SGZC12RC wiping card?

[jokiin]

Are you saying FAT32 may help with the "Please format card!" issue?
.

yes, it can eliminate the problem in some cases

will see if I can get an update from the engineer on this, asked again yesterday but still waiting to hear back

 

[Street Guardian USA]

Thanks for the heads up. Are there any brand of sd card recommended which work well with our Zoran based RC?

Transcend is the go to recommend brand by us and factory DashCam developers.

 

[jokiin]

most top tier brands are ok, the ADATA cards are actually used by the engineer when looking for faults, he commented that they fail the easiest of all the cards they've tried

 

[wozzzzza]

so ADATA and sandisk suck.

 

[jokiin]

ADATA and Sandisk are two brands to avoid for Zoran

 

[wumpyr99]

The rear RC shutoff again today. I took a closer look:

1) The exfat file system was left corrupted, chkdsk did fix it and found these fragments (attachment one), including a large fragment, is this an incomplete video file perhaps?

2) You can also see in attachment two that the newest file was opened but no data was ever written, a zero byte file.

3) The exfat partition created by the RC has an offset of exactly 16MB. Why is this done?

4) I will try FAT32, but what allocation size is recommended (128GB lexar)?

 

[jokiin]

thanks for the detailed info, will send this to the engineer now

when formatting FAT32 I normally use 32kb cluster size

 

[wumpyr99]

thanks for the detailed info, will send this to the engineer now

when formatting FAT32 I normally use 32kb cluster size

Thank you.

I think I've found the problem and also a nasty bug on the RC. The flash memory controller on the lexar card has gone into read only mode. When inserted into the RC, the RC doesn't check the write protection status, it starts recording and continues to think everything is ok. If you didn't know about the issue, you would think everything is normal. At some point later though, it dies. This also explains why when the flash controller is in RO mode, when you try and go into watch previous videos on the RC, it hangs/dies and reboots.

On linux, you can easily see the problem as it detects the scsi drive with write protect on when you plug it in and won't let you touch it. Windows appears to be brain dead and allow (slow) writes but if you unmount and remount, the changes are not there. Windows gets confused, no surprise.

@jokiin Can you please get your engineer to fix this? The RC should check the write protection status of the flash card when it mounts at least, perhaps on a regular basis too if possible.

Well that lexar card lasted 3 months. How pathetic. Supposed to be a decent card too. I didn't expect it to die this early. I will try and return it.

 

[jokiin]

Thanks for the further info, will send it to him now

 

[wumpyr99]

@jokiin Hi, another update. Three of my RCs in the last couple of weeks hit the "Please format card!" issue again. Each time, the exFAT partition is there, but it's corrupted. To make matters worse, you can't format the card from the RC, it won't do it. I have to plug them into a PC to reformat them. It's getting annoying real quick. How do we move this bug forward? (1.01.02)

 

[jokiin]

do you format the cards regularly at all or just something you look at once the error shows up?

how long does it typically go before it happens?

 

[Com69]

Having the same issue and I routinely format my carr every week.

 

[jokiin]

Having the same issue and I routinely format my carr every week.

even with formatting weekly you're having the problem?

formatting in the camera or PC?

which card. make and model?

how much run time on average per day?

 

[wumpyr99]

do you format the cards regularly at all or just something you look at once the error shows up?

how long does it typically go before it happens?

I format rarely, just to clear events. I run them 24x7. Can't tell you exactly how long, but isn't happening every week.

I'm still not following the mantra to format all the time. I've interpreted it as the RC doesn't have a good/reliable exfat/sd card driver. It obviously shouldn't corrupt the file system, but it is and it's on more than one unit and it's repeatable (given time) on each unit. In fact, the file system isn't even mountable, it's been hosed. How bad I'm not sure, would need to do some sort of low level analysis to see what happened.

I'm using Lexar High-Performance microSDXC 633x 128GB UHS-I, U1 w/USB 3.0 Reader Flash Memory Card - LSDMI128B1NL633R in all cameras.

I also don't understand why the RC can't format the card after the corruption event? When you hit format, yes, OK it beeps and doesn't do anything, doesn't say "processing...", it's like you didn't hit OK. Perhaps this is a different but related bug.

How do we proceed?

 

[jokiin]

engineer has been looking at it, this seems to occur for particular usage patterns, 128gb cards seem to be more susceptible to the issue, running them 24/7 though seems related as that's something to do with the boot sector getting corrupted on exFAT formatted cards, formatting them on a regular basis might help avoid the issue, running them FAT32 rather than exFAT might also, that would require formatting in a PC though as the camera can't be made to format large cards FAT32 like we can with our other models, no support in the SDK, have checked on that already, native FAT32 cards don't show this problem in testing, that could be format related or could be due to the different controller used in the cards, not sure on that

 

[wumpyr99]

running them FAT32 rather than exFAT might also

I see. The challenge is FAT32 is not an option because with FAT32 I hit the "Not enough space!" issue and it corrupts the file system as well so I had to stop testing it as I discussed here:

https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/not-enough-space-error.20877/#post-273630

So sounds like the engineer knows what happens just not the root cause? I'm happy to help with diagnosis. If you need me to come to Chipping Norton I can.

I have two other RCs in my second car which I don't drive that often and they are only running on ACC and I've never seen this issue at all (even with the same 128GB lexar cards). Perhaps haven't run them long enough to see the issue with that car. Seems to support some of what you say.

 

[jokiin]

when you ran them FAT32 how did you format the cards, which program, what cluster size?

I suspect running them 24/7 is a bigger issue than the file system though, card issues aside it seems like the only reports of this issue have come from people that are running cameras 24/7

 

[Com69]

even with formatting weekly you're having the problem?

formatting in the camera or PC?

which card. make and model?

how much run time on average per day?

I always format in the camera when it's a planned format. I thought it might be the card too, so I tried another one, and that did it too. First card was a PNY 128gb, the other was a Transcend 64gb(got with my SG9665GC), I usually check the camera as soon as I get back in the car, make sure there weren't any "events" while it was parked. But when this issue occurs, it'll say "Format card", but it won't do it. I have to format in my pc then put back in camera, then it will format it. I don't usually lose much video, but I'm worried it might happen at the worst time, like if my car gets dinged in a parking lot. I usually have my cams running maybe 8-9 hours a day, most of that time it's parked in our lot or in the booth(I turn them on the first drive of the day then just leave them on until I put car away for the night). Doesn't seem to matter if it's hot in the car or not, it's happened when the car was inside all day.

Let me know if you need more info.

 

[jokiin]

Let me know if you need more info.

that's helpful thanks

 

[wumpyr99]

when you ran them FAT32 how did you format the cards, which program, what cluster size?

I suspect running them 24/7 is a bigger issue than the file system though, card issues aside it seems like the only reports of this issue have come from people that are running cameras 24/7

For FAT32, I used guiformat.exe with 32kb cluster size. I hit the "Not enough space!" issue fairly quickly so reverted back to exfat.

I think you're probably right. I'm seeing this fairly often, probably as I've got 8 x Cellinks keeping things humming along as much as possible 24x7.