SD Card problems with Nextbase 212

Big D

New Member
Joined
Oct 5, 2017
Messages
12
Reaction score
5
Country
United Kingdom
I am not sure where to post this on the forum, so I hope it will be OK here

I have a Nextbase 212 dashcam, bought new about 3-4 months ago. Since then, I have had to replaced the SD card four times. The dash cam gives a message about formatting the SD card. This is where the problem comes in.

I try and format the card on the camera, but it will not format. I then try and format the card on the PC, with the same result. I am able to delete the files manually, until the last file, which the PC says is corrupt. The card is then put back into the camera, and I get a message again, saying that the card needs to be formatted. I remove the card, (which has had all files manually deleted) and try and format it again on the PC, only to find that all the files are back on the card.

I have now lost a 16GB Sandisk card, a 32GB Sandisk card, a 64GB Sandisk casrd, and now a 64GB Kingston card. All these cards have had the same issue.

Why would the dash cam go through so many cards.

The dash cam has the R28 firmware installed.
 
Where did you purchase all of these sd cards from?
 
Just what I was thinking, hence my suggestion, great minds and all that
vOWanry.gif
 
Thanks for the replies.

Yes. the PC recognises the cards and asks me to format them before it will open up the folder. I then format, and get the usual Format complete message. The folder then opens and shows nothing inside, which would be correct after formatting.

I have gone into the properties settings, and everything looks correct. I have run the error checking and everything comes back showing no problems found. I have put it back into the Nextbase 212, and was asked to format the card by the dashcam. Card was formatted, and I then tried to capture a video. When I removed the card, all the original files were on the card again, with file names showing in what I would term garbage letters and font. This is all I get on any of these cards once they fail.

One failed card may be a dodgy card, but 4 perfectly good card, failing with the same camera within a few months doesn't seem right.

These are also genuine cards bought from a recognised supplier. All cards have worked properly for a few weeks before failing, so I believe the cards are not the problem. If they failed immediately, I would suspect the cards rather than the Nextbase camera.

I have downloaded video from all the cards before they failed, as I regularly review footage taken, and the earlier downloaded video footage is fine

I currently have a new 16GB Sandisk card in the camera, and this has been working fine for the past week or so. I am however, expecting it to fail within the next few weeks (following the current pattern).
 
Sandisk are reknown here for not being able to cope with high volume dashcam data being chucked at it continuously.

Dashcams need SDCards to a minimum spec of Class 10 U1 (circa 50Mbps read/write).

What are your cards rated at ?

Whether the write rate would corrupt the card with hieroglyphics I don't know.


Presumably this is similar:

https://forums.techguy.org/threads/...er-names-on-micro-sd-card-corruption.1163679/

https://photo.stackexchange.com/que...se-strange-folders-in-my-sd-cards-dcim-folder
 
All cards are class SDHC 10 U1, and if I remember correctly, were rated at about 8OMbs read/write, so this shouldn't have been the issue. I have tried SDXC cards in the 212, but these don't work at all. The 212 user manual does say that it uses SDHC cards rather than the SDXC cards, so I'm not too concerned about this.

In my other Nextbase cameras, I use Sandisk cards, and have never had a problem. These other dashcams are the GW412. It's only with the 212 that I have a problem. It seems to eat and destroy SD cards.

I originally chose the Sandisk card as this was the one recommended by Nextbase. After losing so many of them to this camera, I tried a Kingston, and this has been destroyed too.

I followed the links you provided, and that is what I see on the memory card after it has been formatted on my PC, and then formatted in the Nextbase camera. No video has been recorded since both formattings, but these files still all exist, so it appears that the PC and camera are not actually formatting anything.

As I mentioned previously, all cards did work perfectly without any problems in the 212 camera for a few weeks before being eaten/destroyed/corrupted, so I am still inclined to believe it is a camera issue rather than a card problem.
 
OK, just trying to narrow the info.

I'm stumped now.
 
If your PC shows the card properties to be "read only" or "write protected" it's dead and cannot be formatted or used. IIRC windows will warn you of that if you try to format a dead card in their supplied software, but other card formatting programs may not show such a warning.

Phil
 
I've done some more searching and the only similar references I can find is where the card has been tampered with by fakers.

The scenario seems to be that the card will work perfectly OK until it reaches the point where it tries to write into an area that doesn't exist, then it corrupts the files in exactly the way you describe.

Example is, you think you buy a 64Gb card but it's only a 32Gb card but has had its FAT table 'modified'. When the cam tries to write into the 33Gb area, it can't, doesn't exist, files corrupt, FAT table corrupt = dead card.

Try this first to recover your existing cards: https://www.easeus.com/storage-media-recovery/recover-corrupted-sd-card.html

Note: (I've used Easeus Partition Manager before, without issue, but the name is misleading as Easeus are a Chinese company so check the download with your AV program before firing it off - belt & braces is my motto)

If that doesn't work:

I think I'd get another card, (not from Amazon or Ebay) try writing to it from the PC till the card is full. Then delete files, format the card, then same again. Make sure the card is the capacity it reckons it should be and fails to accept any more files at that point. If it's supposed to be a 32Gb card, can you write 32Gb ?

