256GB SDXC in various Sansas - fails on Clip+

[Doghouse Riley]

The only thing I bought on Amazon prime day was a 256GB Samsung SDXC.   Been wanting to see if I can double the size of my music library in Rockbox, but was waiting for the first decent sized price break.

Opened up the package, stuck the card in my adapter, did the FAT32 format thing, completed without errors.

Copied a couple of dozen mp3 and ogg files to the card, popped it in the Clip+.  Whoops!  boots up with an ATA error 4 showing above the logo, and no keypresses work.

Ok, tried reformatting with a different sector size and "slow format".  Same result on the Clip+.

So I went back to my box of players and pulled out the two other Sansa models I own, an e260 and a Fuze V2.

EUREKA!!  both worked fine - I went back and filled about 190GB of the card with music, audiobooks, and videos.   They all play fine on the two older models, but still no joy on the Clip+, same error.

Anyone know if this is a hardware limitation on the Clip  , or is it something that Rockbox can be modded to fix? 

[saratoga]

Are the clip and the fuze running the same version of rockbox?

[Doghouse Riley]

Yes, all 3.13

[saratoga]

Yes, all 3.13

I'm surprised one would work and not the other given that they both use the same underlying hardware.  In either case, 3.13 is several years out of date at this point, so try a newer build and see if the problem has been fixed.

[Doghouse Riley]

Removed 3.13 from my Clip+ and installed the latest build showed by the Rockbox utility (06-28-2016).  Left the bootloader in place.

Same problem, shows "ATA error: -4" on startup with the 256 card installed.   Works fine with 64 and 128 cards, and the 256 card works fine on other Sansas.

[Mihail Zenkov]

Which exactly version of Clip+ and Fuze v2 you have? You can check it in system > debug > view hw info.

Did you try insert card when rockbox already booted?

[Doghouse Riley]

Mihail, thanks for getting back to me, here's what I've got.

Sansa e260 
Hardware ID   PP5022C
256gb card works when inserted while powered down
256gb card works when inserted while powered up

Sansa Fuze v2
Hardware ID    AMSv2Variant0
256gb card works when inserted while powered down
256gb card not recognized when inserted while powered up, Sansa does not lock up but can navigate only to its native storage

Sansa Clip+
Hardware ID   AMSv2Variant1
256gb card crashes device with ATA error: -4 if inserted while powered down
256gb card works when inserted while powered up, however this is not ideal since I may turn the player on and off ten times a day, and I don't like removing and reinserting this fragile and expensive card every time.

All three devices are using the last official 3.13 release.

Hope you can help me to get the Clip+ to recognize the card if inserted before power up.    Thank you!

[saratoga]

Could you try the latest build and confirm its not fixed by the recent voltage changes?

[Doghouse Riley]

Build 108a0f3-160823 from the dev builds page.

Intermittent success, crashed with the ata -4 (or -3 or -2) error about 85% of the time, occasionally booted up okay.

Also sometimes locked the player when the card was inserted after powerup.

FYI here is the card in question:

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Select-Micro-Memory-256GB/dp/B01G7L03OS

[Mihail Zenkov]

Try this build: http://knk.square7.ch/rockbox-clipplus_sd256_0.zip

[Doghouse Riley]

No joy.  ATA -4 on every boot with the card in place.  It does read the card when inserted after bootup.

Thanks very much for your effort.

(EDIT - It just did boot correctly a couple of times.  Let me try this build tonight on another Clip+ I have at home before jumping to conclusions.)

[Mihail Zenkov]

Another build: http://knk.square7.ch/rockbox-clipplus_sd256_1.zip

[Doghouse Riley]

Still not there.   Both the sd256_0 and _1 builds alternate between the following when booting with the card in place

displaying an ATA error with the Rockbox logo below
displaying an ATA error with nothing else
displaying a black screen, requires holding power button for ~60 seconds to get a reboot
booting up correctly with card recognized 

Thanks again for the response.  Perhaps we'll have to wait until these cards get cheaper and are in the hands of you and the other developers?

[Mihail Zenkov]

Which exactly ata error you have with sd256_1 build? Or it just freeze?

[Doghouse Riley]

Mihail,

From a clean install of the 256_1 build, and twenty attempts to boot with the 256g card in place:

Twelve attempts gave successful boots.

Eight attempts gave a black screen with no message of any kind.  These failed boots could only be recovered from by removing the card and pressing/holding the power button two or three times.  Leaving the card in place with the black screen still showing made a reboot impossible, even when holding the power button for up to five minutes.