Card Tricks - a small utility to help manage SD cards [currently v. 1.44]

[whim]

@shinbet

are you sure you haven't forgotten to make the small partition bootable ?
or to swap back to make the small partition visible ?

if sdminste 'sees' it as in the atttach it should work

and, are you using an official autobuild from here: http://mighty-hoernsche.de/ ? 

wim

[shinbet]

well, i went back and did that, and it worked!!
I was sure i made it bootable to begin with! looks like i am sorted,
thanks for all your help!!!

[Racial]

hi um... i have a problem, but i think it's just me.

im trying to find out what firmware version my SX10IS is.

i downloaded v1.44 of Card Tricks.
i went to select my card from where it says 'select drive'
Problem 1: CardTricks keeps freezing when i click that.

but i managed to get around that.

So, next problem: i cant format it.
It keeps saying that it's write protected. but there's no little switch or anything to flick over on the card or the adapter.

im using a microSDHC turbo. with a transflash adapter to let my computer recognize it.

but the card and adapter dont have any switches or buttons on it. also, it's a 4GB card.

i dont know what im doing wrong. any help?

(if all that makes sense......)

NEVER MIND!!! I continued on reading the tutorial about finding your firmware and i found you can just change asdf.txt to ver.req XD

i feel like such a loser


thanks anyway!

[nawalsingal]

Hi all. another newbie. First thanks all for amzing work u people are doing. I just bought A100IS. got to this forum accidently(good luck to me). I successfully created ver.req & vers.req & got the versions. While trying to make the card bootable using card tricks1.44, every step was completed successfully. (Foramting using FAT16, make BOOTABLE etc) but when loaded the card in camera, it shows card locked. Though if i press Funcset & disp key, version is shown. : PID 318E NT D, VER GM1.00B, Adj ver 007.010 etc. I am using 4 gb sandisk micro sdhc card with sd adapter & lock is turned on. Can any one tell where i am going wrong as i am not in to softwares much. TIA. keep up the good work. Cheers

[fe50]

Hello & welcome, nawalsingal !

A100IS....successfully created ver.req & vers.req & got the versions.....version 1.00B

Copy the diskboot.bin file from http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php/topic,2654.msg31940.html#msg31940 to the root of the FAT16 formatted, CHDK-bootable SD card, lock the card again...
The A1000 CHDK version (diskboot.bin) is an early BETA version, the porting thread is here: http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php/topic,2654.0.html - pls. post there when you have more questions...
*Edit: typo 

[nawalsingal]

Thanks a to buddy. I hv also loaded beta ver of a1000. It's working. Though i am a novice for adv photography, still i m able to see remaining battery life, live histogram etc. various other settings are seen but since i don't know much about this, i'll read & try further. Thanx again for amazing work u people are doing.
 

[traildad]

Is there any disadvantage to using FAT16 formatting on a 4gig SDHC Ultra II card? I am trying to decide the best way to use these cards. I guess I am asking if the speed performance in the camera is affected. If I want to use the multi partition method, what is the best way to do that? Thanks

[fudgey]

Is there any disadvantage to using FAT16 formatting on a 4gig SDHC Ultra II card? I am trying to decide the best way to use these cards. I guess I am asking if the speed performance in the camera is affected. If I want to use the multi partition method, what is the best way to do that? Thanks

This may not be a particularly good thread for this question... but the way I've understood it you definitely should use FAT16 whenever you can (i.e. on any card up to 4GiB), because multipartition cards boot slower (due to automatic partition swap + reboot taking its time) and are a bit more cumbersome to install and use (especially for windows users, who can only see one of the partitions at a time when using a card reader instead of USB download).

[traildad]

Is there any disadvantage to using FAT16 formatting on a 4gig SDHC Ultra II card? I am trying to decide the best way to use these cards. I guess I am asking if the speed performance in the camera is affected. If I want to use the multi partition method, what is the best way to do that? Thanks

This may not be a particularly good thread for this question... but the way I've understood it you definitely should use FAT16 whenever you can (i.e. on any card up to 4GiB), because multipartition cards boot slower (due to automatic partition swap + reboot taking its time) and are a bit more cumbersome to install and use (especially for windows users, who can only see one of the partitions at a time when using a card reader instead of USB download).

My apologies, this is day one for me and it is a bit deep. Thanks for the info, I can understand how the multi-partition would slow down the boot and makes things more difficult in general. From your post I am gathering that there is no loss in write speed for the camera etc. when using the Fat16 format. I got the SDHC Ultra to have a fast card and I didn't want to lose speed unintentionally. Thanks again for the help and for all of the great things you and everyone had done on this project.

