PRS-T1 becomes unresponsive

[Br*ste1]

Fantastic - reader came back after 2 weeks from the repair service, and all they did was a factory reset, even though I told them I already did that.

Needless to say that the problem is still unfixed.

Originally Posted by entodoays

@Br*ste1 One possible solution is to use a modified procedure of the one I posted.

Basically, you could try:

1. backing up the unique part of your Reader using dd. I don't remember the exact command line. @Rupor can you give the command to use.

2. Backup a good PRS-T1 completely.
3. Restore the backup to the faulty one followed immediately by
4. a restore of the unique raw data block at the beginning copied in the first step.

When I had checked my PRS-T1 for bad blocks it found some here and there but my procedure made my Reader behave "as new".

That sounds great, but how can I do that from a windows machine?

[Section8]

Originally Posted by Br*ste1

Fantastic - reader came back after 2 weeks from the repair service, and all they did was a factory reset, even though I told them I already did that.

Needless to say that the problem is still unfixed.


That sounds great, but how can I do that from a windows machine?

You could try booting a Linux live CD (Knoppix, etc) and doing it from there.

[entodoays]

I agree with Section8, download Ubuntu and burn it to a DVD or create a live USB using pendrive linux.

[Br*ste1]

Originally Posted by entodoays

I agree with Section8, download Ubuntu and burn it to a DVD or create a live USB using pendrive linux.

Well I already banged my head against linux a couple of weeks ago (I have a netbook running an ubuntu-based OS) but eventually gave up on it.

Following your instructions here, I ran into the following issues:

After climbing over several obstacles, I finally gave up at the point that my disk application ("gnome disk utility") has no option to make a disc image. There is an icon with two cogs, but it's for benchmarking.

Also, if the image fails, like it did under windows, where do I get a working image from?

[Br*ste1]

UPDATE: Ok, I successfully backed up all 10 partitions. Is one of them the unique part of the reader (if yes, which one?), or would I have to do that separately?

[Br*ste1]

UPDATE 2: Following the advice I found on a different site, it attempted a full image backup using dd (is it really that simple?):

sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=/mybackup/PRST1.img

This resulted in the following error:
Input/output error
482172928 bytes (482 MB copied)

I guess at this point I really need to find out if this is a physical hardware error or not. After all, the reader is still under warranty, so in that case I should locate the blocks, tell Sony/support where they are (who are obviously not able to find out on their own), and demand replacement.

Or if it's not faulty hardware, then I should continue the path in this thread. I guess it's safe to say that I can skip another attempt to make a full image backup of my PRS-T1? So then it's probably back to the question where to get the image of a good PRS-T1...

[Just1Ghost]

Hello, I hope someone can help me.

I'm in a bind. I have my late twin Sister's Sony PRS-T1 eReader and inexplicably it stopped working (screen froze, but still has a third of the screen that works...?!?), and I'm having a MAJORLY hard time backing it up!!! I need to get everything off of it, if for no other reason than to keep the memory of what my Sister was reading/doing before she died, and perhaps even transferring the data to a new eReader, if I wind up even buying another...!?!

I've tried "Reader for PC" & "Calibre", but neither one seems to see her/my reader "enough" to copy ANY files off of it!!! (Reader for PC only sees a handful of the 400+ books, and Calibre doesn't even recognize it at all!!!) Beyond that, Windows XP Pro sees the device as three hard drives, none of them "accessible"...dbl-click = "please put disk in drive" (I'm paraphrasing)

Please help?

Thank you in advance.

-G-

[Br*ste1]

After waiting for over a week for replies, I finally tackled this myself, via:

sudo dd bs=512 if=/dev/sdb of=/mybackup/PRST1.img conv=noerror,notrunc,sync

I got only 7 errors, so a total of 3.5kb was uncopyable, but in the end I got my 2GB image file. After erasing the partition table, I tried to restore the image I made, but that failed at 482MB, this time, any of the options (sync,notrunc,noerror) didn't help.

And so I was screwed - or so I thought.

One interesting thing to note is that restoring ended at:
941745+0 records in
941744+0 records out
...with the counter being 1 record off.

Anyway, to my surprise I saw that, despite of 75% of the restore failing (?), in Gparted all the partitions were there again. So I downloaded partitions sdb 1,2,5,6,7 from entodoays' post and restored those without issues (using dd).

