Dashcam keeps saying "check SD Card"

John8484

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Hi all , hope you all doing well.

I have had my dash cam for about a year or so ,
And suddenly today it started saying
"Check SD card"

Since I was parked for 2 days without turning my car engine On , and being that my camera is installed and using my cars battery 24/7 , I did have some problem in the morning with my cars battery not turning the engine on, so I unplugged the dash cam to see if that would help with turning my engine on and it indeed it helped. Once my car engine was on, I repluged my dash cam and as far as I know all went usual but then later in the day thats when it started saying check SD card.

I have tried to format the SD card thru the format button. Didn't help. I have taken out the card and put it back in. Didn't help.

I was trying to connect thru wifi to the app but it seems to me that the camera would turn on wifi and immediately turn it off automatically since there is no SD card or if the SD card is making problems.

My SD Card is the original SD card that came with the dash cam .

So I thought I would ask you guys of the wonderful community on here if there is anything you can advice me to do to get this issue solved.


Does blackvue provide warranty on those types of errors ? Would they send me a new card ?

What else can I try to do to get the issue fixed ?

Any advice would be really appreciated.

Sent from my SM-N975U1 using Tapatalk
 
Format in a computer if the camera won't. If it won't format in a computer, give up and buy a nice big High Endurance card.

Re warranty. Only BV will know that, so there is no point in speculating. Ask them. But don't hold your breath on them coughing up. Just do as above and if they do, then you have a spare to keep in the car.
 
Format in a computer if the camera won't.
Make sure that you do a FULL format.

By the way, you can get a nice little SD/Micro SD card format program for free for Windows or Mac created by the SD Association (SDA) because "It is strongly recommended to use the SD Memory Card Formatter to format SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards rather than using formatting tools provided with individual operating systems. In general, formatting tools provided with operating systems can format various storage media including SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards, but it may not be optimized for SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards and it may result in lower performance."


Also, as M8TJT said, it's always a good idea to have a spare or two cards in your car.
 
Using the SDformatter will reset the card to it's factory specs, which other programs may not do. I'd suggest doing that as the first step, then using h2testw freeware to check the card for functionality; choose the "write and verify" option. Based on card size and your computer performance that test may take some time, but it will find any bad sectors etc. Once that test shows a good card, do SD formatter again then also do an in-cam format and you should be fine till the card wears out.

Phil
 
Format in a computer if the camera won't. If it won't format in a computer, give up and buy a nice big High Endurance card.

Re warranty. Only BV will know that, so there is no point in speculating. Ask them. But don't hold your breath on them coughing up. Just do as above and if they do, then you have a spare to keep in the car.
Make sure that you do a FULL format.

By the way, you can get a nice little SD/Micro SD card format program for free for Windows or Mac created by the SD Association (SDA) because "It is strongly recommended to use the SD Memory Card Formatter to format SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards rather than using formatting tools provided with individual operating systems. In general, formatting tools provided with operating systems can format various storage media including SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards, but it may not be optimized for SD/SDHC/SDXC Cards and it may result in lower performance."


Also, as M8TJT said, it's always a good idea to have a spare or two cards in your car.
Using the SDformatter will reset the card to it's factory specs, which other programs may not do. I'd suggest doing that as the first step, then using h2testw freeware to check the card for functionality; choose the "write and verify" option. Based on card size and your computer performance that test may take some time, but it will find any bad sectors etc. Once that test shows a good card, do SD formatter again then also do an in-cam format and you should be fine till the card wears out.

Phil
Thanks all so much ! Your responses are greatly appreciated!

Being that I'm the opposite of a tech guy, I get confused pretty fast. As far as i understand from you all, I should do a hard format , and then try again.

However , I remember somewhere reading about configurations that after format it would erase the configurations that comes programmed with card, so after formatting or so would be the case with any new endurance card, I would have to download from blackvue some configuration program to re-program the card , is that true ? (Or is that what
Or I can just do a format and put it back into dashcam right away ?

As I said I'm soo not a tech guy, that I'm trying to make it as simple as possible for me to understand what to do.

Sent from my SM-N975U1 using Tapatalk
 
Using the SDformatter will reset the card to it's factory specs, which other programs may not do. I'd suggest doing that as the first step, then using h2testw freeware to check the card for functionality; choose the "write and verify" option. Based on card size and your computer performance that test may take some time, but it will find any bad sectors etc. Once that test shows a good card, do SD formatter again then also do an in-cam format and you should be fine till the card wears out.

Phil
Is " SDformatter" a third party program which I should download?

Sent from my SM-N975U1 using Tapatalk
 
Format in a computer if the camera won't. If it won't format in a computer, give up and buy a nice big High Endurance card.

Re warranty. Only BV will know that, so there is no point in speculating. Ask them. But don't hold your breath on them coughing up. Just do as above and if they do, then you have a spare to keep in the car.
The dashcam did say that the card was formatted successfully, it just didn't help with the issue.

Sent from my SM-N975U1 using Tapatalk
 
Is " SDformatter" a third party program which I should download?
Yes.
After formatting the card, the current camera settings will be copied FROM the 750 to the card. (It says something like 'Initialising SD card' when you switch on the cam.)
If you take the card out aof the cam, and change the settings on your computer, then when you re-insert the card, the new settings will be copied TO the 750.

