Which format for sd card?


JeFF

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Mine is formatted as FAT, and I think this is not recognised by the pandora?


So in which format does my sd card needs to bet? Ext?
 
Fat32 is fine and should be supported without issue in the Pandora. You can use just about any format you want to. I personally use EXT3 Non-Journaled.
 
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FAT32 is indeed supported. It's what I've been using on my cards ever since a series of problematic Pandora shut-downs caused it to corrupt my main SD Card (which was formerly formatted as ext2).


If you wish to use NTFS, you will need to install the Community Codec Pack first, though.
 
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That is what I use for my SD cards, NTFS, it is trivial getting Linux and OSX to recognize NTFS, usually easier than getting Windows to read Ext. NTFS doesn't have the file size limitations of FAT32 so that is why I use it.


@ Mindlord: Why non-journaled? I've seen this a few times when talking about file systems but never have read the reasoning behind it.
 
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ive heard people saying that journaling damages the memory over time, as it does a lot of read/write, thats why some dont like to use it on nand, sd,usb memory. i could be completely off here though
 
ive heard people saying that journaling damages the memory over time, as it does a lot of read/write, thats why some dont like to use it on nand, sd,usb memory. i could be completely off here though

The number of extra writes that the journal causes is not really a big issue, especially not with the SD controllers wear leveling. At least that is what I remember from the debian wiki page on installing to a EEEpc :p
 
No real reason for non-journaling. I chose to turn it off because it doesn't help me very much. EXT3 is a fraction faster than 2, and I didn't need the journal. As long as you cleanly unmount, the journal isn't going to offer much extra. I've read fair arguments on both sides of the wall, and I just decided to err on the side of caution.
 
I've had (before) poor experience with ext2 and ext3 fs's on SD; at the tiem we were hacking the firmware like mad (long ago) and so crashes were frequent (esp for me, I had extra issues than the other devs), and in the face of crashes, I found ext2 and ext3 would corrupt very quickly; FAT for all its flaws does tend to survive crashes pretty well .... and of course works with ay device you slap it into. (Also, after huge long writes of many files, a 'sync' operation takes significantly longer on e3 than e2 than fat; when I was resetting OSes onto SD 10 times a night (those were the days), waiting a couple minutes just for e3 to sync drove me nuts. So my experience is probably different than current, but I've just stuck to what worked :)


So I tend to always use fat32 on SD :p


jeff
 
I've had (before) poor experience with ext2 and ext3 fs's on SD; at the tiem we were hacking the firmware like mad (long ago) and so crashes were frequent (esp for me, I had extra issues than the other devs), and in the face of crashes, I found ext2 and ext3 would corrupt very quickly; FAT for all its flaws does tend to survive crashes pretty well .... and of course works with ay device you slap it into. (Also, after huge long writes of many files, a 'sync' operation takes significantly longer on e3 than e2 than fat; when I was resetting OSes onto SD 10 times a night (those were the days), waiting a couple minutes just for e3 to sync drove me nuts. So my experience is probably different than current, but I've just stuck to what worked :)


So I tend to always use fat32 on SD :p


jeff

Did you run fsck after every unclean unmount?
 
So, I'm getting weird behaviour (with Fat32).


I have 3 SDHC cards: 16G SDHC, 16G SDHC MicroSD, 8G SDHC MicroSD


I formatted them to Fat32 on Windows, and dragged across my pnd files


and roms.


The first day things seemed fine, but noticed the card wouldn't umount.


Then the weirdness kicked in. A rom that loaded one way wouldn't load the


next, then an app wouldn't load and so on.


dmesg was showing block errors.


So, I started trying other cards and slots.


This is the output I get now.


cat msd_slot1.txt (8Gb microsd in slot1 of the panda)


[19080.454864] mmc0: host does not support reading read-only switch. assuming write-enable.


[19080.463073] mmc0: new high speed SDHC card at address 88f7


[19080.469055] mmcblk0: mmc0:88f7 SU08G 7761920KiB


[19080.474029] mmcblk0: p1


[19080.962432] FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors


[19080.967193] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev mmcblk0.


[19081.128448] FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors


[19081.133209] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev mmcblk0.


removed:


[19186.180908] mmc0: card 88f7 removed


[19186.219940] FAT: Directory bread(block 8192) failed


[19186.224884] FAT: Directory bread(block 8193) failed


[19186.229827] FAT: Directory bread(block 8194) failed


[19186.234741] FAT: Directory bread(block 8195) failed


p$ cat sd_slot1.txt (16 full size SD in slot1)


[19243.985107] mmc0: host does not support reading read-only switch. assuming write-enable.


[19243.993286] mmc0: new high speed SDHC card at address b368


[19243.999298] mmcblk0: mmc0:b368 SDC 15756288KiB


[19244.004364] mmcblk0: p1


[19244.529113] FAT: invalid media value (0xb9)


[19244.533386] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev mmcblk0.


