[mjm6]

Folks,
 
I have a bend new X5 here, and the first night I had it, I was able to load music on both cards in both slots (genuine SanDisk 128GB cards).
 
The next day, I noticed that it had doubled the number of files with almost duplicate names, with the second being what appears to be some kind of temporary file. However, it played OK, and it just tried and then ignored the dummy files.
 
So, this weekend, I attempted to clean up the card, remove the temporary files and upload more music, and I immediately had difficulty getting the files to read correctly with the TF1 card.
 
I pulled it out of the X5 and tried it in a card reader, and it appears that there is a bad sector on the card, or some kind of unreconcilable error that cannot be resolved by the Apple Disk Utility.
 
So, I tried formatting it in the X5, and it reports "format complete" seemingly indicating that the card is good to go.
 
However, clearly something is now wrong.  I cannot get it to load files either through the X5 or in a card reader, and the Mac indicates that there is some kind of data corruption that it cannot resolve, and so it cannot format it, etc.
 
I have dozens of SanDisk cards here (I am a photographer), and have never had a card failure like this, certainly never this early in the use (first used Thursday night!).
 
This makes me suspect the X5 may be partly to blame.
 
Any advice to try to recover this (very expensive!) card?
 
I purchased the X5 over the iBasso because it seemed that it may have better Mac integration, but maybe that is not the case?
 
 
Thanks,
 
---Michael

 

[PurpleAngel]

Assuming your other memory cards work with everything.
Sound like your 128GB card is defective

 

[scotty59]

I use "Blue Harvest" to remove the temp mac files. But it seems to be a defect card in your case. I have two 128 Gb sandisks in my X5 without any problems connected to my MAC.

 

[mjm6]

Thanks.. I was hoping it is not a corrupt card, because that is a hassle.
 
I'm gong to try a recovery at the office on the PC, but if that doesn't work, I'm going to assume that the card is bad and get it replaced if I can.
 
I will look into "blue Harvest".  I was going to ask about how to deal with the temp files.  What a pain in the butt.  Is there a reason they are showing up, or is it just a Mac/PC issue?
 
---Michael

 

[scotty59]

Yes, its the MAC/PC thing. The card is FAT32, the X5 treats it like a windows filesystem. So if you use the card in the MAC the temp files with .something are created. These are preview and search files from spotlight and others. Blue Harvest deletes all these files before the card is ejected, so they don't disturb the display of the X5.
 
I hope this helps a bit.
 
Scotty

 

[OhmSweetOhm]

As mentioned in another thread "Eject for Windows" and "Hidden Cleaner" are for the same purpose as  "Blue Harvest".

 

[mjm6]

Update on this issue...
 
I returned the card that was giving me problems and got a replacement from the dealer. This card is also having problems, so I suspect that this may not be a corrupt card issue, but something else.
 
Can anyone tell me if they have successfully gotten 128GB Sandisk cards to work correctly in the X5?  I think it is an issue of iffy performance, not that is absolutely won't work, because I have had some success.
 
When I pull the fcard from the X5 and look at it on the Mac, it thinks that the card is damaged in some manner, but is unable to correct the errors.
 
I think that Fiio is playing a bit loose with the formatting of the card, and that is causing the problem...
 
Any help from Fiio on this??? I know they monitor this forum.
 
 
---Michael

 

[mjm6]

So the second SanDisk card is exhibiting exactly the same problem as the one that it replaced.
 
When the X5 is plugged into the computer, the memory card shows up, but things are greyed-out and it is not possible to successfully copy to it.  It actually looks like it is working, but it is impossible to erase anything from the memory card, and it never successfully completes a file copy.
 
If I pull the card from the  X5 and plug it directly into the computer, it says something like "cant repair drive..." when mounting. When I've tried formatting in the machine through disk utility, it says either "R/W error" or "can't write to last block of device".
 
So basically, this card has also been bricked by the X5 it appears!
 
I find it extremely unlikely that I got two bad cards from the vendor, although it is possible, I suppose. More likely, the X5 has a file corruption problem somewhere in the bios.
 
Fiio... are you monitoring this forum at all?  I need some help, and may actually need to return this X5 as a failed product.

 

[tjw321]

  So the second SanDisk card is exhibiting exactly the same problem as the one that it replaced.
 
When the X5 is plugged into the computer, the memory card shows up, but things are greyed-out and it is not possible to successfully copy to it.  It actually looks like it is working, but it is impossible to erase anything from the memory card, and it never successfully completes a file copy.
 
If I pull the card from the  X5 and plug it directly into the computer, it says something like "cant repair drive..." when mounting. When I've tried formatting in the machine through disk utility, it says either "R/W error" or "can't write to last block of device".
 
