Database Users

Gold card SD card brand/model compatibility.

So here's my problem. As far as i can tell i am reproducing the steps to create
a gold card to the letter. However after spending close to £30 on SD cards and
getting nowhere I'm pretty much either the most unlucky S.O.B on the planet
or I'm doing it wrong, which i really don't think i am at all, I am very methodical
and re-trace my steps two, sometimes three times.
If i am just unlucky, there must be a way to tell if a card is capable of
becoming a gold card. What exactly are the requirements for a Micro SD card
to retain the HEX'd info without failing to mount? It can't be random chance
that every time i click 'save' then exit from HXD my pc/phone refuses to read
the card as a mountable, formatted file system.
another thing I've noticed is that the Information you write over in OFFSETs
01 (or whatever it is) to 170 are replicated in the second block just after it.
Is that a security back up of the CID security check on the card? because
I can't see why the card would have it twice if it had no intention of using it.
I'm probably wrong about that but It was worth mentioning.
Really my question is what EXACT make and model number has worked for
people? If enough people post in this thread with the data I will make a database
that i will maintain for people who; like myself are having serious problems
finacially getting a gold card sorted out.
So please post as follows:
Manufacturer: blah blah
Model: ohh blah
Model Number: sdsdsd
Batch Number: sdwe23e
Don't worry if there is missing information. Just post as much as you can.
If there is more or different information than i posted please post that also.
Thanks.
Confirmed working:
transcend 8gb class 6 card
ScanDisk Mobile Ultra 8GB

i got it working with a transcend 8gb class 6 card
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Transcend-microSDHC-Memory-adapter-TS8GUSDHC6/dp/B001IAMME8
didnt work first 4-5 times tho
kept trying and it worked
i would suggest instead of buying soo many cards, you keep trying

So you format the card in phone.
Take the card out, into the PC reader.
HEX edit and save.
Remove.
Boot phone with the card in.
And if it fails, repeat?
Also, noted the make and model of your card, thanks.

eh i didnt have a sd card reader at the time so i edited the stuff via sd card in the phone

immya said:
eh i didnt have a sd card reader at the time so i edited the stuff via sd card in the phone
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've heard it works either way.
When you have edited the card and it's in the phone, can the phone read it
or does it come up as blank?
Also, in the quides where it says "reboot with card inserted" does that mean the boot console
or a normal boot? Sorry for the 101 questions btw.

It works with the stock SD card that come with the phone. Your best of having a card reader and plugging it into the pc to edit certain parts. Just do exactly as you say and you will be fine.

I have a tmobile hero also and my problem is the fact that the goldcard bit seems to work and my pc can read the card, but when following the tutorials and doing the backups, it fails, i hate tmobile
ah and Im using a ScanDisk Mobile Ultra 8GB, tried it with the stock 2GB and same problem

Detol Loki said:
I've heard it works either way.
When you have edited the card and it's in the phone, can the phone read it
or does it come up as blank?
Also, in the quides where it says "reboot with card inserted" does that mean the boot console
or a normal boot? Sorry for the 101 questions btw.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah it reads it fine and by reboot it means just turn phone off and on with the power buton

akhtar1817 said:
I have a tmobile hero also and my problem is the fact that the goldcard bit seems to work and my pc can read the card, but when following the tutorials and doing the backups, it fails, i hate tmobile
ah and Im using a ScanDisk Mobile Ultra 8GB, tried it with the stock 2GB and same problem
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what bit of the guide tells you to do backups?
also i suggest formatting the sd card first

andrewb84uk said:
It works with the stock SD card that come with the phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here,... SD card that came with handset worked fine.
Initially failed when using Windows 7 64bit but was fine with an old XP machine.

Hmmm i've had the same problems on 2 Kingston microSD 2GB cards, the whole procedure was fine but when it comes to the testing, when i tried opening the drive, they said i needed to reformat the card. Hmmm are there any sequences of steps on how to do it or so?

