1 Topic by polferis

  • polferis
  • New member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2019-01-09
  • Posts: 2

Topic: Cannot format an micro-SDcard

Hello friends, I realy appreciate your GParted, I'm using it for a long enough time because it has escaped my misfortunes many times in my work! But now I'm stucked in a problem with a Samsung micro-sd-card used in a smartphone for data storage. I cannot format it with GParted and any other partitioning programs. I have tried many times to do that, but with the same result... Windows is unable to format it,any other programs says "completed successfully" but the oldfileson it are there. Even if I copy files on it, they disappear if I remove the card from pc, laptop. Today I have tried to erase data on it with GParted on boot, but it gives me an error which I saved the html log. I know, this is only an micro sdcard, I can buy another one... yes, it's true, but I want to know for the future how to deal with these kind of problems. So, if you are kind and you can help me, I would enjoy it a lot! Thank you very much.
Here is the error log generated by GParted, maybe you will be able to help me:

GParted 0.33.0 --enable-libparted-dmraid --enable-online-resize

Libparted 3.2.94-7188
Format /dev/sdc4 as fat32  00:00:34    ( ERROR )
        
calibrate /dev/sdc4  00:00:01    ( SUCCESS )
        
path: /dev/sdc4 (partition)
start: 256
end: 15677439
size: 15677184 (7.48 GiB)
clear old file system signatures in /dev/sdc4  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
        
write 512.00 KiB of zeros at byte offset 0  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
write 4.00 KiB of zeros at byte offset 67108864  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
write 512.00 KiB of zeros at byte offset 8026062848  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
write 4.00 KiB of zeros at byte offset 8026652672  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
write 8.00 KiB of zeros at byte offset 8026710016  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
flush operating system cache of /dev/sdc  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
set partition type on /dev/sdc4  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
        
new partition type: fat32
create new fat32 file system  00:00:33    ( ERROR )
        
mkfs.fat -F32 -v -I '/dev/sdc4'  00:00:33    ( ERROR )
        
mkfs.fat 3.0.28 (2015-05-16)
/dev/sdc4 has 247 heads and 62 sectors per track,
hidden sectors 0x0100;
logical sector size is 512,
using 0xf8 media descriptor, with 15677184 sectors;
drive number 0x80;
filesystem has 2 32-bit FATs and 8 sectors per cluster.
FAT size is 15280 sectors, and provides 1955824 clusters.
There are 32 reserved sectors.
Volume ID is 29603422, no volume label.
mkfs.fat: failed whilst writing FAT

2 Reply by gedakc

  • gedakc
  • Developer
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2007-11-30
  • Posts: 4,593

Re: Cannot format an micro-SDcard

The last line of the log indicates a problem writing the File Allocation Table.

You can learn more about the problem immediately after the failed format by running 

dmesg

in a terminal and checking the last few lines for indications of read or write errors on the device.  If input or output errors are present then it is likely a hardware problem.  A hardware problem can be as simple as a loose cable, or as serious as a failing device.

Since you have tried multiple ways to reformat the SD card, I suspect that the SD card is failing and will no longer accept write activity.

3 Reply by polferis

  • polferis
  • New member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2019-01-09
  • Posts: 2

Re: Cannot format an micro-SDcard

gedakc wrote:

The last line of the log indicates a problem writing the File Allocation Table.

You can learn more about the problem immediately after the failed format by running 

dmesg

in a terminal and checking the last few lines for indications of read or write errors on the device.  If input or output errors are present then it is likely a hardware problem.  A hardware problem can be as simple as a loose cable, or as serious as a failing device.

Since you have tried multiple ways to reformat the SD card, I suspect that the SD card is failing and will no longer accept write activity.

Thank you @gedakc for your reply. As I said, it's about a simply sdcard, I'll throw it away and I'll buy another one.