[fudgey]

From your post I am gathering that there is no loss in write speed for the camera etc. when using the Fat16 format. I got the SDHC Ultra to have a fast card and I didn't want to lose speed unintentionally.

I haven't benchmarked this, but I wouldn't worry. If you want to be sure, you can try it of course. I regularly use 3 cards: 1 GiB  Sandisk Ultra II and 4 GiB and 16 GiB Transcend Class 6 SDHC cards. The largest is of course a dual partition FAT16/FAT32 setup, others are FAT16.

I mostly use the 16 GiB card for timelapses only because appears to perform a bit slower than the others even though it benchmarks (in CHDK debug menu benchmark, that is) similarly to the 4 GiB one. Partially this is because the camera works faster when there aren't many photos on the card (put a 16 GiB card full of photos and it takes literally ages to boot to play mode), but filesystem size could affect speed too (smaller card handling faster).

[traildad]

Thanks again. I am really looking forward to using bracketing, time lapse and motion detection. This makes a great camera simply amazing. Ken

From your post I am gathering that there is no loss in write speed for the camera etc. when using the Fat16 format. I got the SDHC Ultra to have a fast card and I didn't want to lose speed unintentionally.

I haven't benchmarked this, but I wouldn't worry. If you want to be sure, you can try it of course. I regularly use 3 cards: 1 GiB  Sandisk Ultra II and 4 GiB and 16 GiB Transcend Class 6 SDHC cards. The largest is of course a dual partition FAT16/FAT32 setup, others are FAT16.

I mostly use the 16 GiB card for timelapses only because appears to perform a bit slower than the others even though it benchmarks (in CHDK debug menu benchmark, that is) similarly to the 4 GiB one. Partially this is because the camera works faster when there aren't many photos on the card (put a 16 GiB card full of photos and it takes literally ages to boot to play mode), but filesystem size could affect speed too (smaller card handling faster).

[reyalp]

Might want to add a "new new dryos" udumper to cardtricks, see http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php/topic,3994.msg38483.html#msg38483

Regarding FAT16 vs FAT32, one thin to keep in mind is that the FAT16 on a 4 gb card cluster size is 64K. This means the *minimum* size of a file is also 64K. This doesn't matter much for multi-megabyte files, but is rather wasteful if you have a lot of small files for some reason.

I suspect (but haven't confirmed) that the canon firmware is smart enough to only read/erase/write hardware sectors that physically need updating. If not, this could have a major impact on performance in some cases. As always, the testing is recommended if this really matters to you.

[whim]

Might want to add a "new new dryos" udumper to cardtricks, see http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php/topic,3994.msg38483.html#msg38483

It's on the list, but i first need to find room for another button  

cheers,

wim

[piperpilot]

Well, I have read most of this thread and done an extensive google search and am coming up short.

I downloaded CardTricks and ran the program.  When it runs, I get prompted to select my SD Card Drive.  I have my card plugged in and accessable...I select the drive (F: in my case)...hit OK...and immediately get prompted to select the drive again.

Now behind the "select the drive" filesystem browser, I can see that my card was loaded, it was FAT and it read the Drive label just fine.  The drive is listed as "Removable" so it is definately the right drive.

What am I doing wrong?  I can successfully write to the card via a DOS prompt and can browse the contents via windows.  I can even format the drive by right clicking it in "My Computer".  My operating system is WindowXP.

In addition, when I get to this point, the only way to exit the program is to kill the process from the task manager.

Help here would be appreciated!

Thanks,
PiperPilot

[whim]

Hello Piperpilot,

Welcome to the forum !

You haven't installed CT to the SD card I hope ? That would surely cause the drive select dialog to loop, because
CT is programmed to refuse to select the following:
1) your system drive (the one Windows boots from)
2) all hard drives (unless you checked "Allow fixed disks")
3) the drive CardTricks is running from (because in this case formatting would lead to program suicide)

more things to check:
- press "Cancel" in the drive select dialog, and uncheck "Auto" (above the Card icon). Close and restart the program.
  You will now first have to click the card icon to get the drive select dialog. Does it work now  ?
- Delete the CardTricks144.ini file if it exists and retry
- Try if the program properly recognises a USB stick if you have one (to eliminate a weird SD card as cause)

If these tips don't solve your problems, please supply more detail: program version, install path, and card type/size;
as an afterthought: where did you download the program ?

hope that helps,

wim