[19244.689636] FAT: invalid media value (0xb9)


[19244.693878] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev mmcblk0.


[19293.798065] mmc0: card b368 removed


[19293.818847] FAT: Directory bread(block 30776) failed


[19293.824035] FAT: Directory bread(block 30777) failed


[19293.829040] FAT: Directory bread(block 30778) failed


[19293.834136] FAT: Directory bread(block 30779) failed


[19293.839202] FAT: Directory bread(block 30780) failed


SD card into a usb 2.0 reader:


[ 1896.141448] usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci-omap and address 2


[ 1896.299957] usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice


[ 1896.322387] scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices


[ 1896.330047] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=14cd, idProduct=8123


[ 1896.336853] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=3, SerialNumber=2


[ 1896.344024] usb 1-2: Product: USB 2.0 SD MMC READER


[ 1896.349182] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: SDMMC MA8123


[ 1896.353759] usb 1-2: SerialNumber: 812320080329


[ 1896.358367] usb-storage: device found at 2


[ 1896.358367] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning


[ 1901.353485] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access USB 2.0 SD MMC Reader PQ


: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS


[ 1901.378723] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 31512576 512-byte hardware sectors (16134 MB)


[ 1901.386505] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off


[ 1901.391357] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00


[ 1901.391387] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through


[ 1901.485595] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 31512576 512-byte hardware sectors (16134 MB)


[ 1901.493377] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off


[ 1901.498229] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00


[ 1901.498229] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through


[ 1901.504394] sda: sda1


[ 1901.508575] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI removable disk


[ 1901.514526] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0


[ 1901.523986] usb-storage: device scan complete


[ 1902.185028] FAT: invalid media value (0xb9)


[ 1902.189300] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sda.


[ 1902.351013] FAT: invalid media value (0xb9)


[ 1902.355285] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sda.


It does seem like the cards are corrupting.


So I used the HP USB format tool (will try the panasonic one next)


to format my SD16 again, then on the PC ran h2testw_1.4 on it.


It found no errors and wrote 16Gb of data and verified.


I am getting the same symptoms on all 3 cards, and all are


supposedly reputable cards. I can't find any problems on the PC.


I might try a Ubunutu comparison later, but most of time I


am using Windows PCs, so want to be able to use stock FAT formats


to interchange data.


ID
 
So, I'm getting weird behaviour (with Fat32).


I have 3 SDHC cards: 16G SDHC, 16G SDHC MicroSD, 8G SDHC MicroSD


I formatted them to Fat32 on Windows, and dragged across my pnd files


and roms.


The first day things seemed fine, but noticed the card wouldn't umount.


Then the weirdness kicked in. A rom that loaded one way wouldn't load the


next, then an app wouldn't load and so on.


dmesg was showing block errors.


So, I started trying other cards and slots.


This is the output I get now.


cat msd_slot1.txt (8Gb microsd in slot1 of the panda)


[19080.454864] mmc0: host does not support reading read-only switch. assuming write-enable.


[19080.463073] mmc0: new high speed SDHC card at address 88f7


[19080.469055] mmcblk0: mmc0:88f7 SU08G 7761920KiB


[19080.474029] mmcblk0: p1


[19080.962432] FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors


[19080.967193] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev mmcblk0.


[19081.128448] FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors


[19081.133209] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev mmcblk0.


removed:


[19186.180908] mmc0: card 88f7 removed


[19186.219940] FAT: Directory bread(block 8192) failed


[19186.224884] FAT: Directory bread(block 8193) failed


[19186.229827] FAT: Directory bread(block 8194) failed


[19186.234741] FAT: Directory bread(block 8195) failed


p$ cat sd_slot1.txt (16 full size SD in slot1)


[19243.985107] mmc0: host does not support reading read-only switch. assuming write-enable.


[19243.993286] mmc0: new high speed SDHC card at address b368


[19243.999298] mmcblk0: mmc0:b368 SDC 15756288KiB


[19244.004364] mmcblk0: p1


[19244.529113] FAT: invalid media value (0xb9)


[19244.533386] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev mmcblk0.


[19244.689636] FAT: invalid media value (0xb9)


[19244.693878] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev mmcblk0.


