Corrupted SD card?

[Hammer2001]

I’ve just installed a new A129 Plus Duo in my car after using a Nextbase dash cam for the last 7 years. The install went fine and the camera seemed to be working ok. I was able to connect it ok to the app on my phone and view the clips while in the car.
After a few trips in day and night time conditions I took out the SD card to check the footage on my PC. Daytime footage was good, but I was very disappointed in the night footage, very noisy and grainy and not as good as clips from this camera I have seen online. I checked forums and picked up some suggestions to change in the settings, so put the sd card back in the camera and changed the settings and have done a few more trips.

So today when I took the sd card out again to look at them on the PC, I found the card seems to be corrupted. There are no video files in the DCIM\Movies folder, only one file named USB??????. (Can’t remember the exact name).

The camera appeared to be recording ok, and there was no format warnings. The SD card is a brand new Sandisk 256GB high endurance card.
I found some other forum threads with a similar problem, and they suggest a corrupted card.

Is it wrong to take the card out to view on a PC, does this action corrupt the card?
Should I always reformat the card in the dash cam after using it on a PC.

I never had any issues doing this with the old Nextbase cam.
But if I can’t trust the cam to record the files then it’s not worth having.

Any advice on this would be much appreciated.

 

[CaptureYourAction]

Are you shutting off the camera before removing the card?
It’s good practice to format the card in the camera anytime it has been used in another device.

 

[Hammer2001]

Are you shutting off the camera before removing the card?
It’s good practice to format the card in the camera anytime it has been used in another device.

I’m not actively shutting the camera off myself, just switching off the car which kills power to the camera. I’ve waited until all the lights go out on the camera before removing the card. Is that ok or do I actively have to switch it off with a button on the camera?

As I say the first time the files were fine on the pc, just the second time everything has gone.

I notice in the manual it says to remove the camera and connect that to the pc to read the files. Is that the proper way to do it?

A bit inconvenient , and seeing as Viofo supply a card reader with the camera, I’d assume it was ok to remove the card?

I’ll reformat the card in the camera and try again, and then reformat it each time when reinserting it and see if it stops the issue.

 

[CaptureYourAction]

As long as the camera is off when you remove the card, then it doesn’t matter.

Using the card reader on you PC is the best way of viewing the files.

Hopefully formatting in the camera will fix the issue.

 

[Hammer2001]

I've still been having issues with my Sandisk 256GB High Endurance card.
I thought I'd solved the problem by always formatting the card in the camera whenever it has been removed.
It seemed to do the trick, but yesterday I took the card out again after a few weeks to copy the files to my PC to check the quality of the footage.
When connected to the PC the video files list and directory structure looked fine in windows explorer, but when copying the files an error came up saying something like "volume has changed, cannot copy files"
When I looked at the contents of the card again only one file was shown name USB?????? again. So the card was corrupted again.

I've just run a full H2testw test on the card and it has thrown up errors this time (previously it had passed) See the test log below.
Also do the speeds look correct or do you think I have a fake card? The card was purchased on Amazon, but I specifically chose one supplied by Amazon themselves rather than a third party seller.
Here is the Crystalmark test:



H2testw Results:
The media is likely to be defective.
238.2 GByte OK (499555225 sectors)
563.5 KByte DATA LOST (1127 sectors)
Details:0 KByte overwritten (0 sectors)
0 KByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 0 sectors)
563.5 KByte corrupted (1127 sectors)
0 KByte aliased memory (0 sectors)
First error at offset: 0x0000000b722a0a00
Expected: 0x0000000b722a0a00
Found: 0x0a000a000a000a00
H2testw version 1.3
Writing speed: 20.0 MByte/s
Reading speed: 20.0 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

 

[kamkar]

Those speeds are pretty low, try and format it fully with sdformatter.

SD Memory Card Formatter for Windows/Mac | SD Association

www.sdcard.org

I had speed problems ona brand new Adata endurance card, formatting it made the speeds come back to spec,,,,, as it was brand new the speed was like 1/3 of what it was supposed to be.

