Harmon20
New Member
Wanted to post my experience in case it proves helpful for someone else. I couldn't find a good thread for this, but if the mods know of somewhere more appropriate, please move.
I recently installed a new F200 Pro with rear camera. It came with a 32GB Thinkware branded SD card. Everything works mostly fine other than many of the recorded movies are not viewable for some reason. The various players I try to use say they're corrupted or can't be played or some such thing.
Anyway, I had a random unbranded 128GB card laying around so I tried to use it. Of course it wouldn't work. The cam says 'card format needed' over and over and eventually 'card format failed'. (These are approximations since I can't recall precisely what was said.) I couldn't turn on wifi to connect and format. Holding the Rec button caused it to act like it was recording, but of course nothing was being recorded.
I examined the Thinkware card and attempted to match the formatting, partitioning, partition flags, etc. etc. on the 128GB card. Nothing was working. No matter how identical the cards seemed to be in every way but capacity it wouldn't work.
So I used dd in linux to make an exact clone of the working card. I put the working card in the SD slot of my laptop, the 128GB in a USB card reader after having wiped the drive of any info or partition info, and in a terminal windows ran sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/sda bs=512 conv=sync,noerror status=progress
This uses the dd command to take the data in one drive as a source (if=) and write that data out exactly as it is read into another drive (of=) as the destination, using 512b blocks (bs=512) (value determined by running fdisk -l /dev/mmcblk0 against the working 32GB card to see what sector size was being used), ignoring any bad blocks (conv=sync,noerror) so the process doesn't get interrupted by the near certainty of bad blocks on the source drive and to give some feedback about the process (status=progress) so it doesn't run silently, giving you no indication of whether or not it's working.
It takes a looooooong time. Kick off the process then go build a boat or something. You'll get done about the same time this process does.
I took the 128GB card that has just been written out with the 32GB card data and put it in the camera...IT WORKED! Woo hoo! But, of course, there was only a 32GB partition on the card and around 90GB of slack unusable space on the drive. I put it back into the laptop and used gparted to expand the partition out to the end of the drive, leaving the alignment at the front of the partition unchanged. (There was about 4M of slack space at the beginning of the 32GB drive, 4.5M at the end.) Back in the camera...didn't work. Back in the laptop, shrink the partition back down the the exact same size as the partition on the 32GB card with unchanged front alignment. Back in the camera...it works!
Hmmmm. This 128GB card with a 32GB partition works, with the full 128GB it does not. Nothing changes with the formatting, partition flags, or alignment from one size to the next. The size is seems to be the sticking point. But the F200 Pro is supposed to be good with 128GB.
Then I got an idea. I left the 128GB card with a 32GB parition, put it in the camera, got it going, connected to wifi, opened the app, then formatted the card from there. Voila! The 128GB card now works with the full size available. The app shows the available space as being 124GB, but the difference can be chalked up to file system overhead and slack space fore and aft of the data partition that might be the result of the camera's formatting alignment.
I recently installed a new F200 Pro with rear camera. It came with a 32GB Thinkware branded SD card. Everything works mostly fine other than many of the recorded movies are not viewable for some reason. The various players I try to use say they're corrupted or can't be played or some such thing.
Anyway, I had a random unbranded 128GB card laying around so I tried to use it. Of course it wouldn't work. The cam says 'card format needed' over and over and eventually 'card format failed'. (These are approximations since I can't recall precisely what was said.) I couldn't turn on wifi to connect and format. Holding the Rec button caused it to act like it was recording, but of course nothing was being recorded.
I examined the Thinkware card and attempted to match the formatting, partitioning, partition flags, etc. etc. on the 128GB card. Nothing was working. No matter how identical the cards seemed to be in every way but capacity it wouldn't work.
So I used dd in linux to make an exact clone of the working card. I put the working card in the SD slot of my laptop, the 128GB in a USB card reader after having wiped the drive of any info or partition info, and in a terminal windows ran sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/sda bs=512 conv=sync,noerror status=progress
This uses the dd command to take the data in one drive as a source (if=) and write that data out exactly as it is read into another drive (of=) as the destination, using 512b blocks (bs=512) (value determined by running fdisk -l /dev/mmcblk0 against the working 32GB card to see what sector size was being used), ignoring any bad blocks (conv=sync,noerror) so the process doesn't get interrupted by the near certainty of bad blocks on the source drive and to give some feedback about the process (status=progress) so it doesn't run silently, giving you no indication of whether or not it's working.
It takes a looooooong time. Kick off the process then go build a boat or something. You'll get done about the same time this process does.
I took the 128GB card that has just been written out with the 32GB card data and put it in the camera...IT WORKED! Woo hoo! But, of course, there was only a 32GB partition on the card and around 90GB of slack unusable space on the drive. I put it back into the laptop and used gparted to expand the partition out to the end of the drive, leaving the alignment at the front of the partition unchanged. (There was about 4M of slack space at the beginning of the 32GB drive, 4.5M at the end.) Back in the camera...didn't work. Back in the laptop, shrink the partition back down the the exact same size as the partition on the 32GB card with unchanged front alignment. Back in the camera...it works!
Hmmmm. This 128GB card with a 32GB partition works, with the full 128GB it does not. Nothing changes with the formatting, partition flags, or alignment from one size to the next. The size is seems to be the sticking point. But the F200 Pro is supposed to be good with 128GB.
Then I got an idea. I left the 128GB card with a 32GB parition, put it in the camera, got it going, connected to wifi, opened the app, then formatted the card from there. Voila! The 128GB card now works with the full size available. The app shows the available space as being 124GB, but the difference can be chalked up to file system overhead and slack space fore and aft of the data partition that might be the result of the camera's formatting alignment.
