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Problem formatting sdhc card

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Problem formatting sdhc card
« on: 01 / February / 2009, 15:34:51 »
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Hello,
I have an SD1100 IS and have spent the past few days fighting with my mac (os x tiger, not leopard) to get CHDK to work at all. The instructions (here: http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ/Mac) say they're for leopard, but should work on other OS X computers. I'm using a 16gb card, formatted into 2 partitions (the smaller 6mb "boot" partition with FAT16 and the larger partition with FAT32). I had trouble getting the smaller partition to be FAT16 instead of FAT12, but it worked when I made it a little bigger than the instructions said (6mb instead of 4mb). Where the instructions are failing me is here:

    * Open the Terminal
    * Type: fdisk -e /dev/diskX ie.( fdisk -e /dev/disk2 )
          Ignore the error "fdisk: could not open MBR file ..."
    * Type: setpid 1
    * Enter 1 when prompted for new partition id.
    * Type: write
    * Enter y when prompted
    * Type: exit

I don't get the error it says to ignore. Instead, I get:  fdisk: /dev/disk2 is not a character device or a regular file

Then, none of the other commands do anything.

After trying this over and over again and trying to make sense of the ManPages/fdisk page that is supposed to help, I somehow just skipped this whole step. It seemed like the card was finally formatted correctly because I could update the firmware when I put it in the camera and it let me go through the menus and everything. But, when I tried to load scripts it wouldn't work. I couldn't see any of my scripts. So, I figured out that I had to put the scripts on the smaller "boot" partition instead of the larger partition. Then, I could load scripts, but when I took any photos the camera ran out of memory immediately. It's only using the smaller partition and not recognizing the larger one. Is this because of skipping that terminal step above? Is there something else I can do to make it recognize both partitions like it's supposed to?

Has anyone else used such a large (16 gb) memory card with CHDK before? Will it work? I really need it to be at least bigger than 4 gb because I'm doing time lapse and can't stop in the middle of the process to upload to make room for more photos. Would 8 gb work? Any help would be much appreciated!!

Thank you!!


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Offline reyalp

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Re: Problem formatting sdhc card
« Reply #1 on: 01 / February / 2009, 15:40:20 »
Quote
Instead, I get:  fdisk: /dev/disk2 is not a character device or a regular file
This probably means that you aren't using the right disk name.

You need to figure out which device your sd card shows up as. This is very important as you really really don't want to f the wrong disk ;)
Don't forget what the H stands for.

Re: Problem formatting sdhc card
« Reply #2 on: 01 / February / 2009, 15:53:07 »
Thanks for your reply.
Ok. So, it says to find the disk name, do this:

    * Select the first partition from the list on the left.
    * Get Info ( Apple+I ), and note the Disk Identifier, ie.( /dev/disk2s1 ). This identifier is very important; it will be used to address the proper disk for all subsequent steps.
We will refer to the disk identifier as /dev/diskX and /dev/diskXsX from now on. /dev/diskX refers to /dev/disk2 and dev/diskXsX refers to /dev/disk2s1 in the example. In all subsequent instructions, replace these identifiers with the identifier of your disk, as shown in the information window of Disk Utility.

When I get info, it tells me it's disk2s1. There's no "/dev/" anywhere, so I don't know what that means. I tried it in terminal without the /dev/ and it says: fdisk: disk2: No such file or directory 
or this variation: fdisk: /disk2: No such file or directory

How do I figure out what the right disk name is?

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Offline reyalp

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Re: Problem formatting sdhc card
« Reply #3 on: 01 / February / 2009, 16:04:32 »
Again, you don't want to try to just guess the name. If you managed to fdisk your hard drive instead of your SD card, you're computer would no longer start, and all your data could be lost (you'd probably get a warning or error somewhere along the way, but just randomly trying stuff is a bad idea)

Unfortunately, I'm not particularly familiar with osx, so I don't know exactly how you'd find the right name. On most unixish systems, typing mount in a shell (terminal) will show you what devices are mounted where.
Don't forget what the H stands for.


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Offline fe50

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Re: Problem formatting sdhc card
« Reply #4 on: 01 / February / 2009, 16:09:24 »
@yellowbex
The SD1100 do not have multipartition support yet, only cards with a FAT16 formatted partition up to 4GB can be used !

