sansa clip+ - no disklabel and can't create one

[Conny]

hello,

I bought a used 4GB clip+ and it won't work.
here the result of dmesg:

'[18343.077398] usb 2-1: Product: M200Plus
'[18343.077401] usb 2-1: Manufacturer: SanDisk
'[18343.077405] usb 2-1: SerialNumber:         i 0744703011
'[18343.081179] usb-storage 2-1:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
'[18343.081273] scsi18 : usb-storage 2-1:1.0
'[18344.082904] scsi 18:0:0:0: Direct-Access     UNDEF    storage          1.0  PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
'[18344.083217] sd 18:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg6 type 0
'[18344.085392] sd 18:0:0:0: [sdg] 7744512 512-byte logical blocks: (3.96 GB/3.69 GiB)
'[18344.086759] sd 18:0:0:0: [sdg] Write Protect is off
'[18344.086762] sd 18:0:0:0: [sdg] Mode Sense: 04 00 00 00
'[18344.088399] sd 18:0:0:0: [sdg] No Caching mode page found
'[18344.088403] sd 18:0:0:0: [sdg] Assuming drive cache: write through
'[18344.095397] sd 18:0:0:0: [sdg] No Caching mode page found
'[18344.095402] sd 18:0:0:0: [sdg] Assuming drive cache: write through
'[18344.468924]  sdg: unknown partition table
'[18344.477407] sd 18:0:0:0: [sdg] No Caching mode page found
'[18344.477410] sd 18:0:0:0: [sdg] Assuming drive cache: write through
'[18344.477414] sd 18:0:0:0: [sdg] Attached SCSI removable disk

I think that looks not bad but formatting the drive is not possible in Linux and Win.
A 'sudo fdisk /dev/sdg' shows a

'sudo fdisk /dev/sdg
'Das Gerät enthält weder eine gültige DOS-Partitionstabelle,
'noch einen „Sun“, „SGI“ oder „OSF disklabel“
'Building a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0x3e2882d0.
'Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
'After that, of course, the previous content won't be recoverable.

'Platte /dev/sdg: 3965 MByte, 3965190144 Byte
'122 Köpfe, 62 Sektoren/Spur, 1023 Zylinder, zusammen 7744512 Sektoren
'Einheiten = Sektoren von 1 × 512 = 512 Bytes
'Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
'I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
'Festplattenidentifikation: 0x3e2882d0

(the first part is german an means there was no working disklabel found)
Now I tried to make and write an new disklabel in different ways of fdisk (o and w f.e.)
But the disklabel won't be written an I can't format a new FAT32 partition.

I tried writing a new firmware with:
'sudo dd if=./clppa.bin of=/dev/sdg bs=512 count=$((0xF000))
'24809+0 Datensätze ein
'24809+0 Datensätze aus
'12702208 Bytes (13 MB) kopiert, 777,839 s, 16,3 kB/s
as well.
But no success. Writing the firmware takes a long time, about 12 minutes, with no result.

I hope someone has an idea or a suggestion.

Conny

[saratoga]

Does anything you write to the disk survive a power cycle?

[Conny]

no, nothing.
The behavior of the player is the same than before.
fdisk finishes after the 'w' with no error but no positive result.
Same as flashing the firmware with 'dd'.

Every time I connect the player via USB, it is recognized as M200Plus.(that makes me a little hopeful)
But nothing more. no partition table and a dark display.

I tried the shortcut-method from SansaAMSUnbrick with the same bad result. hmmm...
(I have another clip+ and fixed it wit the shortcut method some time ago. It works perfect with rockbox till now.)