SD and Power

[fivepetpalace]

Do you have to turn off the iPAQ in order to safely change SD memory cards?

I always do power off, wait a few seconds, switch, and then power on, but is this necessary ?

You'd think it would be in the documentation somewhere, maybe it's on the CD I've never looked at :? .

Also, I have a 256 MB SD card that keeps loosing its contents. If you look at the memory manager, it will say there is space used on the card, but you can't see any files, even in a card reader.

Any suggestions?

Michael

[Janak Parekh]

Do you have to turn off the iPAQ in order to safely change SD memory cards?
While some say yes, I believe that as long as you're not accessing the SD card you're perfectly safe. I've been doing it that way for the last few years without any problems whatsoever. :)

Also, I have a 256 MB SD card that keeps loosing its contents. If you look at the memory manager, it will say there is space used on the card, but you can't see any files, even in a card reader.
Sounds like corruption. Run scandisk in your reader, or consider reformatting it. Is it a Sandisk card?

--janak

[fivepetpalace]

Wow, wish I had thought of running scandisk on it, I may have found something out... I just reformatted it.

It has happened twice now with this card, thought maybe it was something I was doing, or maybe had to do with iPAQ file store (not sure what this is yet).

I left the manufacturer off the post on purpose, I didn't want that to interfere with anyones opinion of whether or not I was maybe doing something to cause it, or maybe there was a known cause for this, other than a bad card.

Yes it is a sandisk, and it will be going back to the vendor. I thought it might take at least two posts before someone asked what brand it was :oops: .

Michael
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[Janak Parekh]

Yes it is a sandisk, and it will be going back to the vendor. I thought it might take at least two posts before someone asked what brand it was :oops: .
Well, for what it's worth, I've bought exactly one Sandisk card (a 128MB) and had no problems with it, although it's sitting in a camera for now. I've just heard the symptoms over and over and couldn't resist asking. ;)

--janak

[tanalasta]

I believe this thread may have been discussed before but i'm too lazy to find it ;) But in answer to the questions:

1. The documentation recommends that you switch your pocketpc off before you exchange cards to minimize the risk of corrupting the data. However, in practice it doesn't really matter. If you close all programs using the storage card and wait a few seconds to let your PPC finish writing on it, change the SD cards at will. If the PPC still needs the card, it'd flash up an error message letting you know. As a rule of thumb though, don't ignore the error message as it usually freezes the device :P

2. re: Missing data. Oh dear, and it's a sandisk. Run flash format or another program to verify the SD card but I'd imagine it's corrupted (e.g. lost clusters). A reformat may fix the error but it'd likely come back. From experience (I'm not sure why) larger cluster sizes tend to be more stable than smaller ones. There's little you can do unfortunately to recover data once this happens if you don't have a backup. I'd recommend taking it back to your vendor and getting an exchange, or preferably a refund.

[Kowalski]

---hot plug--- this is the answer. you can safely take out your card unless you are in the middle of copying stuff.