The "small-boot + big-data partition" method will not work on this camera !

--> use a smaller (max. 4GB) card, FAT16 formatted
...  or try to make a single primary partition with max. 4GB on your 16GB card,
     write the CHDK BOOTDISK flag to offset 40h (like described in the wikia) and
     copy the CHDK files to this partition - and don't forget to lock the card.

Re: Problem formatting sdhc card
« Reply #5 on: 01 / February / 2009, 16:23:53 »
Thanks. Too bad I can't use a larger card! I'll have to check if I can with other cameras.

Re: Problem formatting sdhc card
« Reply #6 on: 01 / February / 2009, 16:41:28 »
You can indeed use the larger card. Use the 'firmware update method' each time u want to use chdk (autoboot doesnt work, but at least u can use chdk)

Re: Problem formatting sdhc card
« Reply #7 on: 01 / February / 2009, 17:11:14 »
I do use the firmware update method. The problem is that the camera refuses to recognize the larger partition of my card. It is supposed to work like this:

"If you have a card larger than 4 GB, the solution is to create two partitions on your card: a small FAT16 partition, and a larger FAT32 partition. (The FAT16 partition can be very small, like 2 MB, and must be the first partition on the card.) You would then install the CHDK boot files (DISKBOOT.BIN and possibly PS.FIR) on the FAT16 partition, and everything else on the FAT32 one. When using this system, CHDK will start from the FAT16 part of the card. It will then automatically detect the larger FAT32 partition, and "switch over" to use that one. All images, movies, etc. will be stored on the large partition, and all CHDK scripts and data files will be read from there."

My SD1100 can't recognize the 2nd partition, so it can't use scripts there and can't save photos or video there.

I also have an older SD630. I'm now trying to get it to work because there's nothing that says it can't deal with partitions. It has a 2gb card already with CHDK that works fine, but the card isn't big enough to hold all the photos I need it to. Now when I try to use the 16gb card with the CHDK for this camera and go through all the same steps as I did for the other camera, I run into another problem. The camera won't even let me update the firmware and says "error memory card locked." The instructions said to lock the memory card! But these instructions haven't been very helpful, so I try unlocking the memory card and reinserting it. Then the camera still says the memory card is locked. I'm at a loss as to how to make this work on any camera!


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Offline fe50

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Re: Problem formatting sdhc card
« Reply #8 on: 01 / February / 2009, 17:15:38 »
You can indeed use the larger card. Use the 'firmware update method' each time u want to use chdk (autoboot doesnt work, but at least u can use chdk)

Ahh - yes, forgot this...FI2 creation is enabled by default on the Autobuild server now,
so manual loading should work with all sizes...

@yellowbex:
There's no need for 2 partitions, just use the whole card with one partition (FAT32), this works with the manual loading method !

Download the latest 'complete' version for your camera from the Autobuild Server, format your card in your camera (with the standard Canon menu), then expand (unzip) all the files from the downloaded package to the root of the SD card, start in playback mode & call the "Firmware Update" item from the Canon menu...this should work...


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Offline fe50

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Re: Problem formatting sdhc card
« Reply #9 on: 01 / February / 2009, 17:23:20 »
...
I also have an older SD630. I'm now trying to get it to work because there's nothing that says it can't deal with partitions. It has a 2gb card already with CHDK that works fine, but the card isn't big enough to hold all the photos I need it to. Now when I try to use the 16gb card with the CHDK for this camera and go through all the same steps as I did for the other camera, I run into another problem. The camera won't even let me update the firmware and says "error memory card locked." The instructions said to lock the memory card! But these instructions haven't been very helpful, so I try unlocking the memory card and reinserting it. Then the camera still says the memory card is locked. I'm at a loss as to how to make this work on any camera!

The reason for this is that the Ixus 65 / SD630 do not support SDHC memory cards,
so the camera rejects such cards always with an error message (normally something like 'Card error').

That's a hardware limitation of the camera, CHDK can't help here...

On this camera you can only use "old" memory cards with the SD standard (up to 4GB), not the newer SDHC ones - with or without CHDK.


 

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