PINE64
SD card read/write troubles - Printable Version

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SD card read/write troubles - jezek - 03-02-2021

Hello. Some time ago I bought 2 pinebooks.

Pinebook #1 was sometimes used, different distros were tried and regularly updated. Now Manjaro Arm Sway Profile occupies his EMMC drive.

Pinebook #2 was (with few exceptions) shelved. If used, then only for browsing and not updated. His EMMC drive has still the original stock KDE neon image.

I decided to update pinebook #2 to Manjaro OS. On pinebook #1 I prepared SD card with my current favorite pinebook distro and tested ii right there on #1 if it is working. Yes, #1 booted from SD. Then I inserted the SD card to #2. It couldn't boot. Black screen. So I tried different distros, even the original one. No boot. I've also tried to flash the SD card on #2 with no effect, still no boot. Then I tried to mount the SD card, to see if files are alright and found out, that the card couldn't be mounted (card is recognized, partitions are visible in file manager, but can't be mounted cause of unrecognized file system).I even can't fomat the SD card on #2 with gparted (write error).

My experiment showed me, that if I write an image on #1 (using dd), then the SD card can be booted & read on #1, but not on #2. If I do the same procedure on #2, the SD card is not bootable nor usable on both pinebooks.

Does anybody have an idea what went wrong? Is there any other way to flash an image to EMMC without booting from SD? How can I 100% figure out if it is a HW, SW, SDcard or user related problem?

Thank you for your answers & suggestions.

Fun story: Meanwhile I've tried to run packages upgrade on #2. Something went wrong and now some packages are missing, DE is half broken (no panels or start menu) and I have to connect to wifi via CL Big Grin


RE: SD card read/write troubles - jezek - 03-26-2021

I tried another SD card I've borrowed from a family's member's e-book reader. The card was possible to read on the pb#1 (the working one) and when there was no filesystem read error on pb#2 (the one with SD card issues), I've flashed an OS to the card (manjaro sway). I've booted pb#2 with the SD card and guess what, It booted. I was happy.

So maybe the SD card reader works and the card was the problem? No, because when I tried an OS update or started download of an OS image (to flash to EMMC), the system always froze. As long I did not try to write large data portion to SD card, the system was working flawlessly. So it has to be some SD card reader issue. I used, an USB stick as storage for OS image, flashed it to EMMC and now I have the latest manjaro on pinebook #2. Mission accomplished.