Bad Nand


dejunai

Still Fresh
Joined
Jun 6, 2009
Messages
75
OK so I got my Wiz a little over a week ago...
I been working studiously on building the perfect compilation of Wiz stuff on a series of SD cards.
A card for MAME (2GB), a card for Emulators (8GB), a card for Movies (16GB)... etc...
I decided there was some stuff I wanted access to regardless of which SD card was in the Wiz.
So logically I thought ok I'll write it to the NAND, and do the INIs under the "Built In" Games.
I also realized I could switch between the SD and NAND in the music player, and noticed the Wiz
had created an empty directory on the NAND specifically for music. Kewl! I thro some a couple of
can't be without albums in there, and we'll be smokin'

Well about 2 mp3s later CRC32 like raindrop in a downpour.
Disconnected ( properly ) the Wiz from the system, reconnected it.
Windows wants to scan it for errors->"yes, please"->no problems->good.
Except I still can't write any more data to the NAND.
Hmmm.... I had already copied and archive every thing from GPH that was on the NAND.
So I figured I would format it. FAT, but hold on Windows wont format it.
Vista wont, XP wont, hey Linux wont.
So I simplly deleted every thing off the drive.
Everything seemed ok, I started to add music, and about 10 megs later CRC32 like da rain.

Disconnect, reconnect, windows wants to scan again, yes scan it, everything is fine. kewl
Hey where the phrack did all the GPH stuff come from? I guess delete dont work, wtf?

Delete everything again, run my own diskcheck on it, everything still gone, good time to
try and format again, quick format sucessful, how about a long format just to be sure?
Painfully slow format... ugh... come'on. R-U-KIDDING-ME 30 Minutes 50% done on a 892MB drive?
Wait that might be it... It's not 892MB at all... it's some crap a$$ piece of knockoff flash...
You know the kind... the kind that pretends to be much larger than it is...
Oh Joy... I guess I'll try that in about 30 minutes... DuH... er, Wait, er, Duh...

I'll write a perl script to fill the drive... yeah yeah that's what I'll do while I wait....
CODE
use File::Slurp;

$|=1;

$drive = $ARGV[0];
unless( $drive ) {
print " -- Test Which Drive? : ";
$drive = <STDIN>;
chomp( $drive );
}

$drive =~ s/.*(\w).*/$1/;
$expo = 2;

for $fill( "M", "K", "B" ) {
$byts = 1 + ( 1024**$expo );
$expo--;
$text = "x" x $byts;
$f = 0;

while( 1 ) {
$f++;
$f = padd( $f, 4 );
$file = $drive.":/fill.$fill\_$f\.txt";
eval { write_file( $file, $text ); }; last if( $@ );
print "$fill\+";
$bytes = $bytes + $byts;
}
print "$@\n";
}

$mb = int( $bytes / 1024 / 1024 );
$kb = int(( $bytes - ( $mb * 1024 * 1024 )) / 1024 );
$b = ( $bytes - ( $mb * 1024 * 1024 )) - ( $kb * 1024 );

print " -- Before Test Actual Available DriveSpace was:\n",
" == = [$mb]MB, [$kb]KB, and [$b]bytes = ==\n";
<STDIN>;

sub padd {
my $p = shift;
my $l = shift;

while( length( $p ) < $l ) { $p = "0".$p }
return( $p );
}


Oh, gee... look at that after 55 minutes of formating... Windows has decided....
"Windows was unable to complete the format"...
Grrrr...

Disconnect, Reconnect, Drive must be formatted before use? Come'On!...
Fine Format it... Quick Format -> Successful ( yeah right )...
Copy two small JPGs tot he now clean drive... open them from the drive...
I'll be dammn'd they opened... Ok, fine... Let's try the script....

13MB and change later: sysopen: Permission denied...
The NAND is only 13 Megs?!?!?!
But Wait there's more... The GPH files were more than that,
They were 58.2MB, and I could add about 10 MB after that...
Now that they are gone, I should be able to write nearly 70 MGs to the 892MB JunkNAND.

OK Lets byte the bullet, and Format it as NTFS, what could go wrong?...
"Windows was unable..."... ok that makes sense the Wiz SAMBA would likely have freaked.
But just for giggles since it's clearly ruined anyway, FAT32... Quick-> Success... Hmm, really?
Lets run a DiskCheck, uh run a DiskCheck, hello, why you just hanging there staring at me...
CHECK THE DISK!!!! Helloooooo... oh there you are, CheckDisk complete No Errors, Kewl....

Disconnect, Reconnect, Huh? Windows wants to scan the disk it just scanned? Well Ok...
No Errors, even better... uh, where did all those files on the drive come from?
Why is the drive FAT, and not the FAT32 we just did? You craze little Wiz... U'r such a kidder.
I guess format dont work... Now What... OK, I'll delete those pesky files...
Ok all Gone... DiskCheck for Giggles... Shocking No Errors...

Disconnect, Reconnect, wait for it, wait for it... hmm, Windows doesn't want to check the disk, kewl...
Run the Script, see how much space we have? ok lets do that...
Whoops lookie there, 13MB and change.

Ok, so Now what... The retail outlet seems VERY reluctant to replace the unit...
I have repeatedly re-imaged the unit back to shipping images.
I have been thru the above process at least three times..
I tried the firmware upgrade to 1.0.1 to see if it helped, nope!

Any advice would be helpful...
-DEJ

Be sure to join us next time, as we attempt to open the Wiz cut the NAND from the board and superglue fresh NAND onto the Wiz.
 
The WTF is that GPH format the user nand as VFAT, which doesn't handle bad blocks very well (at all).
 
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