Second test, format the card in the dashcam, write a few files from the dashcam, bring it in and see what the PC makes of them. If OK, write some PC files to the card to almost fill it. Then back out to the car and see if the cam is corrupting the card when it tries to overwrite the oldest file.

From your description of it being OK for a few weeks maybe the cam is destroying the FAT when trying to overwrite the oldest file(s)
 
Last edited:
Rather than corrupting the FAT, the fakes usually give you no indication of being full until you find that your earlier recordings/pictures etc have neen overwritten.
Assume that you have an 16GB card that has been faked to look like a 32Gb card. Very (very) simplistically what happens is this. There is a free space pointer on the card system that increases as the card fills up. On a faked card, when the free space pointer reaches the actual capacity of the card (16GB), the free space pointer 'wraps around' and is reset to zero. Because the 'card full' message is suppressed, the camera thinks it has another 16GB so just starts overwriting the oldest content.
The first thing that users know about this is that when they get home and look at their priceless pics of their once in a lifetime trip, the earliest pics are not there.
A free PC program that I use to check flash memory is FAKEFLASHTEST (there are others). This writes sequential data to the card and checks that it is all there once it has filled it. If the card is fake, the earliest data is not there as it will have been overwritten.

Having banged on about that, it seems unlikely that the 'fake flash' problem is the cause of the OP's problem, as he says his problem has happened on multiple cards bought from reliable sources.
Although I do agree with Kremmen that something seems to be screwing up the FAT.
Incidentally, when you format a card (or any other memory device such as HDD) the data itself is not deleted and can be recovered. Formatting just re-writes a blank FAT so setting the (simplistic) 'free space pointer' back to zero.
 
Yes - you're both correct, I see both types on customers screen shots/cards that are sent it.

Sometimes a 128Gb card will actually be 8Gb, the first say 20 files (1 hour at 1080p) is fine then the rest are corrupted and cannot be opened as @Kremmen mentioned.

@M8TJT I've seen this too, it's an enormous problem for customers and us.

Nobody has a good experience.


The 64Gb @Big D is using was fake, I am unsure of the rest as they've been thrown out but if purchased in a similar place it's likely.
 
Last edited:
So they were fakes as we suspected.

As I posted many moons ago, (probably before the dead sea even reported sick) I might have paid extra, but I firstly navigated to Samsung UK. Checked there who were their official UK retailers and found Scan.UK

There are so many trusted retailers getting caught out judging by the posts here and elsewhere I've seen.

I knew I was buying genuine.
 
So they were fakes as we suspected.

As I posted many moons ago, (probably before the dead sea even reported sick) I might have paid extra, but I firstly navigated to Samsung UK. Checked there who were their official UK retailers and found Scan.UK

There are so many trusted retailers getting caught out judging by the posts here and elsewhere I've seen.

I knew I was buying genuine.


Yes - they've received the Royal Warrant of Appointment too.

1539105758596.png
 
I can only sympathise with Nextbase and other DashCam manufacturers as these fakes cards are giving the wrong impression that the cams are faulty.

The only award I ever got was :

uGgaFMe.jpg
 
Moral of the story is to always check the card with a reliable card checker upon receipt, so that you can instantly send it back if fake/faulty.
 
I can only sympathise with Nextbase and other DashCam manufacturers as these fakes cards are giving the wrong impression that the cams are faulty.

main reason we supply cards with the cameras is people left to their own devices end up shopping on price and all too often buy fake cards, knowing no different they just assume the camera is faulty and send them back when it's the card at fault
 
As Tiffany mentioned, I sent through pictures of the 16GB and 64GB cards. The 64GB Kingston card was identified as a fake. The 16GB card wasn't, and has still been corrupted. Unfortunately, I threw away the other two cards, so cannot confirm if these were fake or not.

I don't mean to imply that the Nextbase product is in any way poor, and agree with Kremmen that fake cards can create problems for the camera manufacturers. Personally, I love the Nextbase range, and have a total of four - 3 x GW412 models (which work great), and the one 212 which appears to be corrupting the SD cards. Also, the customer service offered by Nextbase is brilliant.

I'm still not 100% convinced that the cards are all to blame (fake or not). Tiffany has kindly sent out a 32GB SD card for me to use in the 212. I'll keep using the 212 nand let you know how I get on with it.

I still believe the Nextbase cameras to be excellent, and this is backed up by amazing customer service.

Thank you all for the help and replies with this.
 
@Big D , did latter SD card work? I too have a 212 dashcam that is killing cards as quickly as I can fill them up. I always buy from reputable retailers and can use these cards in high intensity write applications elsewhere, but the 212 kills the same cards as they reach capacity.
Again will not disagree with anything said in this forum, there are fakes everywhere. But too coincidental that there are that many posts around about the 212.
Did you try flashing the firmware?
 
Back
Top