Cannot clone SD

mancity

Hi all,

I have 3 SD cards, all have had RetroPie on them. I was trying to close one using Win32DiskImager, but it fails with cyclic redundancy check.

Every tool I have searched online fails trying to format and it looks from a Windows side that these 3 SD cards (2 were brand new last week) are dead and showing as RAW.

However, they all work fine on my Pi....

Any ideas? I need to image a RetroPie image to one of the cards.

backstander

You might be able to use something like DD for windows
http://www.chrysocome.net/dd

Not as user friendly as Win32DiskImager but should do the job.

Or if you have another PC with Linux on it you can use DD as well:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=91&t=46911

Also Mac OS X has DD built in but I've never used it.

mancity

Thanks for the reply. Struggling to understand that first option haha.

Ive ordered a couple more micro SD's. Just wondering if be un-plugging the Pi as opposed to cleanly shutting it down is the cause. My aim was to create a 'perfect' image on SD, then create a backup so that I could continue to un-plug after playing on RetroPie and if it caused any issues, just format and re-apply the image.

Seems that may have caused corruption to the perfect image though AND my micro SD's :(

backstander

Make sure you purchase name brand micro SD cards like Samsung or SanDisk. Those seam to work best and should last a long time. If you're just turning it off without a proper shut down, your mileage may very ;)

I've read about others installing a power switch and adding some code that will actually run the shutdown command and turn the Pi off gracefully.

Concat

Not that I have any reason to believe you are affected, but there is a big problem with counterfeit SD cards these days. They report a lot more space than they really have.

What is your process for "cloning" the SD card in Win32DiskImager? I assume you are getting the error when trying to read the card and create an image file on your pc, yes?

And what are the brands of the cards that are giving you grief? In the end, you may need to reformat... https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/index.html

Also, as Backstander said, look into getting a Powerblock or something similar.

mdg33

Yeah I have noticed a similar issue I can back up a freshly minted retropie image and then restore it using cmd line DD on osx

But

Ounce I update the retorpie and add roms I can not restore working retorpie I get errors like :

Failed to start load/save random seed
Failed to start create volatile files and directory
Failed to start Configure bluetooth Modems connected by uart
Failed to start (null)
etc etc etc ... more errors and freezes

So that's a real pain in the ass not to be able to backup

Any ideas anyone?

Rascas

cyclic redundancy check means problems reading the sd card and generally means that your sd card has problems like bad sectors. It is time to use another one. You might be able to make a copy of it with dd but if it has corrupted data that will stay also in the copy.