CHDK dual-partition 64GB card issue (Windows)

jules

73

CHDK dual-partition 64GB card issue (Windows)

« on: 17 / November / 2015, 21:11:37 »

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This is only relevant for people who autoboot CHDK on an older camera, and want to use a large capacity sd card.

I just learned (after much hassle) that exFAT is the normal format for large sd cards. Current era computers and cameras handle large cards properly so I had no need to think about format until now.

Where it can get tricky is when you need dual partitions (FAT16/FAT32) for autobooting CHDK on an older camera. Then you find Windows cannot do FAT32 format on anything bigger than 32GB. My new 64GB card seemed to be trashed after trying to partition it...

Solution: use a third-party utility like this one:
http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm

Big thank-you to Ridgecrop Consultants for that very helpful utility. It quickly changed my 64GB card to FAT32 format.

Then the card could be prepared for CHDK as normal by STICK. Big thank you to Dave for this great utility. It will be even better if it can be updated to handle 64GB cards on Windows, or at least warn about this issue.

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zeno

891

Re: CHDK dual-partition 64GB card issue (Windows)

« Reply #1 on: 19 / November / 2015, 14:23:27 »

I've updated STICK so that it detects exFAT cards and says it can't process them. The STICK webpage mentions this problem and also provides a pointer to tools which will successfully format 64Gb (or bigger) cards as FAT32.

I've also fixed a couple of bugs - STICK couldn't lcreate labels with embedded blanks under Windows, and there was an obscure bug that meant card drives on some OSX systems were wrongly skipped as 'system disks'.

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A570, S100, Ixus 127
Author of ASSIST, STICK, WASP, ACID, SDMInst, LICKS, WICKS, MacBoot, UBDB, CFGEdit

kjg

1

Re: CHDK dual-partition 64GB card issue (Windows)

« Reply #2 on: 01 / April / 2017, 21:38:43 »

I have a 128GB and a 32 GB card.
Using STICK, in both cases I get the error:
Drive H:
Size, partitioning, bootability unknown

I thought this was because the bigger card was formatted as exFAT, so I used the fat32format tool to change it to FAT32 (and the 32 bit SD card was already FAT32). I confirmed that they are both FAT32 now with the windows>computer>manage>storage>disk management. For example, the larger card it says "16MB Unallocat, 119.07 GB FAT32 Healthy (Primary Partition)"

STICK still gives this same message for both cards.
I'm running STICK on Windows 7. The camera is a Canon S110.
Thanks!

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zeno

891

Re: CHDK dual-partition 64GB card issue (Windows)

« Reply #3 on: 02 / April / 2017, 04:11:05 »

I just checked the code. That message appears if the low-level card analysis routines report an error reading the card or if STICK has not been given permission to read and write boot sectors. Are you sure you started STICK by double-clicking the stickx.cmd file (which will then bring up a dialog asking for permission to 'elevate' the app)?

To analyse a 128Gb card you will have to edit the stick.properties file to edit the maxsize lineline and make it:
maxsize=128000
instead of 64000. It's a simple text file in the STICK directory.

If you've done both of these things then I'm not sure what is going wrong. STICK writes a log to a file called sticklog.txt - if you email it to me that may give a clue as to what the problem is.

Logged

A570, S100, Ixus 127
Author of ASSIST, STICK, WASP, ACID, SDMInst, LICKS, WICKS, MacBoot, UBDB, CFGEdit