Detol Loki said:
So you format the card in phone.
Take the card out, into the PC reader.
HEX edit and save.
Remove.
Boot phone with the card in.
And if it fails, repeat?
Also, noted the make and model of your card, thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
wORKS FOR ME!!
Thank you so much!

Also make sure you are choosign the right option when opening disk...I think its logical (but not sure as im not on my pc) i tried on many cards using the removable disk option and it didnt work, then on a whim i tried the other option and it worked first time!

bonesy said:
Also make sure you are choosign the right option when opening disk...I think its logical (but not sure as im not on my pc) i tried on many cards using the removable disk option and it didnt work, then on a whim i tried the other option and it worked first time!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
dude your the man ive tried 4 cards about a hundred times with no luck but never tried the other option (think it was physical disk) and it work first time

I did it with two different SD cards and it always worked on the first time. I did it with a card reader.
- SanDisk 2GB (HC)
- Sandisk 8GB (HC)

I've tried it with:
4gb Lexar
2gb PNY
2gb SanDisk
2gb Kingston
Using these steps:
wiki.cyanogenmod[dot]com/wiki/Howto:_Create_a_Goldcard (I'm not special enough to post links I guess...)
No luck at all with any of them.
Any pointers would be nice as I too would like to not have to purchase more and more SD cards to get it to work...

ok, I think I got the gold card right, but I wasn't able to use it to root the phone...
Either I didn't actually make a gold card, or the phone is just a real pain...

SD Card 7.41gb but can't load 4gb sd versions HELP!

*updated/Fixed*
Hey all, So i am a long time lurker of this forum and also the Nexus One and G1 forum for a long time. So i am at work, and decided i wanted to update my nook SD install from the 6.1 date: 5/5 versions. So i downloaded the updated version, then proceeded to clear my SD card of the partitions and reformat to have a clean start. no when ever i try to write the .img of Dualboot Phiremod / Honeycomb, it tells me there isn't enough storage for the data. My SD card has 7.41 gb open and the file is only 3.5gb. Now this could be cause by the card reader in my work laptop, or any other factor, and as soon as i get home i will be trying the pc i used last time and for most of my rom writing. I have tried many image writers, partition erasers, etc so i don't believe those to be the problem. I also put the sd card on my mac mini and did a reformat there, and then moved back to pc to write...no dice. so i am in a spot where i am stuck until i get home, but thought i would get this up in case i did fix then i can post what i did to help other who may run into this problem. anyone have any ideas?
using Nook Color, Transcend 8gb Class 6 MicroSD.
formats were done on new Mac Mini, Thinkpad T410.
programs used: WinImage(although not good with it), Win32DiskImager, SDFormatter, EASEUS Partitioner, along with windows/mac built in tools.
I was running - ph-hc-dualboot-sd.img.zip version 6.1/HCv4
updating to - ph-hc-dualboot-sd-v0.2.img.zip - Phiremod 6.2 and Madcat's Honeycomb Hybrid-RC1
Again any help would be appreciated, but also if i figure this out i will be reposting my answer/fix. Sorry for the wall of text but i wanted to give all the details. Thanks!
*****UPDATE/FIX*****
So it turns out that some card readers must not handle the size of cards the same. I was able to write the image just fine once on an external SD card reader. So if you have some strange issues writing the image, try a different Card Reader.

[Q] Clone SD card?

