Re: [NTLK] dd to backup cards?

From: Victor Rehorst (victor_at_newtontalk.net)
Date: Tue Mar 02 2004 - 12:58:39 PST


Gert Menke wrote:

> I tried this once with a 16MB card from Kingmax. Reading the card worked fine,
> but writing did not. :-(
> The dd command did not produce any errors, but the data on the card remained
> unchanged. So the dd command effectively did nothing while pretending to work
> fine.

Maybe a more useful test would have been to read the card data to a file, use
dd to write zero's to the entire card, and then try to write the data back.

> There is a special driver for linear flash memory cards. It creates more than
> one device node since linear flash cards sometimes seem to have more than one
> memory area (like partitions on ata cards?). And you can also access the
> "attribute memory" of the card (which holds information about the card
> itself, such as what kind of card it is) through a device node.
> BEWARE: Don't try to write to the attribute memory of the card unless you
> really know what you are doing! I did not know what I was doing... and then
> my card did not remember that it was a memory card anymore... :-(
> Luckily I could revive the card after the nice people from Kingmax sent me a
> memory dump of an intact card.

Yes, I have a Pretec 12MB card that needs this fix. It got toasted by a test
version of ATA Support that I tested for Paul a looooong time ago... the
hazards of being an alpha tester :| Unfortunately I lack any time to fix it
and I'm just fine with the 10MB card that I've been using for years.

> That would indeed be great, if you could actually restore the data after
> making a backup... It did not work for me but, of course, YMMV.

Had I a Linux laptop with a PCMCIA slot and some time, it probably wouldn't be
that hard using the raw linear flash driver (NOT TrueFFS or any other FFS on
top of linear).

-- 
Victor Rehorst - victor_at_newtontalk.net - chuma_at_chuma.org
NewtonTalk list administrator - http://www.newtontalk.net
Will the last person to leave the platform please turn off the backlight?
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