SDHC card slows to a crawl and stops when writing image

[jim01]

Hello. I am trying to write an image to a 4GB SDHC card by following the directions in the quick start guide. The problem is that when it is writing the image, it gets slower and slower until it just stops. I thought I had a bad image so I downloaded it again and followed the directions to check the checksum to ensure it was not corrupted. I originally had an 8GB SD/SDHC card but thought it was bad and went to another store and purchased a 4GB SDHC card and it's doing the same exact thing.

Am I missing something here? I've never used an SD card other than to toss it into my camera. Any advice would be appreciated. The card is formatted FAT32.

[FTrevorGowen]

How are you writing the image (Tool/Program/O.S.)?
Are you using an SD(HC) card "slot" or an external USB SDHC card reader/writer?
Trev.

[jim01]

I've tried writing the image using Win32DiskImage and Roadkil's DiskImage. I am using a PNY All-in-1 Combo card reader via usb connection on 64-bit Win7. I just received an "Error 34 occurred while writing to disk at sector 382976" error message.

[jim01]

So both my 8GB SD/SDHC and 4GB SDHC cards have returned with the same exact error message, " "Error 34 occurred while writing to disk at sector 382976." There is no way that the darned cards are both bad and failing at the exact same sector. Since I know it's not my iso file, I guess it has to be my brand new, out of the box card reader.

[FTrevorGowen]

So both my 8GB SD/SDHC and 4GB SDHC cards have returned with the same exact error message, " "Error 34 occurred while writing to disk at sector 382976." There is no way that the darned cards are both bad and failing at the exact same sector. Since I know it's not my iso file, I guess it has to be my brand new, out of the box card reader.

You may be right, but the im(a)g(e) file that's being written is of fixed size (a little under 2Gb) and thus the write could fail at the same sector. I don't write my SDHC cards with Windows tools because my netbook is dual-boot Ubuntu Linux/Windows XP and I can use Ubuntu's "ImageWriter" tool. There have been mixed posts w.r.t. Win32DiskImager written cards on the forum in the few weeks I been here - some people have had no problems, others have had subsequent booting issues. One point that has been mentioned is that you must have admin rights when writing. I'm guessing that "safely remove" is a good idea too. My external SDHC card reader/writer is one of two "integral" devices purchased with 4Gb SDHC cards not long after they became available (I don't use the SD card slot on my netbook since it's not marked as SDHC compatible). One possibility is to try a "Live Linux Distro." which runs from CD/DVD without using your m/c's hard drive and use the "command-line" "dd" utility of that, with care - be sure you are writing to the correct drive/device! I don't know for sure, but the (current) "Ubuntu Live" may include "ImageWriter", one of its other uses being to create a bootable USB stick version of the live distro. it's part of.
Trev.

[drgeoff]

1. I have only ever used Linux and 'dd' to write my cards so cannot say with certainty that Win32DiskImager will behave the same as the following. 'dd' is completely blind to the bytes it is writing. They can be anything - don't need to be a valid iso, img or anything else.

2. Assuming 512 byte sectors, the error message occurs at about 192 Mbytes into the write. Or 4k sectors would be 8 times that. What is the exact size of the image you are attempting to write?

3. Can you post a URL to the card reader?