I have spent a large amount of time getting my Nook to boot from an SD card with CM7. It finally works exactly like I want it to but now I want to back that SD card to an identical one for a backup so I won't have to do all the setup again if something goes wrong on updates etc.
I know lots of people are talking about Win32disk imager but whenever I run it I get an error at the app start and it won't copy my 16gb sd card.
Is there another way to make a reliable backup of the SD card?

jziggy101 said:
I have spent a large amount of time getting my Nook to boot from an SD card with CM7. It finally works exactly like I want it to but now I want to back that SD card to an identical one for a backup so I won't have to do all the setup again if something goes wrong on updates etc.
I know lots of people are talking about Win32disk imager but whenever I run it I get an error at the app start and it won't copy my 16gb sd card.
Is there another way to make a reliable backup of the SD card?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've done it many times, running Win32disk imager in admin mode. Otherwise the 30 day trial version of WinImage (http://www.winimage.com/download.htm) works just fine.
Both programs seem to work fine with 4-16G Sandisk cards on both my Vista and Win7 machines (both 32 bit)

jziggy101 said:
I have spent a large amount of time getting my Nook to boot from an SD card with CM7. It finally works exactly like I want it to but now I want to back that SD card to an identical one for a backup so I won't have to do all the setup again if something goes wrong on updates etc.
I know lots of people are talking about Win32disk imager but whenever I run it I get an error at the app start and it won't copy my 16gb sd card.
Is there another way to make a reliable backup of the SD card?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try EASEUS Todo Backup Free. It performs a clone or backup flawlessly.
http://www.todo-backup.com/download/

shumash said:
Try EASEUS Todo Backup Free. It performs a clone or backup flawlessly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Second -- this is what I do to create perfect backups of my NC SD card.

EASEUS Todo Backup Free did not work for me. It can't even see the sd card, only the main hard drive. I upgraded from an 8gb card to a 16gb card yesterday and I used Minitool Partition Wizard Home Edition (free) to do the move. Worked flawlessly.

I use USB Image Tool. Use to backup and create clone image. Works great on 16 GB cards.

zires said:
EASEUS Todo Backup Free did not work for me. It can't even see the sd card, only the main hard drive. I upgraded from an 8gb card to a 16gb card yesterday and I used Minitool Partition Wizard Home Edition (free) to do the move. Worked flawlessly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have to remove the sd card from the NC and use a card reader. It won't work left in the unit. Is that what you did?

Do these clone/backup options create images that are the same size as the card, or just the size of the used space? Every attempt I've made leaves me with a 32gb image, even if only 1-2gb are being used on the card.
Can someone suggest how to clone my entire card (all partitions) so that the resulting image is just the size of the used space? Mac or PC method is fine. I've created .DMGs on my Mac that are sized the way i'd like, but I get a ton of errors when I try to restore those images.
Thanks!

I use Easeus Partition Master Pro to image from one SD card to another. Works well, the app was offerred free about a week ago, but is well worth the $19 retail price.

brentb636 said:
I use Easeus Partition Master Pro to image from one SD card to another. Works well, the app was offerred free about a week ago, but is well worth the $19 retail price.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm... I have the home edition but don't see the option to create an image. Care to point me in the right direction? Are your images the size of the total card, or just of the space currently used by the card?

PSUlion01 said:
Hmm... I have the home edition but don't see the option to create an image. Care to point me in the right direction? Are your images the size of the total card, or just of the space currently used by the card?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Clone to another SD card, not an image. Sorry if I misled you.

[Q] Creating bootable SD card size issue

Hi all,
It seems that I'm having a bit trouble with writing the image to my SD card. I'm using a 16GB currently with Honeycomb on it, but after the image finished writing, my card size is reduced to 105MB free out of 150MBish. I tried to get the CM7 boot to work on a 2GB card, after the "generic" img finished writing on the card, it gets the same free 105MB, and I can't copy the CM7 files onto the card because those files are 115MB total.
I tried partitioning the card but it's still the same, and the computer isn't able to see the second partition that's not the main one. Is anyone having this issue and/or know how I can fix it? Much appreciated.
Cheers,

kzn said:
Hi all,
It seems that I'm having a bit trouble with writing the image to my SD card. I'm using a 16GB currently with Honeycomb on it, but after the image finished writing, my card size is reduced to 105MB free out of 150MBish. I tried to get the CM7 boot to work on a 2GB card, after the "generic" img finished writing on the card, it gets the same free 105MB, and I can't copy the CM7 files onto the card because those files are 115MB total.
I tried partitioning the card but it's still the same, and the computer isn't able to see the second partition that's not the main one. Is anyone having this issue and/or know how I can fix it? Much appreciated.
Cheers,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very much a known issue... to work around this:
1. Write the image to SD
2. Resize boot partition (only one on it so far) to anything up to 2 GB.. I recommend keeping it less than 2 GB for compatability
3. Put your ROM on the boot partition
4. Put SD in nook and boot it up

