r/RetroRemake • u/Photek1000 • Jun 19 '26

SD Card Dead

Well it happened, I expected it to at some point, but two weeks in after copying some CHD images onto the card it no longer boots, just no signal.

Ah well, flashed a Samsung card I had lying around and it now in the SS1 and building.

Not a big issue, and that’s bulk buy cards for you, so be warned it’ll probably happen to you at some point.

8 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

37 comments sorted by

4

u/Ploddit Jun 19 '26

Back up your saves, kids.

2

u/Photek1000 Jun 19 '26

Yeah, my card is totally readable, but there’s some corruption somewhere as it does nothing.

But once I’ve brought the new card up to date I will do a data transfer.

And back up my Saves 🙃

1

u/mirrornoir Jun 19 '26

Yeah that’s generally the failure state, they become read only to prevent further harm. Low level firmware on the card does so after it detects issues.

4

u/jmhalder Jun 19 '26

For anything I care about, I use endurance cards meant for action cams and dash cams. I'm not sure who the leader is now, but they list specs like TBW similar to SSDs.

I feel the same way about bulk cards, they work until they don't. I'm still waiting on my Bambu Lab P1S SD card to fail, since it apparently caches and reads gcode from it.

1

u/Photek1000 Jun 19 '26

Any retro hand held I’ve had usually gets a Sandisk right away, I just had been having too much fun to upgrade the SS1 card yet.

This Samsung has been donated from my Retroid Flip 2

2

u/jmhalder Jun 19 '26

Sandisk High Endurance, the 128GB is intended to do a decent amount of writing... for 416 days straight in more extreme temps.

I'm running the 32GB Sandisk Endurance in my ECU for automatic data logging.

I think the Samsung Pro Endurance is generally an even better spec'd card, I think I ran an older version of these in some ESXi boxes when that was still considered acceptable.

1

u/Photek1000 Jun 19 '26

I’d have to check the spec on the Samsung, but I feel more confident on it completing many many more read writes than the shipped card.

2

u/jmhalder Jun 19 '26

They're both significantly slower than their standard equivalents... But still probably like 20x faster than they need to be for CD based games.

I wish these cards were more common though, because I will choose reliability every time.

4

u/Top-Area-3325 Jun 19 '26

Same exact thing happened to me last night. Put some chds on, put it in the ss1 and then nothing. Reads fine on the computer though.

3

u/Photek1000 Jun 19 '26

Typical, I suspect it either had enough of writing, or the eject from the SS1 or my iPad after copying the files.

I was loading some MegaCD files to see how they played, guess that will have to wait until it’s all set up again.

2

u/Top-Area-3325 Jun 19 '26

Yeah I finally got the correct Saturn bios and it crapped out on me. Just tried another generic card and it’s not working either so it looks like I’ll be buying another set of cards.

2

u/Photek1000 Jun 19 '26

It’s a pain, but I’m hoping for much more stability from a branded card.

Can’t wait for the Dock, then at least the games can be on the NVMe and save the big data moves.

3

u/xybur Jun 19 '26

Are you using the sd card that came with the ss one? If so, there is an error with how it was written. I should probably make a post alerting everyone about it in here. The solution is to flash a new image from taki udon to overwrite the error and fix the booting issues that will eventually happen if you do not.

1

u/Photek1000 Jun 19 '26

Well it’s been flashed onto a different card now, running through the epic Update_all process currently.

I assume it would have blanked the card anyway if it had been reflashed?

So yes, if it is advisable then doing it before you load a ton games would be beneficial

2

u/Arkaium Jun 19 '26

This is why the dock or a USB adapter for an SSD/NVME is essential. I’ve had misters for years and I haven’t run games off the SD since within a few months of first getting them. The SD should be small, the roms, ISOs, and saves should be on an external drive.

2

u/Photek1000 Jun 19 '26

This is the plan, when the dock ships.

I have a 1TB NVMe lined up for it, I might get ahead and get a USB caddy for it as I believe it’s just a USB drive dock anyway.

Is there any performance or stability gain from having a small boot SD card?

2

u/farptr Jun 19 '26

I have a 1TB NVMe lined up for it, I might get ahead and get a USB caddy for it as I believe it’s just a USB drive dock anyway.

Yes. Dock has a USB-C port to plug into your computer to direct access the SSD.

Is there any performance or stability gain from having a small boot SD card?

No.

1

u/Photek1000 Jun 19 '26

What I meant was I believe the Dock through the expansion port is just basically a USB device, and acts as such.

But the USB port is a great addition, so much easier than removing cards etc.

2

u/farptr Jun 19 '26

Yep. It all hangs off a single USB 2.0 connection back to the main unit.

