Need your advice! I suspect I have a faulty CF card

[Hook]

Folks, may I please pick your brain? Apologies for the long-winded post, but I want to be as clear as possible.

I have an unbranded 8gb Compact flash "Rerory card" (which leads me to believe that it's an cheap, unbranded Chinese product. I got it bundled with a TerribleFire TF534 card and an IDE-to-CF adaptor.

Pic of actual card:



The card came formatted in a single 8gb partition with a preinstalled WB 3.1.

But being a relative noob to the Amiga scene (back after 20+ years without having an Amiga), I didn't know how to make partitions on a CF card, so I read as much info as I could on alternative filesystems and scsi devices for high capacity storage mediums such as CF cards. In retrospect, I should have made a backup of the card before cleaning it, but I digress.

This lead me to the following tutorial:
https://16bitdust.wordpress.com/2015...nuae-and-pfs3/

So I followed the instructions:

-Cleaned the card in diskpart in Windows 7
-Launched WinUAE and added the folder containing pfs3, updated scsi device, etc.
-Added the CF card in the Hard drives section
-Launched emulation with the settings recommended in the tutorial
-Loaded updated scsi.device (44.20) and rebooted
-Launched HDToolBox
-Read CF card configuration
-Added pfs3_aio-handler
-Entered DOS type 0x50465303
-Made DH0 1gb in size
-Edited maxtransfer to 0x1fe00

Now this is where things get odd.

-Created a 4gb DH1 partition by dragging the slider.
-Made sure it was pfs3
-Edited maxtransfer to 0x1fe00
-Created DH2 with the remainder of the space on the card.
-Made sure it was pfs3
-Edited maxtransfer to 0x1fe00

Rebooted.

-Format DH0: no problem
-Format DH1: no problem
-Format DH2: system hangs.

Tried on a different version of WinUAE. Same issue when it comes to DH2.

Decided to redo the whole process, but on an actual Amiga instead of WinUAE.

-Booted via floppy on an actual WB3.1 install disk
-Loaded pfs3 and scsi drivers via ADF on Gotek.
-Did everything listed above.
-DH0, DH1 format without issues, DH2 makes the system hang. CF card reader LED stays on, no flickering.
-Tried fast format and slow format, hangs on both.

This leads me to believe that the CF card is faulty or incompatible. However, it worked fine before I wiped it clean. I have yet to try another CF card, I need to buy one first.

What are your thoughts??

[Daedalus]

First off, are you using the latest version of PFS3? The latest versions are just called pfs3aio, without the handler bit.

One thing you could try is making DH2: a little bit smaller, leaving some unused space at the end of the drive. It's possible that the cylinder at the end of the drive doesn't exactly match up with the last block that HDToolbox detects, and trying to access that undefined space is causing issues.

[Hook]

Will give that a try. Also, I've read that some people are having issues with scsi device 44.2, and that I should try version 46 instead

[solidcore]

Those cards fail on their own. my 4gb one died on me.

How mine failed? I put it in my laptop the other week transferred a few files, pcmcia, great everything was fine... 10mins later it wouldn't mount, and never mounted again, sad times lol, other times ive lost files randomly.

Best to get a more reputable brand, that is a Chinese cheap.

i have a couple of those cards 1x8gb and 2x 16gb , i hope they last a while, they seem to be commonly given out when included with hardware, might swap them out at some point for transcend or similar

[solidcore]

Originally Posted by xubidoo

i have a couple of those cards 1x8gb and 2x 16gb , i hope they last a while, they seem to be commonly given out when included with hardware, might swap them out at some point for transcend or similar

Always make an image on your PC of the drive (DD or other tools) if you've been given one with your hardware.

I'd just like to make this clear that I'm not bashing the fact you get given them with hardware, I actually support the idea behind it. It's harder to debug hardware issues if everyone is running 3.XX and all kinds of drivers so the merritt behind giving them out fully loaded and ready makes 100% logical sense. And I approve of it.

The problem is that it is a generic chinese CF and it's sold cheap on ebay from china. Expect data loss, expect drive failure and certainly expect to be finding something more durable in the future. I agree with more reputable brands such as Transcend, Sandisk etc.. of course bad experiences with hardware of all brands exist out there so always Backup critical work data... if anyone uses amiga for Spreadsheets, word documents these days haha :P

Originally Posted by solidcore

Always make an image on your PC of the drive (DD or other tools) if you've been given one with your hardware.

did that a few days ago , both the 16gb and 8gb both imaged on to my pc just in case , i do have x2 16gb cards but they are both identical, ill continue to use them until they die.


im not bashing the suppliers of these ,as you said its great that the guys who build and sell the hardware also provide the loaded cards, obviously they need to keep costs down by using cheaper cards, but touch wood, ive had no probs as yet with them.
but will deff upgrade to better brands at some point.

[jotd]

I have a bunch of those exact cards and they are good so far. But I had a microsd card which lost all the files suddenly. And it was a good brand like sandisk.

So: always get a HD backup.

[Hook]

I managed to revive the card with WinImage and a basic 68000 Workbench backup image. Still, I will want to get a better CF card just in case. Thanks for everyone's suggestions!