[19293.798065] mmc0: card b368 removed


[19293.818847] FAT: Directory bread(block 30776) failed


[19293.824035] FAT: Directory bread(block 30777) failed


[19293.829040] FAT: Directory bread(block 30778) failed


[19293.834136] FAT: Directory bread(block 30779) failed


[19293.839202] FAT: Directory bread(block 30780) failed


SD card into a usb 2.0 reader:


[ 1896.141448] usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci-omap and address 2


[ 1896.299957] usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice


[ 1896.322387] scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices


[ 1896.330047] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=14cd, idProduct=8123


[ 1896.336853] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=3, SerialNumber=2


[ 1896.344024] usb 1-2: Product: USB 2.0 SD MMC READER


[ 1896.349182] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: SDMMC MA8123


[ 1896.353759] usb 1-2: SerialNumber: 812320080329


[ 1896.358367] usb-storage: device found at 2


[ 1896.358367] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning


[ 1901.353485] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access USB 2.0 SD MMC Reader PQ


: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS


[ 1901.378723] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 31512576 512-byte hardware sectors (16134 MB)


[ 1901.386505] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off


[ 1901.391357] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00


[ 1901.391387] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through


[ 1901.485595] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 31512576 512-byte hardware sectors (16134 MB)


[ 1901.493377] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off


[ 1901.498229] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00


[ 1901.498229] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through


[ 1901.504394] sda: sda1


[ 1901.508575] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI removable disk


[ 1901.514526] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0


[ 1901.523986] usb-storage: device scan complete


[ 1902.185028] FAT: invalid media value (0xb9)


[ 1902.189300] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sda.


[ 1902.351013] FAT: invalid media value (0xb9)


[ 1902.355285] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sda.


It does seem like the cards are corrupting.


So I used the HP USB format tool (will try the panasonic one next)


to format my SD16 again, then on the PC ran h2testw_1.4 on it.


It found no errors and wrote 16Gb of data and verified.


I am getting the same symptoms on all 3 cards, and all are


supposedly reputable cards. I can't find any problems on the PC.


I might try a Ubunutu comparison later, but most of time I


am using Windows PCs, so want to be able to use stock FAT formats


to interchange data.


ID


Just used the SDFormatter to fully erase and format the 16 SD card.


The card is blank and no errors on the PC


dmesg on insert:


[22539.719512] mmc0: host does not support reading read-only switch. assuming write-enable.


[22539.727691] mmc0: new high speed SDHC card at address b368


[22539.733703] mmcblk0: mmc0:b368 SDC 15756288KiB


[22539.738739] mmcblk0: p1


[22540.214111] FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors


[22540.218841] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev mmcblk0.


[22540.377593] FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors


[22540.382354] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev mmcblk0.


removal - cannot umount it from the gui - even though it is blank and unused


df


/dev/mmcblk0p1 15743520 32 15743488 0% /media/PANDORA1


pandora:~/dlogs$ sudo umount /media/PANDORA1


works though
 
Every file system has hiccups for me on SD except for EXT4 and NTFS. FAT32 has gotten corrupt for me before but mainly I steer clear of it because of it's limitations. EXT3 has gotten corrupt for me also. EXT4 takes up too much of the card though so I use NTFS. Does anyone know how to add NTFS to the Pandora? We need a guide. I don't have mine yet and have never used Ångström Linux.


Also, never use windows to format anything, when I have something always goes wrong, Linux is much much better for that. I'd install gparted in Ubuntu, just type it in on the software manager, and install that. I think it might come with NTFS, if not just search NTFS and install what makes sense. You can use OSX also once you install NTFS but I find OSX confusing on formating, there is no good gui for OSX to format media that I know of, when I use OSX I google on how to use the command line tool, sadly it is much easier.
 
Does anyone know how to add NTFS to the Pandora? We need a guide. I don't have mine yet and have never used Ångström Linux.
Here;


1: Download the Community Codec Pack PND, and copy it to an SD Card formatted as FAT32, ext2, or some other format that a fresh-out-of-the-box Pandora can read.


2: Create a directory in the root of the SD Card named pandora and make another one inside that named desktop (there is no need to create the other locations where the Pandora looks for PNDs at this time). Place the PND inside the desktop directory.


3: Insert the SD Card into the Pandora, and boot the Pandora. Once booted, you should see the Community Codec Pack on the desktop, ready to be run. Double-click it, and it will guide you through the rest of the process.


Note: You may need to reboot the Pandora (or log out and back in again) after the installation for the desired changes to take effect. I will note that I don't use NTFS, however, so I don't know this part for certain.


Basically, to sum up the whole thing in one sentence, it's: Download and run the Community Codec Pack from the app-store. :p
 
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^ Trivial. I'd try NTFS if you're having trouble with other file systems id10t. If the Pandora can't format the cards itself, which I'm sure it can but if you have an Ubuntu install I'd just use that. You could try windows to format to NTFS, heck it is a Microsoft file system, but like I said I've had things go corrupt that I've formated on windows but when done through Linux it works great on windows, Linux, and OSX without any corruption.


Anyway, all my SD cards are NTFS except for one that I use for a video camera, I think it has to be Fat32, and I use all three platforms to read my cards. The other nice thing about NTFS is any windows XP or higher machine can still read your cards so if you're at a friends house and want to share something you can do it. I think every Linux user I know has NTFS installed and for OSX there is a good project, I think under google code, just google 'NTFS OSX'.
 
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