So basically, this card has also been bricked by the X5 it appears!
 
I find it extremely unlikely that I got two bad cards from the vendor, although it is possible, I suppose. More likely, the X5 has a file corruption problem somewhere in the bios.
 
Fiio... are you monitoring this forum at all?  I need some help, and may actually need to return this X5 as a failed product.

I had this problem the other day on a Yosemite beta. Although it says that it can't repair the drive, I managed to open the drive in "Disk Utility" and repair it there.
 
Rebooting the Mac seems to help too, surprisingly. I think there is some instability in Yosemite handling of external drives. Are you using Yosemite?

 

[mjm6]

tjw,
 
No, I am using 10.7.5.  My machine is OS limited to that OS due to age, but considering this is the first time I have ever had a problem with a memory card, I doubt that age is the issue here.
 
I cannot get Disk Utility to successfully do anything to the memory card.
 
I have tried a few other things, including this:
 
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/136601/error-unable-to-write-to-the-last-block-of-the-device
 
...which is a command-line erase step, and it didn't work.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Hello mjm6,

Folks,

I have a bend new X5 here, and the first night I had it, I was able to load music on both cards in both slots (genuine SanDisk 128GB cards).

The next day, I noticed that it had doubled the number of files with almost duplicate names, with the second being what appears to be some kind of temporary file. However, it played OK, and it just tried and then ignored the dummy files.

So, this weekend, I attempted to clean up the card, remove the temporary files and upload more music, and I immediately had difficulty getting the files to read correctly with the TF1 card.

How did you "attempt to clean up the card"?

The X5 presently has difficulty with the extra system files generated by a Mac on the SD card (of which one is generated per music file, hence all the duplicates). Blue Harvest may be used delete the extra files prior to ejecting the card for use on the X5. However, it sounds like what you did here is something else?

 

[Joe Bloggs]

So the second SanDisk card is exhibiting exactly the same problem as the one that it replaced.

When the X5 is plugged into the computer, the memory card shows up, but things are greyed-out and it is not possible to successfully copy to it.  It actually looks like it is working, but it is impossible to erase anything from the memory card, and it never successfully completes a file copy.

If I pull the card from the  X5 and plug it directly into the computer, it says something like "cant repair drive..." when mounting. When I've tried formatting in the machine through disk utility, it says either "R/W error" or "can't write to last block of device".

So basically, this card has also been bricked by the X5 it appears!

What file operations, if any, have you tried on the cards prior to using them on the X5? (since you say the X5 is responsible for the cards' failure, I assume they were used successfully elsewhere before being used on the X5?)

 

[mjm6]

Joe,
 
The cards were purchased to use with the X5.
 
I put them in the X5 and formatted it to assure it had correct formatting for the device, and then plugged the X5 into the Mac and copied files onto it.
 
It seemed to work, but after finishing the copy and unmounting the card, etc., the X5 couldn't see anything.
 
At that point, I pulled the card from the X5 and tried to copy to it from the Mac, and when first plugged in, it said something like "Can't repair device, but you can pull files off it...".  I ran Disk Utility, and sure enough, there were problems that it could not repair.  It also could not Erase the disk (Format). At times, is said that it "could not write to the last block", so I used some steps to try a complete rewrite to fix that. No success.
 
I turned on my Windows machine and tried formatting on that one as well. No good.
 
I tried fast format and full (complete overwrite) format on both machines.
 
It is possible that the second card I got was bad, so I am going to try to call the vendor (who is very upstanding and reliable, BH PhotoVideo) and see if they have had a batch of bad cards from SanDisk. Beyond that possibility, I believe that the X5 is corrupting the FAT when it formats somehow.
 
So I now have a dead memory card, the second one.
 
Clearly, the X5 isn't very Mac compatible (hidden file problems? you really can't program it to ignore those?).  I'm happy with the player other than these issues, but it's not worth the hassle if it is going to be destroying memory cards, etc.
 
I need a recommendation for a course of correction for the memory card problems if possible.

 

[OhmSweetOhm]

What Mac are you using? (I understood you are limited to OS X 10.7.5.). What format are these SD cards? (SDHC, SDXC?) What kind of card reader are you using?
It seems that your Mac / OS may have trouble supporting the card format. (HC, XC)

 

[mjm6]

Ohm,
 
I have a Mac Pro 2006-8 version (1,1).  However, the problems occur on a Windows 7 machine, and on a 1-year old MacBook Pro as well.
 
I understand that OS 10.6.5 is required for SDXC cards, do I should be goo there...
 
This has me thinking that the problem is the card reader I am using... I will go out an purchase a new one and see if that if the source of the problems, however, it seems that the problems occurred when going in directly to the X5 as well, so I'm not positive that this might be a solution.
 
 
---Michael