I have nothing but good experience returning bad memory cards to amazon, often they had a new card at my place before i got to send the bad one back.

 

[Hammer2001]

Thanks kamkar. I’ll give that a try and see if it makes any difference.
But I’m severely tempted to bite the bullet and just purchase a new Samsung endurance pro card as recommended by Viofo.

 

[Hammer2001]

So I did a full reformat using SD Memory Card Formatter as suggested, but it did not improve the speeds and the card was still giving errors in Hwtest2. So I resigned myself to a having faulty Sandisk card and bought a brand new Samsung Endurance Pro card from a reputable store.
But to my dismay the new card showed exactly the same slow speeds in Crystal Mark and failed on Hwtest2 with small errors.
This made me start to suspect the card reader may be the problem. I've been using the free Viofo branded one that came with the dashcam.
So I took both cards and tried them in my work PC which has a built in SD card slot. Testing the cards in a MicroSD to SD card adaptor both returned high speeds on Crystalmark and fully passed on Hwtest2 with no errors.

I've since bought a new USB3 card reader and tested again at home. Again both passed with high speeds and no errors.

So it would seem the Viofo card reader is the problem. The speeds I can understand as I found out this reader is only USB2, but I've never encountered a card being corrupted when being read in a reader before.

Hopefully this will solve the issue. It does add up, as I've never encountered beeping from the camera to indicate SD card problems, it was only after using it to copy files on the PC the problems would seem to show.

I have a trip planned this weekend so will get a chance to use the dashcam extensively and see what happens with the footage when I return.

 

[kamkar]

yes the little provided card readers will not give you full speed even if it is put in a USB 3 port on the computer, the same goes if you use the dashcam itself as sort of a card reader connected to the computer
Generally these approached give you 15 - 20 MB/s speeds VS the full read / write speed of the memory card ou would get in a fast card reader on a fast USB port.

Sorry i forgot about making this test and a post on this forum about it a while back and take that into account.

Laggy playback, slow transfer speeds

I have run a little test on my computer using various readers, from my default Kingston reader ( USB 3.0 ) on a USB 3.0 port, to factory provided readers, and finally using a dashcam ( A139 ) in mass storage mode. There is a huge difference in the speeds you get, my Kingston reader of course...

dashcamtalk.com

At least your memory card have warranty for dashcam use, so you can get it replaced.
These little suckers are tricky some times.

 

[Hammer2001]

Just to update this thread.
I’ve now been using the Original sandisk high endurance 256gb sd card I bought for 5 weeks or so now with no more issues.
The problem was definitely being caused by the free SD card reader supplied by Viofo with the camera. It was somehow corrupting the card when it was being used to transfer files to the PC.
A new usb 3 card reader has worked fine.

 

[mcrv]

@Hammer2001 Is the sandisk high endurance 256 card still performing properly ? No problems? What software version do you have in both cameras ?

 

[jibe]

The problem was definitely being caused by the free SD card reader supplied by Viofo with the camera. It was somehow corrupting the card when it was being used to transfer files to the PC.

I can confirm that I had this problem as well, I tested my micro sd card with 3 different sd card readers,
and only the Viofo card reader corrupted my files and would not save loop recordings after re-inserting into the camera.

 

[jibe]

I can confirm that I had this problem as well, I tested my micro sd card with 3 different sd card readers,
and only the Viofo card reader corrupted my files and would not save loop recordings after re-inserting into the camera.

To add to this,
When using the viofo card reader on my PC,
it would freeze quite often while I watched or opened the mp4 files
This wasn't the case with the other card readers

 

[kamkar]

A good USB card reader are a must if you are a PC guy, and in some way deal with memory cards.
I am contemplating looking to see if there is something better than my USB 3.0 Kingston reader as the micro SD slot in it have stopped working so i have to use a adapter to regular SD size