Pre-installed 8GB SD Card Problem

[retepetsir]

Hello. New here but hoping to learn quickly!

I have just received a Raspberry Pi Type B and 8GB SD Card bundle from RS but unfortunately it seems to be causing some problems.

The Pi booted up perfectly and via NOOB gave me the option of which OS to install. Having selected Raspian it got 6% through the install before hanging and giving an error of 'corrupt image'. Having removed the SD card and reading it in my computer its only showing a total size of 1.17gb with 67mb available and titled 'Recovery'. Any idea what is going on?!

It was the first time I booted the Pi and now it appears the SD card may be faulty. Has anyone else had similar issues?

Many thanks

[retepetsir]

Lack of sleep showing, I have realised that the rest of the card may be formatted differently. However, I have tried it a few times and its still showing image corruption and similar problems.

Is it best to re-format and do it all myself via the downloadable image?

[RaTTuS]

yes try a fresh download of raspbian

[retepetsir]

Right. Have formatted the card via the suggested SDFormatter software and copied the NOOBS file across.

Having now tried it, the Pi does not boot and just sits at the colour screen test with just the power LED lit.

Not a good start!

[RaTTuS]

the noobs image is more than one file
what have you put on the SD card

[retepetsir]

Sorry I didn't make that very clear, I've transferred the extracted contents of the ZIP package across to the SD card.

Having just tried it again I'm receiving a 'compressed image corruption' error with a few 'panic' statements.

[retepetsir]

Maybe I need to try another SD card other than the supplied Pi branded one. Having just booted up it showed broken text and didn't display the menu correctly, followed by changing to a corrupt command line screen.

[DougieLawson]

Reformat the card with the SD Formatter (so that it has a single 8GB FAT partition) or delete all partitions using Windows disk management. You want a single, empty primary FAT partition.

Unzip NOOBS to a folder.
Open Windows File Explorer (start-> run-> explorer) twice (once for the card, once for the folder where NOOBS in unzipped)
CTRL+A (select all)
CTRL+C (copy)
switch to the SDCard
CTRL+V (paste)
Get a coffee or a beer

It should look like this when it's done:


Safely remove the hardware.
Pull the card and boot that in your RPi.

[retepetsir]

Can confirm that's what I have been doing.

Done all this 3 times now and I'm getting different errors when booting the Pi/attempting an OS install - the last one being 'SD Card May be corrupt/damaged'.

Looks like a dodgy card to me? Have tried a few times and it is failing on install or boot.

I am just about to try a spare 4GB card that I have available.

[DougieLawson]

This is a constant problem with NOOBS.
I'd love someone to send me a broken SDCard so I could examine it forensically as it shouldn't be this difficult.

If you can copy an image to your card then using http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_latest (which overwrites the SDCard starting at byte0 (so it trashes the partition table)) should work every time.

With an image we know that all the partitions are going to be in the right places. The only failure is going to be when you write half an image to a card. But we can mitigate against that by doing a sha1sum to ensure we've got everything. With a Linux system as the one doing the card writing we could even sha1sum the card once it's written.

[retepetsir]

Thanks, I will give that a try. I'm getting similar errors on a freshly downloaded NOOBS package and the 4GB SD card.

There's been no problem copying the files into either of the SD's.

[retepetsir]

This is a constant problem with NOOBS.
I'd love someone to send me a broken SDCard so I could examine it forensically as it shouldn't be this difficult.

If you can copy an image to your card then using http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_latest (which overwrites the SDCard starting at byte0 (so it trashes the partition table)) should work every time.

With an image we know that all the partitions are going to be in the right places. The only failure is going to be when you write half an image to a card. But we can mitigate against that by doing a sha1sum to ensure we've got everything. With a Linux system as the one doing the card writing we could even sha1sum the card once it's written.

This image seemed to work. On booting the Pi did it's thing and loads/copied files with 'OK' for most lines except for one showing an orange 'Warn'.

I rebooted as requested but now its just showing the colour screen again and nothing else!

[DougieLawson]

Is the green LED on the board flashing a sequence?

What happens if you try again?
Have you got a good enough power supply?
Can you try the image on your other SDCard?

[retepetsir]

Is the green LED on the board flashing a sequence?

What happens if you try again?
Have you got a good enough power supply?
Can you try the image on your other SDCard?

Was working fine until the reboot, now nothing except for the colour 'debug' screen and the red power LED

PSU is one recommended by RS, 1.3A 5V regulated supply but I could potentially try another one.

I have reloaded the image again onto the same card but now it doesn't boot to the setup sequence. Will try another card!

Frustrating

Thanks for the help so far.

[gsh]

It does sound strange that you are seeing this problem... It is definitely worth trying a NOOBS lite download image (it's much faster to copy down although installation takes a little longer.

I think it may be a problem with SD corruption which was recently fixed (but isn't in the 1.3.2 release) so it might be worth trying a Raspbian image instead which should have the latest fixes.

Gordon

[retepetsir]

I've managed to get it up and running with my own 4GB SD card and the latest Raspbian image. Took many attempts but finally there. It does not like the supplied Pi branded memory card!

I've currently got it running with the 1.3A PSU and a keyboard and mouse plugged in. All ok for the moment.

Thanks for the help

[DougieLawson]

Now you've got a running system get a Fuji USB SDCard reader and you'll be able to mount the other SDCard.

You should be able to copy the running system to it with dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/sdX bs=1M # where sdX is probably sda. That will give you a backup that should boot.

[retepetsir]

Thanks guys

Card reader has been ordered.

I've been trying to mount my external hard drive (has its own PSU) but the Pi is not seeing it so I wonder if it is still a power issue. The log keeps on showing a count of an attached 'new usb device' but this count just increases in number. It's a Seagate drive so could be a driver issue.

[gsh]

Do you get anything in dmesg or lsblk

Gordon

[retepetsir]

After finding a similar forum thread where someone else had problems with a Seagate hard drive I initiated the 'update' and 'upgrade' commands. Took quite a few minutes but it seemed to do lots of installing. I've just gone to reboot and its now stuck on the colour debug screen again . That's without the hard drive plugged in, just HDMI, LAN and power.

Looks like I need to start again.

Using the sudo fdisk -l command didn't show the hard drive at all, just the SD card.

[gsh]

I think your problem is one we've been having with the bootcode...

What you could do is:

EDIT::

Actually download the whole of the firmware from https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware copy the contents of boot/ to the FAT partition on the SD card...

Try again...

Gordon

[retepetsir]

Thanks. Have just done that so will see what happens

Edit: Still won't boot having replaced fixup.dat, kernel.img and bootcode.bin as suggested in another thread

[retepetsir]

Have copied the whole of the /boot contents to the root of the SD card and it still won't boot

Looks like I'm starting again.

[retepetsir]

Have re-formatted both SD cards and used the latest image again (put on both) but now neither are working. I am just getting the colour 'debug' screen and that's it.

What on earth is going on

[gsh]

OK, back to basics...

How about you try the latest Raspbian image from the downloads page and install that to the SD card

http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_latest

You'll need to either use the diskimager software or dd on a linux box...

Gordon