SD card keeps becoming unformatted
I'm using the Cyton board and recording to a SanDisk 32GB SD card (formatted FAT32, Class 10 etc.) with ambulatory recording. It was working fine yesterday, but today, a few minutes after I start recording, it stops and when I check the SD card in my computer, it says it is unformatted and needs to be formatted. Is this a physical defect issue? I've reformatted the SD card a few times and tried it again, and the same thing happens each time.
Comments
Ssub, hi.
Is it possible you simply have a marginal / intermittent SD card?
https://www.google.com/search?q=fake+sandisk+micro+sd
William
Hi William,
I ran all the recommended diagnostics on the card (filled it up to max capacity, ran H2testw, etc.) and it passed all checks. Today, it no longer unformats itself, but it does stop recording prematurely (instead of 5 minute recording, stops at 1 min) and gets progressively shorter each time I try again (a few seconds, then 1 second, then a corrupt file).
I also bought a new 8GB microSD card (also passed all diagnostics) and it is working fine as of now (for 5 minute recording)... will see if the same thing happens again in a few days or with longer recording durations.
For more context, I've programmed the PROG button to start recording to SD card for ambulatory recording with blinking LED to indicate active recording.
Thanks!
Ssub
Did some more tests... everything was working fine for 5 minute recordings, but when I increase to 10 minute recordings, it worked the first time on the 8GB SD card and successive times the recordings became shorter (8 minutes, 1 minute, 2.5 minutes). This is similar to what happened before with the 32GB SD card. Is it something about increasing recording length? Sometimes if I give it a break (wait a few hours or a day or so), it gets better the next time (at least for 5 minute recording). But if I do several recordings back to back, I have this problem.
Have you tried emailing tech support: contact at openbci.com ?
Where are you purchasing your SD cards? What country? I assume you saw the previous search link, showing that SanDisk cards are faked in certain marketplaces, even some Amazon sellers. I've found that the most reliable and more recent manufacture date cards, are usually carried by what are called "electronics distributor" companies. Such as Mouser, Digikey, Newark, etc. These are large corporations that have no means for fake resellers to stock sub-standard components. They buy direct from the manufacturers and mostly sell their stocked items to other companies, not retail 'consumers'.
https://www.mouser.com/c/embedded-solutions/memory-data-storage/memory-modules-memory-cards/memory-cards/?m=SanDisk
Select the 'MicroSD Cards' in the Product column, then press Apply Filters. You can also sort by various columns.
It's remotely possible you have a failing SD card reader/writer device on the mainboard, but unlikely. When did you purchase the Cyton? Has it ever worked correctly? Do other functions work as expected?
William
I don't think the thread below is related to your issue. The bug mentioned there was only triggered because 'Aux' data (analog read mode), was being recorded simultaneously. And the internal byte counter was thrown off. This has since been repaired.
https://openbci.com/forum/index.php?p=/discussion/3235/sd-card-logging-interval-asked-for-not-reflected-in-recording
https://github.com/OpenBCI/OpenBCI_Cyton_Library/pull/102 [fixed in firmware]
After A LOT of testing, I figured out the issue was a bad LiPo battery. Whew!