Class 10 SD Card Not Working

[5V0]

Hi, there

Two weeks ago I bought a Raspberry Pi. I checked the list of valid SD cards to use on the Pi and bought two different class 10 cards (one Kingston, the other Lexar). Neither class 10 card works, but an old class 4 card does. I have spend $30 on these cards which are advertised to work, and they don't. I'm not sure what the issue is, I bought the official 5V/1.2A power supply - I noticed that it's giving me 4.84 volts, though, even when plugged directly in from the wall.

I'm getting really frustrated due to terrible customer service from Element14 - off topic, but my experience so far has been terrible and now it looks like I've wasted $30 on SD cards that were advertised to work.

Has anybody else had this issue and how do I fix it? I just want to start learning hardware, this is not a good first experience.

[5V0]

My mistake, one of the cards was listed as problematic (had the same model number as it's 32GB counterpart). The other card was class 4 and not class 6.

The Wikipedia page should be updated:
"16 GB SDHC Class 6 Platinum II" may work but:
"16 GB SDHC Class 4 Platinum II" most definitely does not.

[AshMan40]

Not sure if this will help you but I bought two Class 10 Maxell Micro SD 4GB cards with SD adapters. I don't know if they were listed as compatible, or not.
When I tried to image the OS files to the cards using Win32DiskImager. First card worked right out of the box.
Second one could not be written to initially. I tried formatting it under Windows 7 and then re-image. Still could not write.
I ended up rebooting my laptop and starting the Win32DiskImager explicitly with the Run as Administrator option. This worked. I pretty sure I burned the first image without running as admin, but that is what I needed to do to get the image burnt to the SD cards.

If you are not getting errors writing to the cards, but have problems reading from them once inserted.... maybe this is of no use.


AshMan40

[5V0]

Thanks for the response. I'm getting I/O errors and sector errors when trying to read from the Pi, the cards work fine on every other device I have tried, though. Apparently it clashes with the GPU somehow.

[tarjalan]

I think I read somewhere that this may be due to your using windows to set up your sd card.

If you have access to a Linux machine, you may find the card will work if you use that to make the image.

If you have a usb cardreader you may be able to use Linux Live (google it), or something similar, to create a useable image on a windows machine

[5V0]

I used OS X to format and copy the image onto the card. It doesn't seem to be specific to Windows if Windows also has this problem - unless it's the other way around, in which case I should try Windows.

I ended up getting a 4GB Sony SD card which works. Shame, though, I have found class 4 to be considerably slower.

[Matha]

Sorry if this has been covered already. Be very particular about the SD card. The original SD card as supplied by the U.S. distributor failed to boot - not a surprising experience based on related posts here. A trip to a local retailer for a well known brand remedied the situation and everything works flawlessly now.

[5V0]

Sorry if this has been covered already. Be very particular about the SD card. The original SD card as supplied by the U.S. distributor failed to boot - not a surprising experience based on related posts here. A trip to a local retailer for a well known brand remedied the situation and everything works flawlessly now.

Yeah, honestly, my first experience with the Raspberry Pi has been absolutely terrible. I bought this thing to learn more about hardware and I can't do anything because of all the flaws. Really disappointed that I spent my money on this. In what world does a Kingston SD card not work on a device? Moreover, I've just found out that the official Wi-Fi dongle that I bought only works in Debian, absolutely disgusted by this.

[jackokring]

You say GPU, ?? HDMI or composite?

[5V0]

You say GPU, ?? HDMI or composite?

I've tried both, but I read somewhere on the internet, may have been elinux.org that the SD card isn't compatible with the GPU for some odd reason.

[efflandt]

My 1st rev 2.0 Pi worked fine with (2) class 4 Sandisk 16 GB SD cards, but initially would not boot a class 10 Sandisk 30 MB/s 16 MB card. I then got it to boot, but after a random period of time everything on USB would drop out (keyboard and ethernet or WiFi would stop working). Strangely it also had issues with a class 4 Sandisk 8 GB similar to the 16 GB ones that worked fine.

I got (2) more Pi's which appear to be from a different batch, because the Samsung CPU chips have printing on them instead of just marked with dark Samsung impression. They seem to work fine with all the SD cards. But I have done various Raspian software and firmware updates, so that might have had something to do with it. Although, strangely the software updates (dist-upgrade) made a perfectly functioning common Dell (Lite-on Technology) wired USB keyboard no longer compatible (USB and ethernet have fits when it is connected) which still works fine on a Linux PC.

Since the (2) newer Pi's stay up with or without wireless keyboard dongle and with ethernet or mini-WiFi, I need to do more testing with the 1st Pi to see if it is more reliable with updated software or firmware, or if it might be defective. But its failures have been entirely random, sometimes up for days, and sometimes not responding after less than an hour.

Development is still ongoing, which is why some people report certain hardware working, and others not.

[remsnet]

Hello,
one of my expirences with 32GB and 64Gb SD cards :

Setting GPU ram to 16Gb resulted the RPI modelB 512MB ram not boot FC17r2 rasp
Looks like minimum require 32G GPU ram required for bigger sized cards.

Probably someone can confirm that ?!?

kind regards.

[5V0]

Hello,
one of my expirences with 32GB and 64Gb SD cards :

Setting GPU ram to 16Gb resulted the RPI modelB 512MB ram not boot FC17r2 rasp
Looks like minimum require 32G GPU ram required for bigger sized cards.

Probably someone can confirm that ?!?

kind regards.

Please post a separate topic to this one.

[5V0]

My 1st rev 2.0 Pi worked fine with (2) class 4 Sandisk 16 GB SD cards, but initially would not boot a class 10 Sandisk 30 MB/s 16 MB card. I then got it to boot, but after a random period of time everything on USB would drop out (keyboard and ethernet or WiFi would stop working). Strangely it also had issues with a class 4 Sandisk 8 GB similar to the 16 GB ones that worked fine.

I got (2) more Pi's which appear to be from a different batch, because the Samsung CPU chips have printing on them instead of just marked with dark Samsung impression. They seem to work fine with all the SD cards. But I have done various Raspian software and firmware updates, so that might have had something to do with it. Although, strangely the software updates (dist-upgrade) made a perfectly functioning common Dell (Lite-on Technology) wired USB keyboard no longer compatible (USB and ethernet have fits when it is connected) which still works fine on a Linux PC.

Since the (2) newer Pi's stay up with or without wireless keyboard dongle and with ethernet or mini-WiFi, I need to do more testing with the 1st Pi to see if it is more reliable with updated software or firmware, or if it might be defective. But its failures have been entirely random, sometimes up for days, and sometimes not responding after less than an hour.

Development is still ongoing, which is why some people report certain hardware working, and others not.

That's true. I probably shouldn't be so harsh on the Pi. How do I do a simple firmware update? Must I be running Raspbian? (That's what I've currently got on my card)

[efflandt]

In the Toubleshooting forum there is a sticky post that links to http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting

And specifically how to update firmware is http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting# ... g_firmware

However, I had some issue with wget for names that include ipv6 addresses in the list of IP's they resolve to. So I had to add inet4_only = on to /etc/wgetrc before that would all work. And you also have to sudo apt-get install git-core, which rpi-update will tell you if you do not have git.

[5V0]

In the Toubleshooting forum there is a sticky post that links to http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting

And specifically how to update firmware is http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting# ... g_firmware

However, I had some issue with wget for names that include ipv6 addresses in the list of IP's they resolve to. So I had to add inet4_only = on to /etc/wgetrc before that would all work. And you also have to sudo apt-get install git-core, which rpi-update will tell you if you do not have git.

Thank you!