SD Card Destroyed - v2.00

[VMG]

Here's an odd thing. When the 2.00 C firmware came out, I updated my Nerdseq just fine, and even made a video about making new cables for all the expanders I have   In that video, you can see the filesystem check was OK

   

A few weeks later (now) I was doing another video where I wanted to load a previously saved project, but noticed I could not get into the Load Project menu: it just flashed at me. Being a QA guy and assuming it's just a developer oversight   I did come get the latest firmware v2.01? to try and see if that fixed the Load Project menu.

When I put the SD into the computer, I was greeted with the horrifying OS message "Cannot read drive. Initialize?" which of course I said no... all my projects are on that chippy... dummy me, never backed them up off the SD card (so yes, my mistake and I will now pay that price).

Taking the SD card back to Nerdseq without initializing or formatting, now I realize as it is loading, there is a filesystem error:

   

I am pretty sure all hope is lost at this point, my 30 or so projects are likely lost. I do not think XOR can magically fix a busted SD card but I am mostly posting this to tell you this happened, which could just be a defective SD card (though it has lasted 2.5 years since I bought Nerdseq).

FWIW, I do power off and on a lot, but I am always extremely careful to not power cycle quickly and I do have surge protectors on all my gear... so I am unsure how this could have happened. I doubt it was the firmware upgrade, but just in case, here's some info for you.

I am going to reformat the SD now and put a ./firmware folder with the 2.01 release in there, and see if I am up and running again.  I will miss my old projects, but nothing can be done so no sleep will be lost. It is what it is. Always Backup!

Thank you, as always, for such an amazing device.
Jc

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Oh, one more piece of info why I think the SD card itself is just destroyed: both Windows 10 and MacOS report this drive as 32mb... not 16GB that it should be. Not sure if that'll ring any bells.

[XORadmin]

Hey VMG,

I'm sorry to hear that. I can assure you it is not a bug or anything like that and not related to any firmware version. This is just a common thing on the reliability of SD cards in general. (Take a look at any embedded gear around and you will find the exact same issues) And also the fact that you are dealing with an embedded system rather than a full fledged operating system which keeps fixing any FAT problems on the fly. For example I am pretty sure that the FAT file system/library on a windows/mac/linux system is bigger than the whole NerdSEQ firmware.
That said even though it is just an embedded minimal FAT library it is quite stable as I had a very few (reported) issues in the last 7 years (like once or twice a year). And there is no chance to avoid this. These things happen also when you plug it into your computer. Power off to power on is an issue with all electronic devices. And often the issues with external media can and will be fixed by the operating system and sometimes not. I can tell because I had countless broken (external) mediums of all kind in the last 20-30 years of computing. And I am only one person.
I added some functions within the years to minimize the problem (creating an incremental backup in another folder) and a automatic reminder from time to time that a general backup should be done. That is all I can do.

If you didn't format your SD Card yet, I would be interested to have it in my hands and see if I can get any data on a low level. And maybe it is even possible to recover something. But also maybe it is an electrical fault and it just died by bad vibed electrons.
And I can send you a replacement SD Card of course. (32GB these days)

I think I didn't change the SD Card in my development NerdSEQ since several years and this system is being pushed way beyond the safe boundaries. Power on off, coutless hotplugging, computer, back etc... and it stays fine so far. And for my productive setup, when I play a gig again, I keep making backups and even make a copy of the SD Card content onto another SD card before the gig to avoid any surprises...never needed it but I got a nice folder on my computer which keeps the live-sets of the last years.

Allright, sorry for the trouble and let me know if I can help you in any way.

[VMG]

If you didn't format your SD Card yet, I would be interested to have it in my hands and see if I can get any data on a low level. And maybe it is even possible to recover something. But also maybe it is an electrical fault and it just died by bad vibed electrons.
And I can send you a replacement SD Card of course. (32GB these days)

Thank you so much for the reply. A replacement is not necessary, I have so many of these little things lying around, I threw the /firmware for 2.01A on it and Nerdy is happily working again. I believe the files are lost though, as I am pretty crafty at hard drive recovery. I have literally a box full of 2TB WD Passport USB drives that randomly die every few years. It's a crime how unstable hardware is today. I even just had a brand new 16TB Iron Wolf die in my RAID1+0 the other day. Criminal, I tell you

I should say, I did not mean the title of this thread to imply firmware destroyed my SD Card, I could change that if you prefer. It was mostly about the last time I did a firmware upgrade, and that little card just couldn't take the pressure of how amazing 2.00 is

[XORadmin]

If you didn't format your SD Card yet, I would be interested to have it in my hands and see if I can get any data on a low level. And maybe it is even possible to recover something. But also maybe it is an electrical fault and it just died by bad vibed electrons.
And I can send you a replacement SD Card of course. (32GB these days)

Thank you so much for the reply. A replacement is not necessary, I have so many of these little things lying around, I threw the /firmware for 2.01A on it and Nerdy is happily working again. I believe the files are lost though, as I am pretty crafty at hard drive recovery. I have literally a box full of 2TB WD Passport USB drives that randomly die every few years. It's a crime how unstable hardware is today. I even just had a brand new 16TB Iron Wolf die in my RAID1+0 the other day. Criminal, I tell you

I should say, I did not mean the title of this thread to imply firmware destroyed my SD Card, I could change that if you prefer. It was mostly about the last time I did a firmware upgrade, and that little card just couldn't take the pressure of how amazing 2.00 is

No your patterns are too cool for this SDCard!! :-)