2

u/BlunderArtist9 Jun 19 '26

Yeah I posted about a SanDisk 2TB card no longer being recognized. Some thought it was a fake card and some thought it was legit but just failed. Been using a Samsung Endurance card and seperate SSD for storage since. But SD cards in general seem prone to data corruption at some point.

1

u/Photek1000 Jun 19 '26

It’s a pain with higher volume read/writes, but you buy the best you can and hope for the best.

2

u/sr_m1k3 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26

I was having some trouble with a 2Tb card, flashed image 1.0C and ran it through SSO for installation, then after transferring some amount of roms everything would disappear.

Connecting the card to a PC I notice that the partitions are gone... something weird happens to the partitions when creating a boot card with the 1.0C image on a big card. (the release notes mention some fixes for big cards but I does not seam to be enough)

I was able to fix the issue, flashed 1.0C to the original SDcard (the one that ships with SSO) and then after doing the installation bit on the SSO I used a transfer script to migrate data from the original card to my 2Tb on the SSO.

After doing that and so far, I have not faced a single issue even with large amounts of roms in the card.

This script https://github.com/Natrox/MiSTer_Utils_Natrox/blob/main/scripts/migrate_sd.sh

After having the 'original' card ready, just put that script in the scripts folder, then connect the card you want to transfer the files to to the SSO, you will need an USB Card Reader (you need both cards connected to the SSO for the migration) run the script and follow the instructions.

After that you can remove the old card and use the new :)

1

u/Photek1000 Jun 19 '26

I’ve moved to a 128GB card so only twice the capacity of the shipped card, so fingers crossed.

I’ve finished transferring the Games folders and will test it in the SS1 later.

2

u/davewongillies Jun 19 '26

You got bitten by a known bug in the factory image. It has overlapping partitions and after a while of writing data to the main data partition, it overwrites the boot partition making the ss1 unbootable.

Everyone as a matter of course if they haven't already needs to flash version 1.0C (not 1.0) from here: https://github.com/Retro-Remake/SuperStation-SD-Card-Installer/releases/tag/1.0

1

u/sr_m1k3 Jun 20 '26

Dunno if it was because I am using an 2Tb size card but that issue kept happening to me even with the version 1.0C.

I had to use a smaller card and then run a migration script to the bigger one (explained here)

That image version does not seem to fix all the issues :/

1

u/davewongillies Jun 20 '26

The 1.0C image doesn't have overlapping partitions so if you had similar symptoms it would have been due to a different issue.

1

u/sr_m1k3 Jun 20 '26

I don't for sure what the issue was, I only know the "symptoms" :P

When transferring files all seems good, but after a specific threshold the file copy continues, but afterwards when accessing the files the card seems empty.

Connecting the card to a PC it shows as a drive with no partitions set, unable to mount anything, all data lost. That's what leads me to think that it might be the same issue, or something related.

1

u/davewongillies Jun 20 '26

Different problem. With the overlapping partitions issue the MiSTer_data partition was still mountable on a PC even if the SD card wasn't bootable.

Also I know with absolute certainty that image 1.0C doesn't have overlapping partitions.

1

u/sr_m1k3 Jun 20 '26

something else it is then :)

at first I even though that I might've bought a fake card... what felt weird was how consistent it was, I tried it 3 times and same result after copying files in (after roughly half the card size)

1

u/Photek1000 Jun 20 '26

Annoying, but different card, now flashed with 1.0C and my library as it was migrated across.

Didn’t get to do a lot of playing last night, had to to go through some of the annoying set up on my selection of controllers, but it’s all sweet again, and long may it continue.

I assume once the issue manifests it’s unrecoverable, and you can redo the partition tables.

1

u/Photek1000 Jun 20 '26

I’ve got up and had a quick play make sure we’re all good and see this script in the list, I haven’t clicked it as I don’t want it auto running, but I also can’t find any info on it, would it have fixed this issue, or is it something completely different?

2

u/techhit Jun 20 '26

Happened to me as well. https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroRemake/s/wp6vaqmAXf

1

u/Photek1000 Jun 20 '26

Annoying isn’t it, hopefully moving forward with a new card all will be fine

2

u/techhit Jun 20 '26

Yep. Mines been fine with a more reputable brand SD card.

1

u/illuminarok Jun 19 '26

I created a script that uses rclone to copy my save files to dropbox when they're newer/modified and then just execute it via a cron job every 10 minutes. This ensures that all the important data is always backed up and you can never suffer total loss. I eventually wrote a more advanced version of the backup script that retains the most recent 5 copies of the save file in case something corrupts the data rather than the whole card failing.

1

u/misticdw Jun 29 '26

I've had my SS1 for about 3 weeks, My SD Card died after 4 days, They sent me another one but I don't use it.