Regarding A 4gb Sd Card.


Alys

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Sep 3, 2006
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Hiya, nice to meet you all. I'm sort of new here, having only received my 2X the other day.

Since this is kind of a complaint, and I'd rather not start posting on a negative note, I want to make clear that I really like the console. The joystick isn't nearly as bad as I thought it'd be, and it's been really nice to be able to play old games and watch videos on the bus to work.

However, while I have had no problems with the console itself, I've had a great deal of grief from the SD Card that I bought with it. At first, my card reader failed to recognise its 4GB capacity, and assigned it only somewhere in the region of 900MB. After much fiddling, though, I managed to get Windows 2000 to acknowledge its proper capacity.

I thought that it was fixed...but it turns out that, while Windows sees it as a 4GB card, I can only actually write to the first 900MB. Any files that exceed that capacity appear to write correctly, but simply disappear when I remove the card from my card reader. And, while 1GB of space is still enough for me to be able to make good use of the card, it would be nice if I could have access to the amount of space that I paid for. ^_^

I don't think that the card is broken, so the most obvious conclusion to me is that my card reader simply doesn't like cards of that capacity. But I figured that I'd ask here first, before scampering off to buy a new card reader, on the off chance that I've missed something really obvious. If my diagnosis was correct, then any recommendations as to a card reader that does handle 4GB cards would be appreciated. =)

Sorry if this is a question that's been asked before. And sorry about the considerable length of this post. Thank you to anyone who takes the time to read it and reply. ^_^
 
If Windows reads it as 4Gb and you can write such a quantity of data onto the SD card do so; remove the SD card from the read/writer then pop it back in, if Windows still sees 4Gb capacity, then it can't be your card reader, or the card; but it will be the fact that the GP2x isn't too happy with the brand of 4Gb card you are using; best to choose 1Gb cards ideally.

There are many threads about SD cards, I suggest you spend a bit of time and have a read, it will answer your query fully.

Anyway, welcome.
 
http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/SD_card_compatibility

I have the PQI 4GB card, which happened to be the cheapest one at Newegg. It's worked like a champ so far. I bought a SanDisk ImageMate 12 in 1 (card reader) from Best Buy without doing any research and it reads and writes to the card just fine. The GP2X reads the card just fine. Maybe I've been incredibly lucky, but I haven't had a single problem.
 
bacteria posted on Oct 6 2006 at 09:52 AM said:
If Windows reads it as 4Gb and you can write such a quantity of data onto the SD card do so; remove the SD card from the read/writer then pop it back in, if Windows still sees 4Gb capacity, then it can't be your card reader, or the card; but it will be the fact that the GP2x isn't too happy with the brand of 4Gb card you are using; best to choose 1Gb cards ideally.

Thanks for replying. My card isn't on either the compatible or incompatible lists. It's a RiData 4GB one that was shipped from Craig's site along with my 2X.

I don't think it's a matter of incompatibility with the GP2X, though. My problem is that, while Windows seems to allow me to write to the full capacity of the card, any data past the 900MB to 1GB mark gets cut off when the card is ejected. This remains true regardless of whether or not I use the card in my GP2X. I've tried writing more than 1GB of files to the card, ejecting it, and putting it straight back into the reader, and when I do so, every file that was written before the 1GB mark was reached is fine. Everything beyond that is just gone, as if I had never copied it over at all.

It's a really weird problem, and one that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere. I guess it could just be a broken card, but I wanted to post here first and make sure that I wasn't just being really stupid and overlooking something obvious.
 
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Alys posted on Oct 6 2006 at 12:44 PM said:
I don't think it's a matter of incompatibility with the GP2X, though. My problem is that, while Windows seems to allow me to write to the full capacity of the card, any data past the 900MB to 1GB mark gets cut off when the card is ejected. This remains true regardless of whether or not I use the card in my GP2X. I've tried writing more than 1GB of files to the card, ejecting it, and putting it straight back into the reader, and when I do so, every file that was written before the 1GB mark was reached is fine. Everything beyond that is just gone, as if I had never copied it over at all.

It could well be your card reader. I had an old one that only read up to a GB, so I just bought a new one (emailing the manufacturers to check it could write 2/4GB) and reformatted the card. Worked perfectly with windows and linux. If youre interested, this is the one I used --> http://www.amazon.co.uk/ByteStor-2-0-Multi...p;s=electronics

Good luck :)
 
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Oddly my $2 SD card reader which I got years ago from Hong Kong works with 4GB cards fine, yet my newer fancy £20 multi card reader does not.
 
justthisguy posted on Oct 6 2006 at 03:44 PM said:
It could well be your card reader. I had an old one that only read up to a GB, so I just bought a new one (emailing the manufacturers to check it could write 2/4GB) and reformatted the card. Worked perfectly with windows and linux. If youre interested, this is the one I used --> http://www.amazon.co.uk/ByteStor-2-0-Multi...p;s=electronics

Good luck :)

Ah, thanks a bunch. ^_^ Though I'm not entirely sure if it'll help matters, I think I might as well at least try ordering a reader that is verified to work with 4GB cards. If it turns out it was just my card, then I can always give the other reader to my father, as he doesn't have one for his digital camera. And at £7.34 it's not exactly a huge investment. I'd rather not return the card as 'dead' until I'm sure that that's actually the case.

It's my own fault, really. I don't know a great deal about SD cards, and I didn't realise that certain readers choked on higher capacity ones. I should've taken the time to better research it first. I was actually going to just buy a 2GB card, but I ended up getting greedy. ^_~ It's not a problem that requires immediate resolution, anyway, as 1GB is adequate, but it'd be nice to not have to cut down my music folder too severely.
 
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