Need help - SD cards image bad/corrupted



  • A month ago, when I received the hotspot, the first thing I did was to upgrade and clone its SD card with a Sandisk Extreme Pro one, and it worked ok until yesterday.

    Yesterday, after I restarted it, I tried to bluetooth pairing countless times through the Pycom Helium app and the message No hotspots Found appeared.
    I replaced the cloned SD card with the Pycom original one, it worked until I restarted the hotspot, and also when I tried to bluetooth pairing, the same No Hotspots Found message appeared.

    When changing the cards, after booting, I noticed that the following LEDs light up, respectively: when the original Pycom SD card is inserted on the Pygate board, the SW1 green and Tx red LEDs are lit, and on the CM4 board the green LED next to the card slot is flashing , and the opposite one on the same CM4 board is also lit.
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    302616457_617108543120014_1677911320109462598_n.jpg

    When the SanDik Extreme Pro SD card is inserted on the Pygate board, the SW1 green and Tx red LEDs are lit, and on the CM4 board the green LED next to the card slot is OFF all time, and the opposite one on the same CM4 board is also lit.
    302549789_854016052634609_3715425625672575754_n.jpg

    302616457_617108543120014_1677911320109462598_n.jpg

    I also followed the steps recommended by @Pete-Allen-0 to @Dimitrios-Bogiatzoules to insert the cards into a computer and this is what I got for both SD cards was the following Windows Autoplay notification : system-boot (E:)-There's a problem with this drive. Scan the drive now and fix it. And after closing the Autoplay notification, the system-boot (E:) window opens automatically in which the overlays folder and many bcm2710 files appear.
    I also tried connecting the USB-C port to a computer and no Linux console opens.

    Also when I try to SanDik Extreme Pro SD card with the SD Card Formatter tool, the following message that appears is Formatting Failed, which means that the SD card is corrupted, the same situation for the original Pycom SD card.

    Thank you,
    Razvan



  • @Razvan-Ciltea
    I had a similar problem. A Pycom hotspot did an OTA update (I suspect) and then went down sometime after that. It had asked me to change the password to the local web interface, which it had never done before, so I assume it had updated. The solid indicator lights I got were just like yours, except I didn't know there was one on the back of the CM4 adapter board.

    In any case, the SD Card was corrupt. I could see the 256Mb FAT partition and its contents, but could not delete or write any new files. DISKPART could not wipe the disk. I plugged it into a Linux laptop and tried to use DD to wipe it and that failed.

    Luckily, I still had a brand new hotspot I had not installed, so I used Balena Etcher to clone the card to a Samsung 64gb high endurance card. It booted up, I paired it to bluetooth, and it is back up and running normally.

    If you have a dropbox or similar account, I can image the OEM drive using USB Image Tool (https://www.alexpage.de/usb-image-tool/) and upload the image so you can restore it on a new drive using the same utility. The file will be 32Gb though - unless it will compress well.

    Note: My hotspots are US915, so I don't know if the image for an EU or different region is the same or not.


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