Technical reason why the G1W series doesn’t work with some SD Cards

[Kenco]

Anyone found the Technical reason why the G1W series doesn’t work with some SD Cards.

My G1W has worked flawlessly for 11 Months on a 16GB Transcend, decided to upgrade to a Transcend 32GB (also a Sandisk 32GB) but reports Card Error in a split Second on both at power up, i’ve done several tests with different types of Software and theres no appreciable differences, all Cards are good Class 10. ( all cards work perfectly on 2 different Camcorders ).

Even copied the contents of the 16GB Card to the other two. 32GB cards to check if the problem is creating a new DCM Folder at the beginning but still fail just the same.

There should be a good technical reason from the Manufacturers as to why they are so finicky,

Great Car Cam though.

 

[CheckYourLights]

jokiin has mentioned something to the effect of the way the I/O works in some of the cards. I'm not a very technical person I'm sure he can describe it better.

 

[Kenco]

jokiin has mentioned something to the effect of the way the I/O works in some of the cards. I'm not a very technical person I'm sure he can describe it better.

Agree about the I/O recognition due to it being almost instantaneous at Power Up however not being a problem on other HD Cams there should be a solution to resolve it on this very popular Cam (F/Ware ~ S/Ware Update) surely.

 

[jokiin]

there are multiple versions of this same looking camera, not all are created equally

 

[Kenco]

there are multiple versions of this same looking camera, not all are created equally

Well not the Technical answer to the problem but i appreciate your reply of course ,
Seems to be a Chipset problem as the B40/A118 Cam also has similar reports on the Forum so the Manufacturers should be taking notice to address and resolve this problem.
Like many others i'll soon be payed out as much in Cards as the price of the Cam !!

EDIT.
Just looked at the Mobius Cam which also uses the same Chipset and not seeing any problems with SD Cards (more confused). Lol.

 

[reverend]

The Mobius has had a lot of work done to improve card compatibility with various firmwares which is highly unlikely to be in the G1W series.

It's been said that the Mobius uses a slightly different variant of the Novatek chip - the firmware reports 96650 and 96611.

The Sandisk Ultra cards I have are slow at random IO which is what happens when a card loops - ie delete a file, the file system table needs updating and then the camera needs to work out what clusters are now free. The Sandisk Ultra cards are an order of magnitude slower at random IO than other cards on the market. It wouldn't surprise me if they intentionally kill performance in the controller software of the Ultra cards which are aimed at phones these days to push the Extreme line they have which offer much better performance.

If you use something like IOMeter or Crystal Disk Mark you can see the different performances between various cards. I've got a stack of MicroSD cards here and one day I'll get around to comparing them all.

A lot of the time the cards are written to sequentially which for dashcam use is fine - it's when they start looping and you see file system fragmentation that separates the men from the boys (and also why a format gets some people working happily for a while.)

 

[jokiin]

Well not the Technical answer to the problem but i appreciate your reply of course ,

different solution companies doing the various versions, some are done well, some not so well

Just looked at the Mobius Cam which also uses the same Chipset and not seeing any problems with SD Cards (more confused). Lol.

good example of done well

 

[Kenco]

The Mobius has had a lot of work done to improve card compatibility with various firmwares which is highly unlikely to be in the G1W series.

It's been said that the Mobius uses a slightly different variant of the Novatek chip - the firmware reports 96650 and 96611.

The Sandisk Ultra cards I have are slow at random IO which is what happens when a card loops - ie delete a file, the file system table needs updating and then the camera needs to work out what clusters are now free. The Sandisk Ultra cards are an order of magnitude slower at random IO than other cards on the market. It wouldn't surprise me if they intentionally kill performance in the controller software of the Ultra cards which are aimed at phones these days to push the Extreme line they have which offer much better performance.

If you use something like IOMeter or Crystal Disk Mark you can see the different performances between various cards. I've got a stack of MicroSD cards here and one day I'll get around to comparing them all.

A lot of the time the cards are written to sequentially which for dashcam use is fine - it's when they start looping and you see file system fragmentation that separates the men from the boys (and also why a format gets some people working happily for a while.)

 

[Kenco]

Thanks Reverend & Jokin ~ Yes i think we can all agree its a I/O problem,
what peed me off was the Cam works fine (11 Months ) on my Transcend 16GB Card so updated to a Transcend 32GB and recd. Card Error this is usually due to the card of course,
Ive ran most of the test available ( must try IOmeter ) and looking at Sequential , Random and Data sizes on both 16Gb & 32GB Class 10 Cards graphs etc. but none of the tests gave a obvious problem to the cause of the 32Gb card failure, also both would work perfectly in 2 other Cams (1 runs at 15mbs ) slightly higher than the G1W.
And yes the Mobius has had many major firmware updates also quite a few other Cams are using the same Chipset as the G1W but most are not as finicky from what ive seen.
So to sum up i wish the R&D of the Manufacturers would look at firmware updates regarding Card problems on the excellent G1W series. ( i know some updates are available ) but none that address the Card Problems. ( ive just ordered a Samsung 32GB class 6 Card ~ fingers crossed)
Regards K.

 

[Kenco]

Glad to say the Samsung genuine 32GB Card (Korea) works perfectly.
Ebay seller 247clix as sold over 13,000 with very good Feedback. ~ K.

 

[bebop]

Just to let everybody know, my G1W-C is currently successfully recording on a class 10, 32GB, Lexar High-Performance microSDHC UHS-I card (model no. 633x), official web page: http://www.lexar.com/microsd-633x?category=5778 .
The dashcam itself formatted it as a 29,8 GB FAT32 drive.

 

[Kenco]

Glad to say the Samsung genuine 32GB Card (Korea) works perfectly.
Ebay seller 247clix as sold over 13,000 with very good Feedback. ~ K.

Update.
Re - my 32GB Class 10 Transcend Card upgrade that gave me a immediate Card Error on my G1w (Battery Model) , Ive since had the chance to try it in my Brothers G1W - C. camera and it works perfectly !!
So i can now agree with Jokins reply that same type cameras are not all created equally . So in hindsight we shouldn't always blame the actual Memory Card.~ K.

 

[jokiin]

G1W there are seven different versions that I know of at last count

G1WC as far as I know there's at least two versions, I don't follow them closely though so perhaps there are more of these also

One thing is certain, they are not all created equally

 

[efcm]

Jokiin how its possible to the end customer figure out witch ones have the "correct" firmware?

Its already hard to find the real ones in the middle of the fake ones.

 

[jokiin]

They're similar enough that the firmware from one generally runs on the others, component spec and quality is different enough though that the end result is not always equal, which hardware and firmware is the best combo is very hard to say unfortunately