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Has Anyone Else received a Flaky Element14 SD Card?

Kuya.Marc

The Product in Question

Element14's 4GB SD Card for Raspberry PiElement14's 4GB SD Card for Raspberry Pi

The Problem...

Very, very random, like once every 30 to 60 days, this SD Card goes into Read-Only mode without any switch toggle. In my case, this problem is too random to the point, as an experienced service technician, I can not reproduce the problem. The problems happens only with Element14's branded SD Card. My other SD Cards hasn't experienced a similar condition (yet).

The Solution...

Rewrite entire SD Card, twice, using the dcfldd command. Afterwards, the SD Card is fully usable for another 30 to 60 days.

The Situation...

Only if I can reproduce this problem, I would contact Element14's customer service to exchange the card. If I were to send it in, customer service will probably say there's nothing wrong with it.

Anyone Else experience this problem with their Element14 SD Card?

Marcos "Kuya Marc" Miranda

  • It's probably not the card that becomes read only. It's the linux root file system that becomes corrupt. At that moment, it's somehow mounted read only to allow fsck to check and repair it. I don't know if fsck checks and verifies it automatically.

    You can place the card in a reader and connect it to another linux pc to run fsck on it.

    A possible cause of such corruption is overclocking. One of the overclocking settings causes it.

    It's not with every Pi and not with every sd card. (So very hard to reproduce).

    Another thing that can corrupt the sd card is if you power cycle it without proper shutting down linux first.

  • in reply to Former Member

    I haven't thought about fsck... The situation happened twice to the Element14 4GB SD Card.

     

    After doing sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade for the same updates on repeated boots, is when I first noticed the problem. Data that is supposedly rewritten, vanishes on a reboot.

     

    As for power cycling, I always use sync && sudo sync before doing a sudo shutdown -h now.

     

    Overclocking? I stay at 800 MHz or 900 MHz. Power supply is 5VDC 1.5A.

     

    Currently, five (5) SD Cards are frequently being used on my Raspberry Pi. Only the Element14 SD Card enters a read-only stage on its own. SanDisk 4GB & 32GB and PQi 4GB never encountered a random read-only state.

     

    Traditionally, before the 1st occurance, I had kept the Element14 SD Card in a "preserved state" (kept in it's original blister package) for emergency purposes, while my SanDisk SD Cards were used daily and often, heavily.

     

    As for the Element14 SD Card, I suspect one of its transistors is flaky, though I can't prove it. The SD Card might smoke up if I do repeated, low-level formats, which is something I won't do. Since I'm planning on going to Singapore (soon), I might bring it to Element14 for an exchange. Despite what the website says (Made in Japan), mine says "Made in Korea".

     

    The original image of the Element14 SD Card was the August 4, 2012 build of Raspbian which I had received on October 24, 2012.

  • in reply to Kuya.Marc

    Marc,

      There have been various reports of SD card corruption.

    I don't think it only affects cards from Element14.

    Simon reported "a dozen corrupted SD cards".

       http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=28294

     

    It's difficult to tell if anyone is working on solving this.