Hey thanks!
So for some reason I was able to follow this post and root my Nook http://www.informationweek.com/byte/howto/231002060
I used the 2GB card again and this time after writing the image to it I still have 1.75ishGB left and the file didn't take up the whole card like it did previously. Was able to boot up CWM and flash CM7.
But I'm running into another problem, which is my 16GB card, no matter how I format it, the Nook would not recognize that it's mounted. And when it does show up in the system, it only sees about 1.5GB, and the card is completely empty. I'm really stuck here, is this another known problem?

But I'm running into another problem, which is my 16GB card, no matter how I format it, the Nook would not recognize that it's mounted. And when it does show up in the system, it only sees about 1.5GB, and the card is completely empty. I'm really stuck here, is this another known problem?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What are you using to format it? What format, FAT32? What was on it before? What shows up when in a reader on your PC?

I used EASEUS and also just window to format the card. It's in FAT32 and my PC sees it as a removable storage device just fine, all 14.5GB of it.

LOL
Honestly, the OP does drive me nut
I want to help but I can't follow what he said.
16GB SD, 2GB SD, what?
If you, OP, still need help, then pls clearly indicate what your problem is and what you intend to accomplish.

kzn said:
I used EASEUS and also just window to format the card. It's in FAT32 and my PC sees it as a removable storage device just fine, all 14.5GB of it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
EASEUS does help a lot (ext4) but I would then suggest never using Windows to format a uSD. This works much better IMO to get a good format.

[Q] Dual boot sd situation

Would appreciate some guidance, if anyone can help...
In December we got two new Nook Color Devices, one had 1.2 and the other 1.3. Had one 8gb micro sd card, and without understanding much about it, I followed verygreen's instuctions to create a card for dual booting. The 1.3 machine was used for installing cm7 (7.10) and the latest gapps file. But the card was then removed from that unit and inserted into the other Nook Color which had 1.2 in its firmware. I now think this was improper but am unsure what the repercussions were.
The system was used succesfully for several weeks. Occasionally the Nook side was booted from menu. Then suddenly after a cold boot, CM7 started but the virtual sd card was not recognized. Removed the card from the unit and investigated using Windows XP and Minitool Partition Wizard and found the "CM7 SDCARD" partition was corrupted. I reformatted that partition in Minitool, and then used the card for about another week in the 1.2 NC. At that time multiple partitions on the card suddenly became corrupted and fearing the sd card itself was defective I ordered some higher quality sd cards (now have 4 8gb sandisk class 4 cards to play with). Meanwhile the 1.2 NC accidentally booted into the Nook side with wifi enabled when it was charging and updated itself to 1.4.1. Before receiving the new sd cards, I reformatted the possibly defective sd card and recreated dual boot system using Verygreen's instructions (in the 1.3 unit but transferred into the 1.2 unit after creation). I was able to restore some of the apps using Titanium (but only because I had copied some of my original backups to my pc)
The unit with 1.3 on it had not been used much with wifi, and it still had/has 1.3 on it. One of the new cards is now in that NC (created as before with the Verygreen instructions).
I'm in a quandary what to do with the other unit.
Could using the 1.3-created sd dual boot card in the 1.2 Nook have caused partitions to become corrupted?
Where are applications going? Doesn't look like they're in the large sd card partition. I didn't think I had that much on there, (just some free apps from google and amazon) but I might I have run out of space? I never elected "move to sd card" or "clear cache" for any apps and don't know if that is a requirement when you use dual booting.
I haven't found instructions for what to do to create a dual boot card for 1.4.1. My original 8 gb card is in the unit, but I'd like to create a new boot card using the higher quality medium. Just want to understand what's happening. Is use of a 1.3-based card bound to lead to more corrupted partitions? Any suggestions on how to create a reliable dual boot card for this unit?

