I know it sounds silly, but I was running openwrt on my rpi and I accidentally uploaded an upgrade image which was for ramips platform. Since then the rpi doesn't boot with the sdcard which was in use at that moment.
I know you will tell me to reflash it in an sd card reader, and I did that already. But it still wouldn't boot. Then I went ahead and tried another sd card and it works. I flashed that sd card with the same image I kept flashing to the broken card and still works fine.
Interestingly, the malfunctioning sd card seem to work fine under windows.
So, the question is how to fix the broken sd card? and how can it be broken?
Thanks!
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beta-tester
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Re: Can rpi brick an sdcard?
try to zero the content of the SD card on a low level. possibly confused by a broken/inconsistent partition table/file system (that Windows still accept, but RPi/Raspbian doesn't).
put your broken SD card to a card reader.
under linux try first to zero the first 16MByte of the sd card.
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=16M count=1 && sync
or zero your entire sd card (takes a very very long time)
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M && sync
where X you have to change to the one of your SD card.
i would suggest to do not on your working desktop PC.
do it on your working and running RPi, by using your good SD card, and plug your sd card reader with the broken SD card to there, to zero the broken sd card.
as a newbie the chance to wipe out your HDD on a desktop PC is too high.
PS.: if you do it on RPi, then your SD card in the SD card reader is mostly accessable as /dev/sda.
but do not use that device name on a desktop PC, because there /dev/sda is your system hard drive, you would wipe out then!
put your broken SD card to a card reader.
under linux try first to zero the first 16MByte of the sd card.
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=16M count=1 && sync
or zero your entire sd card (takes a very very long time)
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M && sync
where X you have to change to the one of your SD card.
i would suggest to do not on your working desktop PC.
do it on your working and running RPi, by using your good SD card, and plug your sd card reader with the broken SD card to there, to zero the broken sd card.
as a newbie the chance to wipe out your HDD on a desktop PC is too high.
PS.: if you do it on RPi, then your SD card in the SD card reader is mostly accessable as /dev/sda.
but do not use that device name on a desktop PC, because there /dev/sda is your system hard drive, you would wipe out then!
Last edited by beta-tester on Sat Feb 13, 2016 3:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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RPi B (256MB), B (512MB), B+, ZeroW; 2B; 3B, 3B+; 4B (4GB)
RPi B (256MB), B (512MB), B+, ZeroW; 2B; 3B, 3B+; 4B (4GB)
Re: Can rpi brick an sdcard?
Thank you, but I am not a newbie to using computers, or linux 
I think it has nothing to do with the areas that normal utilities can write. Because I did what you said (by the way, you meant to write 'bs=16M' I think?) and also formatted the card fully with sd formatter on windows with overwrite option and also tested it with H2testw for the full size. Still the result is the same.
In addition, I now realized at least one digicam does not recognize the card anymore. It says no card inserted. (although it appeared in Linux, and in Windows fine with the USB card reader, and also a netbook's internal card reader worked fine(which is also usb internally)).
I think we need a special utility to write to sdcard raw or something. Some way to reset the card contents including the protected area perhaps?
Thanks!
I think it has nothing to do with the areas that normal utilities can write. Because I did what you said (by the way, you meant to write 'bs=16M' I think?) and also formatted the card fully with sd formatter on windows with overwrite option and also tested it with H2testw for the full size. Still the result is the same.
In addition, I now realized at least one digicam does not recognize the card anymore. It says no card inserted. (although it appeared in Linux, and in Windows fine with the USB card reader, and also a netbook's internal card reader worked fine(which is also usb internally)).
I think we need a special utility to write to sdcard raw or something. Some way to reset the card contents including the protected area perhaps?
Thanks!
Re: Can rpi brick an sdcard?
When all else fails, the usual advice is to format the card in a camera. It very often works.yurtesen wrote:I think we need a special utility to write to sdcard raw or something. Some way to reset the card contents including the protected area perhaps?
Pi2B Mini-PC/Media Centre: ARM=1GHz (+3), Core=500MHz, v3d=500MHz, h264=333MHz, RAM=DDR2-1200 (+6/+4/+4+schmoo). Sandisk Ultra HC-I 32GB microSD card on '50=100' OCed slot (42MB/s read) running Raspbian/KODI16, Seagate 3.5" 1.5TB HDD mass storage.
Re: Can rpi brick an sdcard?
I now tried 2 different cameras, one of them says there is no sd card, the other one says it formatted it but it does not seem to help.
Re: Can rpi brick an sdcard?
It sounds as though it's terminally bricked then. Out of interest, what age/size/make/model of card is this?
Pi2B Mini-PC/Media Centre: ARM=1GHz (+3), Core=500MHz, v3d=500MHz, h264=333MHz, RAM=DDR2-1200 (+6/+4/+4+schmoo). Sandisk Ultra HC-I 32GB microSD card on '50=100' OCed slot (42MB/s read) running Raspbian/KODI16, Seagate 3.5" 1.5TB HDD mass storage.
Re: Can rpi brick an sdcard?
It is a sandisk extreme pro uhs-1 8gb card, I think it is about 2 years old.
The card is not even bricked itself, it works fine in every other way than in that one camera and RPi cant boot from it.
Anyway, it is not so big deal, the sd cards are pretty cheap but I was just wondering if there was a way to somehow fix it.
The card is not even bricked itself, it works fine in every other way than in that one camera and RPi cant boot from it.
Anyway, it is not so big deal, the sd cards are pretty cheap but I was just wondering if there was a way to somehow fix it.