Blackvue DR500GW wants to initialise the sd card

mollydog

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 1, 2013
Messages
929
Reaction score
621
Location
Cambridgeshire
Country
United Kingdom
to be honest, I've never got on with my DR500GW till I used Mio's firmware upgrade, then started to get better results, but still wasn't happy with this DVR. So last August I gave it to my daughter to put it in her car.

To put you in the picture, Due to illness, she hasn't used her car since beginning of last December (2014) so the Blackviue was taken inside the house and kept there till yesterday, when she returned to work, she came home from work and said that once she started the car instead of hearing "Blackvue for your safe driving" she hears "initialising the sd card"

So I took the Blackvue in to my home and sit it up on my 12v set up, and this is what happens:

Blue LED comes on for about 3 seconds, then the blue, orange and wifi LED stay on for about 2 seconds then the orange LED turns green and the other two go off and the voice says "initialising sd card" and the green LED stays on till power is taken off, (up to 4 hours was the longest I've left it) when I do disconnect the power from the Blackvue, the green LED will still be on for about a further 20 or so seconds before going out

so first thing I did was to format the 32gig sandisk micro sd card with SDFormatter and then move across from my computer Mio's firmware upgrade, I've been using since 2013, I think the version is 1.1.1aE

when the Blackvue was in my car, this is what I did every week, format/initialising the micro sd card then move across Mio's upgraded firmware and had been OK for the past year and a half. well last night is would only go through the process I mentioned above with the LED lights then would try to initialising the micro sd card, I've tried this process with two different 32gig sandisk micro sd cards and one 8gig Kingston micro sd card and all with the same result mentioned above, these cards were just fine when the Blackvue was in my car.


don't know if this clip will be of help


Any help would be most welcome
 
Last edited:
It needs at least 1 amp on a 12v supply or it will do stuff like that
 
thank you for this information Hilbilly, I'll give it another go in the daily drive and see how it performs
 
If you just formatted the sd card, it will say that when you power up the blackvue. It puts the folders and application back on the sd card. it should start recording again after that.
 
thank you for this info Shane, but I wasn’t using official firmware

when I first got hold of my DR500GW in Feb 2013, I was appalled at what low quality image the DR500GW produced considering it’s cost. I would compare its results to what low end Ebay stuff produced

Thank goodness there was a guy on here called Mio who produced a firmware upgrade that resulted in much better image quality.

as mentioned, it would say initialising the SD card then. . . . nothing, once I left it connected to the car over night and when I went to it in the morning, the green light was on, but nothing had changed or had been recorded

it went belly up a few weeks or a month or two after that, it's in a good place now, it sits on a shelf in the shed out of the way, a good reminder to me that some manufacturers come out with some large pork pies about their products and to read reviews first before parting with cash

expensive doesn’t always mean better, it didn’t in this case anyway
 
thank you for this info Shane, but I wasn’t using official firmware

when I first got hold of my DR500GW in Feb 2013, I was appalled at what low quality image the DR500GW produced considering it’s cost. I would compare its results to what low end Ebay stuff produced

Thank goodness there was a guy on here called Mio who produced a firmware upgrade that resulted in much better image quality.

as mentioned, it would say initialising the SD card then. . . . nothing, once I left it connected to the car over night and when I went to it in the morning, the green light was on, but nothing had changed or had been recorded

it went belly up a few weeks or a month or two after that, it's in a good place now, it sits on a shelf in the shed out of the way, a good reminder to me that some manufacturers come out with some large pork pies about their products and to read reviews first before parting with cash

expensive doesn’t always mean better, it didn’t in this case anyway
So let me ask.. Which camera will you go next. I have three of blackvues and needless to say I never could get the wifi to work correctly, it would always lag when trying to play a video on your phone, it would buffer every 4 seconds. My second one internal battery died and was going to cost me about 140.00 in shipping charges to ship it back to get it fixed, but did find a battery for it on ebay. Just waiting for it now...
 
in the end I ended up getting a mini 0805 for rear facing and a mini 0806 for forward facing

I had to send the first two mini 0805 back due to very bad/noticeable out of focusing issues, but the third one I received I am very pleased with the results I’m getting, as for reliability I’ve only had it for around 6 weeks or so, so still early days yet but image capture, I’m more than happy with my third on and it cost me only one third the cost of the Blackvie over 2 years ago

I mention about my 0805 here
https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/mini-0805-or-something-else.13508/
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top