SD Card Formatting

leejones15 · 14 Mar 2019, 23:51

Hi all,
I have a 32gb microSD card that I am trying to format and image with Retropie for a RB 1 B+.
When I plug the SD card into my laptop (with an adapter) it shows up as D: and E: and always pops up a warning that the D: needs to be formatted before it can be used. The D: is labeled (in Windows) as a "removable disk" and the E: is "SDHC." The D: is 0 bytes and the E: is ~32gb.
I can format both (quick format with SD Card Formatter) but when I try to install the image with Etcher it fails. When I use Win32DiskImager, I can write the image to the disk ("Write Successful"), but I just get the pretty rainbow screen when I plug it into my pi.
I'm by no means an expert, but this isn't my first rodeo (does that American idiom work on a UK forum?). I have used Raspberry Pis and Retro Pie before, so I have been through the process of formatting and imaging before, so I'm not above admitting fault, but I suspect there might be something abnormal going on.
Any ideas? TIA.

Halvhjearne · 15 Mar 2019, 03:01

try this:
https://rufus.ie/

if that dosnt work, i suggest trying to remove all partitions from the sdcard and then try again.
if it still fails, its most likely you sdcard that gave up.

Efriim · 15 Mar 2019, 04:29

@leejones15
Ya'll gotta saddle up into your good old windows command prompt.
.
Hi-ho, Win+R! Away!
throw a lasso round the "cmd" press enter when you got her.
now you gotta break her
Type diskpart
wait for her to settle down.
list disk
and make sure you got the right one.
select disk x
clean
create partition primary
and there you go she's yours.

Halvhjearne · 15 Mar 2019, 04:57

@Efriim said in SD Card Formatting:

@leejones15
Ya'll gotta saddle up into your good old windows command prompt.
.
Hi-ho, Win+R! Away!
throw a lasso round the "cmd" press enter when you got her.
now you gotta break her
Type diskpart
wait for her to settle down.
list disk
and make sure you got the right one.
select disk x
clean
create partition primary
and there you go she's yours.

why create a new partition when he is about to write an image to the card right after and why not use the graphical interface, if he writes he is no expert?

right click your windows icon and i belive its called "diskmanager" or something similar

Efriim · 15 Mar 2019, 05:10

@Halvhjearne
It looked to me like the logical thing to do, but there we go down our separate paths.

Extended partitions cant be broke by using disk management.

leejones15 · 15 Mar 2019, 06:57

I'm no expert, but I can handle command prompt...
I actually tried that already and get this error. RESCAN and restarting doesn't help.

DiskPart has referenced an object which is not up-to-date.
Refresh the object by using the RESCAN command.
If the problem persists exit DiskPart, then restart DiskPart or restart the
computer.

Efriim · 15 Mar 2019, 07:31

occasionally you need to reset the drive,
did you try to
remove volume
delete partition
clean
I don't know if it can make it much worse, but recreating the logical partition might be challenging, and if it works now you might as well keep it, and use something else for the pi.

Or maybe it is something with your computers mount assignments or even a ricoh sd driver, did you try different adapter, different port, different computer?

Sorry that I couldnt help.

Do you have a phone you can use to format with?
and if that doesn't work, it should be the adapter, but what I don't know.

Halvhjearne · 15 Mar 2019, 12:56

@Efriim said in SD Card Formatting:

@Halvhjearne
It looked to me like the logical thing to do, but there we go down our separate paths.

Extended partitions cant be broke by using disk management.

that is not true.
and considdering it is most likely just a frontend for the command prompt, i dont see why it would work with one and not the other.

Do you have a phone you can use to format with?

that however will most likely not work.

@leejones15 said in SD Card Formatting:

I'm no expert, but I can handle command prompt...
I actually tried that already and get this error. RESCAN and restarting doesn't help.

it sounds like either your sd card or your cardreader has gone bad, try a diffrent sdcard with the reader and see it the same happends, if it dosnt, then its most likely something wrong with that sdcard.

rbaker · 15 Mar 2019, 13:02

@leejones15 Are you unpacking the download to reveal the image first, they are compressed? You must do this if you are using Win32DiskImager. Etcher does not require you to unpack first. Are you saying that you are taking the card out of the Pi after you have written the image and are then placing it in a laptop? If so, you are effectively placing a linux based system into a windows PC and will prompt you to format. Describe the order of everything that you did according to https://retropie.org.uk/docs/First-Installation/#installation so we can suggest further things to try. Maybe the SD card is faulty or not compatible with a Pi?

Efriim · 16 Mar 2019, 09:30

@leejones15
I found this for the error you referenced using DiskPart.
Open the properties of the drive, right-click
click the hardware tab,
open the usb device properties from the list,
click the volume tab
and then click populate

Also if the drive no longer has a mount assignment or letter.
You can select the volume in diskpart and just type assign

Efriim · 19 Mar 2019, 05:21

Or maybe I overlooked, or jumped the gun on what was the problem.
If you see the pretty rainbow screen then you wrote the image correctly.
It may be very likely as I was reminded in the forums that there are different versions of the retropie image that will work for the different raspberry pi models. The pi 1/zero are bundled up into one image and the pi 2/3 are bundled into a different image, with older images not supporting the pi3b+.
I don't know about the 1b+