You can also format the card using the Blackvue viewer program. I have always just used that and never mucked around with SDFormatter or any other third party formatter, or reformatting the card when in the camera.
 
Yes.
After formatting the card, the current camera settings will be copied FROM the 750 to the card. (It says something like 'Initialising SD card' when you switch on the cam.)
If you take the card out aof the cam, and change the settings on your computer, then when you re-insert the card, the new settings will be copied TO the 750.

You can also format the card using the Blackvue viewer program. I have always just used that and never mucked around with SDFormatter or any other third party formatter, or reformatting the card when in the camera.

Ok so if I got you right.

1. Even if I do a format and reinsert the card into the cam then the can will write the configurations to the card. So no need to worry about that.

2. If I use the blackvue program it will avoid everything and format and write by default the correct configurations.

Did I get it right?

If yes , how do i download the blackvuew viewer program? Just go to blackvue site and download it there , and then choose format card ?
 
NO. No.2 is wrong. After you formatted the card (Either in the viewer or elsewhere, it is now blank with no camera settings on it. The 'right' configuration is now only on your camera.

When you put the blank SD Card into the camera, the camera writes the settings to the card.

You can then, if you want to change the settings, remove the card from the cam, stick it into your computer, open the viewer, tweak the settings then put it back into the camera. The new settings will then be copied from the SD to the cam. (Or use the app.
 
NO. No.2 is wrong. After you formatted the card (Either in the viewer or elsewhere, it is now blank with no camera settings on it. The 'right' configuration is now only on your camera.

When you put the blank SD Card into the camera, the camera writes the settings to the card.

You can then, if you want to change the settings, remove the card from the cam, stick it into your computer, open the viewer, tweak the settings then put it back into the camera. The new settings will then be copied from the SD to the cam. (Or use the app.
Awesome. Will try to do this all as soon as I can and keep you posted. Thanks loads.
 
UPDATE:

I have downloaded the blackvuew viewer inserted
The card with the original blackvue USB adapter and tried to format and it kept giving me an error "format failed please check card:


I have tried to format thru the regular right clip option on the computer and it kept saying something like "this disk is write protected"

So I checked if the adapter is on lock mode and there wasn't even an option it should be locked or unlocked.

Further more when I tried to delete files manually thru the blackvuew player, it shows deleted. But when i take out the sd and put it back in it still shows all the clips that I supposedly deleted already.

Any idea what the issue is , and what I should do next ?
 
Is " SDformatter" a third party program which I should download?

Sent from my SM-N975U1 using Tapatalk

SDformatter is the official freeware of the SD Association, which is comprised of almost all of the SD card manufacturers in the world. You can find the info on this HERE\
It is safe to DL and run. My cheap W8.1 laptop runs it just fine, but I normally use another program so that I can set the file format to other systems and change the partition which SDformatter will not do.

It does seem that your card has failed- they do wear out in time. @M8TJT is very knowledgeable about this cam so I'll leave you two here and go back to watching from a (social) distance.

Phil
 
@M8TJT is very knowledgeable about this cam so I'll leave you two here and go back to watching from a (social) distance.

Agreed to that ! Thought ill wait to see what he says about it.

It's just weird to me that the original card shouldn't last for even a year.
 
...It's just weird to me that the original card shouldn't last for even a year.
It happens. Products have a given lifespan (expressed as Mean Time Between Failure - MTBF) and like everything there are good samples and bad samples. Say a light switch is rated at 100,000 cycles - most will go about 100,000, some will go 150,000 and a few will go 50,000. Memory cards are no different. Sounds like you may have ended up with one of the 50,000 cycle units.
 
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Yep. Card is knackered. Get a new one, but make sure it's a high endurance card (I have a mix of Samsung and at least one SanDisk in 64GB and 128GB sizes).
The bigger the card the better. Not necessarily because you can 'get more on them' (pretty pointless anyway) but because the write cycles are reduced. A card that's twice as big, in theory, and with everything else being equal, should last twice as long but don't cost twice as much.
I also keep a spare in both my car and my wife's. Two reasons. To cover the occasional "Check SD card" problem and if I need to preserve some video, I can swap the cards to make certain that I don't lose the video that I want to keep.

In my limited experience, the "Check SD card" problem is usually recoverable by formatting the card, but as you have found, not always. Indeed, I have had one occasion when my PC read the 'faulty' card 'as is' and a reformat revived it no prob.
 
Yep. Card is knackered. Get a new one, but make sure it's a high endurance card (I have a mix of Samsung and at least one SanDisk in 64GB and 128GB sizes).
The bigger the card the better. Not necessarily because you can 'get more on them' (pretty pointless anyway) but because the write cycles are reduced. A card that's twice as big, in theory, and with everything else being equal, should last twice as long but don't cost twice as much.
I also keep a spare in both my car and my wife's. Two reasons. To cover the occasional "Check SD card" problem and if I need to preserve some video, I can swap the cards to make certain that I don't lose the video that I want to keep.

In my limited experience, the "Check SD card" problem is usually recoverable by formatting the card, but as you have found, not always. Indeed, I have had one occasion when my PC read the 'faulty' card 'as is' and a reformat revived it no prob.
Got it. Thanks for the well written explanation! You should always be able to help others like that. And not be the one that needs help [emoji6].
 
Which one is rather recommended to get ?
The Samsung’s Pro Endurance or the Sandisk max endurance?
 
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