. The image that you provided has got the e-reader back up and running, and I was able to transfer all of the books to the new card using copy/paste. I would be concerned about corruption from the original disk creating issues with the copied data.

Is having the serial number on the new image important? I only ever use Calibre for loading books, and I don't get my books from the Kobo site, so syncing isn't something I do except when setting up a new e-reader.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Bartdude

Thanks for the reply. The disk does not show "read only mode" as active in Diskpart, but it certainly behaves as if write capability is disabled. Presumably I'll just have to toss it.

That flag is set in the card's internal controller and is not visible from outside.

Originally Posted by Bartdude

I don't think that I'll pursue creating an image. The image that you provided has got the e-reader back up and running, and I was able to transfer all of the books to the new card using copy/paste. I would be concerned about corruption from the original disk creating issues with the copied data.

Is having the serial number on the new image important? I only ever use Calibre for loading books, and I don't get my books from the Kobo site, so syncing isn't something I do except when setting up a new e-reader.

The serial number isn't used for much unless you are part of Kobo's beta program. Some people want it just to keep their ereader as close to factory as possible. OTOH, the VCOM and waveform tables are also present in that area and some people have reported issues though more often after changing a screen.