Then, just to see what happens, I ran:

sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=/mybackup/PRST1.img

...and to my utter surprise, it went through completely without errors.

Unplugged everything, restarted the reader, uploaded a couple of books, and the device still works. I can even read books!

I really have no clue why the device isn't actually bricked now, let alone if the original issues are fixed. Just posting these tidbits since they may be helpful to others.

[rupor]

Br*ste1, if my memory does not fail me all flash memory controllers implement on-write memory re-mapping algorithm called wear leveling and in addition most of them have over-provisioning. This may explain what you are observing...

[Br*ste1]

The problem with the reader freezing in sleep is there again, so I'm pretty much back to square one.

Tried backing up the reader again and it worked just fine, so the CRC error isn't back, but then I guess that wasn't the issue to begin with.

Only other thing that comes to mind: entodoays posted several partitions from a working reader (thanks!) but partitions 8-10 were missing. So provided that logic has anything to do with this, then possibly the problem is either with the system or the preload partition. Can anyone possibly post images of those (preferrably 1.0.05.11130 european)?

Thanks a bunch!

[entodoays]

OK, here you'll find the preload and system partitions.

If you already flashed a restore set, then the system partition would have been replaced with an original, so in that case I suspect it's the preload partition which is problematic.

If, on the other hand, after copying the partitions, you did not flash a restore set, you might solve the issue by doing so, should the problem be with the system partition.

[Br*ste1]

That is fantastic - appreciate the quick help.

I did flash the restore set as one of the first attempts to solve my problem, but it didn't help. But I guess it doesn't hurt replacing the system partition anyway.

[Br*ste1]

So here's what happens:

dd: writing to '/dev/sdb8': No space left on device
48449+0 records in
48448+0 records out
24805376 bytes (25 MB) copied, 49,5303 s, 501 kB/s

Copying sdb10 after that worked.

ANY ideas?

[Br*ste1]

So here's what happens:

dd: writing to '/dev/sdb8': No space left on device
48449+0 records in
48448+0 records out
24805376 bytes (25 MB) copied, 49,5303 s, 501 kB/s

Copying sdb10 after that worked.

ANY ideas?

[Br*ste1]

PS: When I click on the "preload" (=sdb8) device in file explorer, I get one of the following errors:

invalid argument error
input/output error

I suppose this isn't normal?

Also, gparted says that my preload partition is only 23.66 MiB, even though entodoay's partition image is almost 41 MiB. Here's my full partition table:

Partition: unallocated
File System: unallocated
Mount Point:
Label:
Size: 25 MiB
Used: -
Unused: -

Partition: /dev/sdb1
File System: ext4
Mount Point: /media/Recovery
Label: Recovery
Size: 10 MiB
Used: 3.58 MiB
Unused: 6.42 MiB

Partition: /dev/sdb2
File System: unknown
Mount Point: /media/Diag
Label: Diag
Size: 10 MiB
Used: -
Unused: -

Partition: /dev/sdb3
File System: extended
Mount Point:
Label:
Size: 378.19 MiB
Used: -
Unused: -

Partition: /dev/sdb5
File System: unknown
Mount Point: /media/fonts
Label: fonts
Size: 16.02 MiB
Used: -
Unused: -

Partition: /dev/sdb6
File System: ext2
Mount Point: /media/dictionaries
Label: dictionaries
Size: 152.37 MiB
Used: 152.35 MiB
Unused: 17 KiB

Partition: /dev/sdb7
File System: fat16
Mount Point: /media/SETTING
Label: SETTING
Size: 10.02 MiB
Used: 2.27 MiB
Unused: 7.76 MiB

Partition: /dev/sdb8
File System: ext2
Mount Point: /media/preload
Label: preload
Size: 23.66 MiB
Used: 23.65 MiB
Unused: 11 KiB

Partition: /dev/sdb9
File System: ext4
Mount Point: /media/data
Label: data
Size: 48.02 MiB
Used: 6.88 MiB
Unused: 41.15 MiB

Partition: /dev/sdb10
File System: ext2
Mount Point: /media/system
Label: system
Size: 128.02 MiB
Used: 120.02 MiB
Unused: 6 KiB

Partition: /dev/sdb4
File System: fat32
Mount Point: /media/READER
Label: READER
Size: 1.41 GiB
Used: 4.55 MiB
Unused: 1.41 GiB