Sherip said:
Would appreciate some guidance, if anyone can help...
--- SNIP ----
I'm in a quandary what to do with the other unit.
Could using the 1.3-created sd dual boot card in the 1.2 Nook have caused partitions to become corrupted?
Where are applications going? Doesn't look like they're in the large sd card partition. I didn't think I had that much on there, (just some free apps from google and amazon) but I might I have run out of space? I never elected "move to sd card" or "clear cache" for any apps and don't know if that is a requirement when you use dual booting.
I haven't found instructions for what to do to create a dual boot card for 1.4.1. My original 8 gb card is in the unit, but I'd like to create a new boot card using the higher quality medium. Just want to understand what's happening. Is use of a 1.3-based card bound to lead to more corrupted partitions? Any suggestions on how to create a reliable dual boot card for this unit?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can't tell you what issues you may be having with the sd card, but verygreen's "dual boot" (it's not really dual boot, but that's another story) method is independent of the stock rom (1.2, 1.3, 1.4, whatever). When you boot to the sd card, everything needed is on the card. When you boot to the Nook, either by using the sd card menu or removing the card, you get whatever stock ROM is currently installed in the emmc. If you properly created the sd card, you can insert it in any NC and use it.

I read through all and by the end, I'm lost
Anyway, if you are dealing with verygreen's uSD cards, you should be all set and not to worry anything on the eMMC. It's independent.
As why those partitions corrupted, I don't know as I never hit that problem. Just curious, why do you say it corrupts?

votinh said:
I read through all and by the end, I'm lost
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh well, if no one else has had the issue of sd card corruption hopefully its not a side effect of using verygreen's image together with cm7 7.1.0, google apps and user apps.
Anyway, if you are dealing with verygreen's uSD cards, you should be all set and not to worry anything on the eMMC. It's independent.
As why those partitions corrupted, I don't know as I never hit that problem. Just curious, why do you say it corrupts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The behavior was a little different each time. Has happened 3 times now.
Once it totally locked up. Powered off and back on. Got my home screen with icons but in the notification area an image of the sd card persisted for maybe 5 minutes while the unit was otherwise locked up. Finally the sd card image cleared, but es file explorer empty sdcard. When tested on the PC, that partition's data was corrupted. Recovery (using pc software) retrieved a bunch of files but without their proper names. That time my apps were not destroyed. I didn't have to redo verygreen's procedure, just reformatted CM7 SDCARD partition.
Another time I had powered off. Restarted and it booted in Nook instead of CM7. Removed the card and tested on the PC and both the boot and CM7 SDCARD partitions were unreadable. Didn't attempt any recovery. Wiped out and reformatted the card, then redid the verygreen procedure on it.
The third time (last night ) was more similar to the first time. I got some forced closes and couldn't get back the status bar. Rebooted. Got the sdcard icon showing for about 5 minutes. When it cleared, my files were inaccessible. Removed the card and tested on the PC. CM7 SCDARD partition content was corrupted.
The (bad?) sd card didn't give any errors when tested prior to the break downs. Its labeled as a sandisk 8gb class 2. Was a gift.
I'm back up and running after redoing the verygreen procedure using one of the new sandisk 8gb class 4 cards. This time I actually used my unit instead of another to do the unpacking/recovery loading of cm7 and google apps. I've never applied any of the nightlies. Maybe I should look into that. Also have never deliberately done any other procedures, such as overclock it.
Praying the corruption issue doesn't hit me again. I guess my NC's internal flash drive could possibly be defective. If so, at least its still under warranty.