SG9665GC V3 keeps "reformatting" itself periodically & endlessly?

[Al Guderian]

SG9665GC v3 2017 edition, purchased March 3. Card is SanDisk High Endurance Video Monitoring Card with Adapter 32GB (SDSDQQ-032G-G46A)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/B00V5Q1K3O
Not sure where the original card is right now.

 

[Street Guardian USA]

Did you format the card in the camera at least one time? You need to do that at least once if you just popped it in factory fresh without formatting.

 

[Al Guderian]

I did indeed, first thing upon installing it. And it worked fine until mid-April, when it started doing this. If I turned off the car, sometimes it would continue, but most times it would stop. Still happens intermittently. Started doing it again today.

 

[Street Guardian USA]

Could be a faulty card. Some SanDisk had compatibility problems in the past but I thought the high endurance cards might be OK. We have Very little feedback on them so far though. Besides this thread I'm not aware of any other cases of this error happening.

 

[Al Guderian]

So which card should I be using?

 

[Street Guardian USA]

Transcend is the recommended brand.

Samsung EVO Select is also very good and the specs/prices are the current best bang for the buck vs quality.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/B06XX29S9Q

 

[Al Guderian]

Thanks!

 

[peterharvey]

Yesterday, another one of my SG9665GC's with the Sandisk 200 GB mSD card started to repeatedly boot up, boot up, boot up - endlessly playing the boot up melody.
I held down the reset button; it did nothing.
I pulled the power supply out, and it stopped.
I replugged the power supply, and it started booting up endlessly, endlessly playing the boot up melody.
I pulled the power plug out again.

I tried to bypass the Vico Power Plus, by plugging the GC directly into the cigarette lighter socket, but the repeated booting up still occurred.

Before I had a chance to fix my faulty first GC, my second GC started playing up in the exact same way!
I gave up.
I unplugged the micro USB power plug.

Thus, I have two faulty SG9665GC's; one V2, and the other one was V3.

Today, I tried it again, and it still failed.
Then I removed the Sandisk mSD card, and I notice that the boot up cycle stopped.
I put the mSD card back in, and the boot up cycle started again.

I then put the Sandisk 200 GB mSD card into the desktop PC, and did a quick format in ex-FAT.
I then put the formatted mSD card back into the GC.
The GC asked for a format, and I clicked down, and enter, and everything was all good.

I did this twin format process to the second GC, and all is good too...

 

[jokiin]

Card error is about the only situation that can cause that behaviour, formatting as you did back to defaults in the PC then formatting in the camera afterwards is the right approach and usually sorts things out

 

[Street Guardian USA]

It's possible the large Black Sandisk cards with Red writing might have some long term quirk we've yet to detect. The fact both your cameras behave the same way leads me to point the finger at the card.

Put your original included Transcend cards back in to test for a few days and see how that goes. (for starters and test purposes) We never bundle Sandisk cards since we're told they use a proprietary controller that doesn't follow the SD standards. I think their "High Endurance" cards are ok but they don't come in large sizes of course.

The 256GB Samsung EVO Select has been rock solid in my V3 for many months now. (and several customer I recommended they buy Large Samsung EVO Select cards are happy)

So again do some troubleshooting with different cards.

 

[peterharvey]

So far, i suspect that the only reason y this card error occurred is because i swapped the SanDisk 200 GB mSD between the GC V2 & GC V3 - without reformatting.

It couldn't be formatted inside the GC's after the swap, because i tried many times.

In the end, the secret is to format each card in a desktop PC first, and only then it could be formatted inside the swapped GC's.

 

[jokiin]

Best not to swap the cards between cameras as that has been known to trip things up

 

[peterharvey]

If I swap Sandisk 200 GB mSD cards between two different SG9665GC units, what I find is that the GC's struggle to reformat the micro SD cards, and thus the GC's continue to reboot themselves, continually playing the boot up melody.
However, if I remove the micro SD card and reformat in a PC, when I insert the newly formatted mSD cards into the swapped 9665GC's, the newly swapped dashcams reformat the "empty" 200 GB micro SD cards in just 1 second!
Thus, the GC's must have some sort of difficulty trying to reformat a fully filled Sandisk 200 GB micro SD card...

