Red light, no green,no boot? SD card Bad?

[bubblegumpi]

So I have a Pi3 was working just fine. Put noobs on the SD card updated was working just fine. So I lost the mouse and was waiting for a new one in the mail. While not using the Pi I put the SD card into my windows machine to look at the files. This is the same computer I used to install noobs, anyways the SD card was totally not recognised; pluging it in and taking out didn't even register. I figured this was because the last time I used the SD card was just to put the noobs files on it then I let the pi do its magic and set things up.

So today I get the new mouse put the SD card into the pi plug it in and nothing but a solid red light.My monitor said no HDMI signal. Unplugged the power removed the SD card to see if had a bios screen come up or something, but nothing but solid red light. SD card back in several times same thing; solid red LED, no green, and no signal on the monitor. Shouldn't it do something when it doesn't have an SD card like show color bars?

[ejolson]

Shouldn't it do something when it doesn't have an SD card like show color bars?

You'd think, but it doesn't. Initializing the video system is a bit tricky from a software point of view and you need a working sdcard for that.

[linxuser8671]

I had to reinstall my SD card once or twice to get my PI working when i first started, so try formatting the SD card and re installing.
Consider linux as a host machine!

[HawaiianPi]

Once a Pi OS is installed the card gets split into multiple partitions, and only the first, very small partition is visible to a Windows machine. The rest of the card is formatted with a Linux filesystem that Windows can't see. In the case of NOOBS this happens after you boot it and tell it which OS you want. With a Raspbian image, it happens when you write the image file to the SD card.

Now if you could not see the card at all, not even a tiny partition, then it sounds like the card got corrupted and needs to be set up again. Use the SD Card Formatter from the SD association. And make sure you go into Options and turn Format Size Adjustment ON, then click on Format. If the SD card is 32GB or less that's all you need to do. The card is ready for NOOBS again.

If the card is larger than 32GB then it will be formatted with the exFAT file system, which will not work with NOOBS. You will have to reformat cards larger than 32GB with the FAT32 file system, but Windows will not let you do that, so you'll need yet another application called, GUI Format (FAT32format).

Personally, I never liked NOOBS and prefer to grab the Raspbian images and write them to the card with Win32 Disk Imager (or Linux dd). With a Raspbian image you don't need to worry about old partitions or compatible filesystems, because all of that gets overwritten when you write the image to the card.

[bubblegumpi]

So I found the FAQ thread that helped a lot, like finding out the pi has NO BIOS!!!
Since my windows machine absolutely will not recognize the SD card
I'm thinking it's bad. I have had SD cards fail but never so catastrophically like this. I plug it into windows on my laptop SD card slot and nothing, not even that noise it plays when you plug something in. Even if raspberian redoes the SD card after you set up the pi for the first time, shouldn't windows at least detect that something is in its card reader? Even using an SD USB adapter thing, windows makes no indication that something is plugged in to its USB port. When I had bad SD cards before it would tell me I had a device plugged in. I know "kingston" SD cards are kind of generic but if the problem is the SD card I'm never using their POS cards again. What a waste of money and since I bought it off Amazon over a month ago there is no taking it back. I wish bestbuy and staples had normal/competitive prices so I could shop there. I think they lose huge amounts of business to online because they charge 5-10X times the price of online. When the exact same brand is $10 online with shipping and staples charges $69.95 thats just being greedy.

[DavidS]

Well what happens when you put in a different card with a Raspberry Pi targetted Operating System installed?

SD cards go bad, and more often when running Linux off of them (there is a lot of read/write access in the way that Linux applications do things), so always prepair at least two, and use a seperate device to maintain backups of your data, projects, and packages.

[bubblegumpi]

Yes my new SD card should be here tomorrow, but I was trying to exhaust all possibilities before I got a new one.. This time I;m buy two or three one will have a fresh copy of noobs. What I was hoping to do is when every thing was all setup and working make an exact clone of the SD card in my windows machine as I only have one real computer, but I read that windows might not understand the fully set up card and might have a problem making an exact copy. Can this be done? It would be awesome having an exact back up I could just slide in with my settings and files all intact.

Also I have a 500Gb hard drive I found from my old lap top. I have a hard drive case that adapts the SATA to USB to make it a stand alone drive, could this be configured in place of the SD card? I read that the pi looks for the USB before it looks to the SD card...

[bentleyafrica]

Hi My Rasberry pi did not want to boot red light only.
I must add to this that it was hanging by a USB cable under the shed roof next to an access point I have there. We had a great rain storm with numerous power failures including the backup battery bank going off at times. A bit of a bad setup I must admit.
After power was restored the Rasberry Pi only gave me a red light no boot, no green light at all.
1. I put in a newly configured new memory card. No solution Put back old card.
2. Put it in the oven still hot after baking hoping that it would dry out as I suspected moisture damage. No solution
3. Put it in the hot sun for an hour or so. No solution I thought but left it on. Later I noticed the red light off! Powered off and on and we had a boot.
All systems go but now I am scared to power the Pi off.
Am battling with static IP and it changes every time the system boots. Coen (a friend over the mountain from me) kindly gave me an AP with configurable IP address for this and worked fine till I upgraded my Internet connection and the AP causes havoc on the network as DHCP server is in the router of the internet company. I am probably one of the worst programmers however can do MS dos. my network for the pi should be 192.168.3.10 running openhabian and Domotics to control switches.