 

[Street Guardian USA]

Interesting, well It could have to do with the non-Standard proprietary controller Sandisk uses. Glad you have a work around and know not to swap cards now. I haven't experienced that problem with my 256GB Samsung EVO Select card and it bounces between GC's now and again. Card is full and I format.

 

[peterharvey]

Yes, like you say, it must have something to do with Sandisk's non-standard proprietary controller I guess, but thankfully I got around it...

 

[fishbert]

Yesterday, another one of my SG9665GC's with the Sandisk 200 GB mSD card started to repeatedly boot up, boot up, boot up - endlessly playing the boot up melody.
I held down the reset button; it did nothing.
I pulled the power supply out, and it stopped.
I replugged the power supply, and it started booting up endlessly, endlessly playing the boot up melody.
I pulled the power plug out again.

I tried to bypass the Vico Power Plus, by plugging the GC directly into the cigarette lighter socket, but the repeated booting up still occurred.

Before I had a chance to fix my faulty first GC, my second GC started playing up in the exact same way!
I gave up.
I unplugged the micro USB power plug.

Thus, I have two faulty SG9665GC's; one V2, and the other one was V3.

Today, I tried it again, and it still failed.
Then I removed the Sandisk mSD card, and I notice that the boot up cycle stopped.
I put the mSD card back in, and the boot up cycle started again.

I then put the Sandisk 200 GB mSD card into the desktop PC, and did a quick format in ex-FAT.
I then put the formatted mSD card back into the GC.
The GC asked for a format, and I clicked down, and enter, and everything was all good.

I did this twin format process to the second GC, and all is good too...

I had the exact same thing happen to me a week or two ago with my V3 and a 200GB card I've used without issue for 6 months in a V1.

Another issue I've seen is that, every once in a while, when the V3 starts up it'll ask to reformat the card. I don't notice this sometimes, and I think it just doesn't start recording ever in that case. Pair this with the rather dim recording light (on the V1 it was equally as bright as the power LED, not so on this V3), and I've driven for up to an hour without noticing it wasn't recording anything.

Sure, maybe my 200GB card is going bad; that's always possible. But it seems suspicious that all this has happened just weeks after switching to a V3 from a V1 that I'd been using the card in with zero issues for so long.

 

[jokiin]

.

Sure, maybe my 200GB card is going bad; that's always possible. But it seems suspicious that all this has happened just weeks after switching to a V3 from a V1 that I'd been using the card in with zero issues for so long.

did you reformat the card when you put it in the V3?

 

[peterharvey]

My experience.
Reformat your micro SD card ex-FAT on PC first, then reformat immediately in dash cam, and all will be good.

 

[fishbert]

did you reformat the card when you put it in the V3?

Yes, I did. Very cognizant of that.

Note: I edited my previous comment to strip out mention of missing video files. I found them in a hidden '.Trashes' folder on the drive. Not sure why formatting on the camera didn't get rid of that... but I'm glad my videos aren't lost.

Edit: Nope... check that... those files in the hidden '.Trashes' folder are all from last month. Apparently I haven't actually been recording any files to that memory card since April 30th.

My experience.
Reformat yo ex-FAT on PC first, then reformat immediately in dash cam, and all will be good.

Yes, I had to do that to get the constant rebooting to stop.

 

[jokiin]

Note: I edited my previous comment to strip out mention of missing video files. I found them in a hidden '.Trashes' folder on the drive. Not sure why formatting on the camera didn't get rid of that... but I'm glad my videos aren't lost.

ok, I take it you're a Mac user with a .Trashes folder? in which case formatting in the camera after you've had the card in the computer each time is a must