Hacking Computer freezes when transferring games

[Blaze_Up]

I just got a CycloDS, and I'm having issues putting games on the card. When I try and drag and drop games onto the root of the MicroSD card, more often than not it freezes on me. I usually end up having to remove the drive to prevent my computer from needing to be restarted, which then corrupts the data and makes me have to reformat the card. I've tried adding the files one by one and as a group, and while a couple single files may go through, sooner or later a file freezes and I'm back to square one. Dragging and dropping an entire group is out of the question, it fails every time. It should be noted though that it doesn't exactly freeze. The transfer animation (for lack of a better term) never freezes, it always shows the files as still sending, but the progress goes nowhere. I've left it transferring a 60mb game for 20 minutes and nothing happened. On the few instances where I can get a single or a couple roms on the card, they do work fine, but sooner or later it'll freeze if I try putting more on.

 

[Hop2089]

Use another MicroSD compatible USB adapter. You can buy cheap ones for $15 bucks.

 

[chrisman01]

What are the specs of your computer?

Have you tried transferring anything on another computer?

If you have a wii and sd adapter, copy some saves and/or channels and tell us if you get an error doing that.

It's either you have an old computer, something's wrong with your computer, or somehings wrong with the card. Sounds like the card to me.

 

[DeMoN]

2 Questions.

How old is your computer?
What adapter are you using to connect the MicroSD to your computer?

 

[Blaze_Up]

My computers a couple years old, I don't remember, but when I got it it was running Vista. I have no idea what the specs are. I've never had any issues transferring anything from my iPhone or PSP though. I'm using the adapter that came with the Cyclods to connect my MicroSD card, T-Flash something or other.

 

[chrisman01]

heehee, vista... I'm inclined to say that's your problem, but it most likely isn't... hopefully. Vista sucks. Given me nothing but heck since it first came out.

Anyway, did you try using the wii or another computer?

 

[Blaze_Up]

I don't have a Wii or another computer, although I have friends with both so perhaps I'll try that tomorrow if I can.

 

[leiger]

heehee, vista... I'm inclined to say that's your problem, but it most likely isn't... hopefully. Vista sucks. Given me nothing but heck since it first came out.

After a few service packs and updates, I'd be willing to bet it's even more stable than XP. And 7 just takes the cake.

Back on topic. OP - How much are you trying to transfer at a time? Try just moving 1-2 games onto the microSD at a time, and not several.

 

[FAST6191]

To me it sounds like corruption is the symptom not an effect of the problem: I often see it on dying drives usually as windows tries to access many things that are "not" there. The fact it happens later and that you can transfer some files (presumably after a reformat) points to a later sector on the card (or at least the part the file system uses).

Things to try:
linux (liveCDs like puppy linux should work just as well): it has a slightly more robust reading mechanism (something I am very thankful for as I am going through such a thing with my external drive as we speak). It probably will not do anything for you as far as writing goes but it could allow you to grab save files from it.

sector by sector format as opposed to quick format: all decent flash memory has sectors to replace the corrupt ones and if not you will likely just lose some space from the drive. By doing a sector by sector you essentially test the each drive sector and it will hopefully nuke the corrupt sectors. You might want to repeat this a few times.

awful kludge: partitioning the drive to skip those later sectors. Even large half decent SDHC cards are not that much these days so I will give more specific instructions if it is called for. If you do fancy looking up people either did this when 2 gig first came down to a sensible price and GBA slot carts were adding support or more recently if something went wrong and they needed to create a larger partition (same method for the most part and certainly same tools).

 

[DeMoN]

Is your microSD 8GB or larger?
Maybe this hot-fix might help: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936825

 

[Chris_Skylock]

Vista has nothing to do with his/her problem. Im using Vista and It's fine with 8GB of games. perhaps, it's a hardware failure or a software corruption.

 

[Blaze_Up]

heehee, vista... I'm inclined to say that's your problem, but it most likely isn't... hopefully. Vista sucks. Given me nothing but heck since it first came out.
After a few service packs and updates, I'd be willing to bet it's even more stable than XP. And 7 just takes the cake.

Back on topic. OP - How much are you trying to transfer at a time? Try just moving 1-2 games onto the microSD at a time, and not several.


Originally I tried transferring like 25 games, but it soon became apparent how futile that was. Now I'm moving them 1 game at a time and sometimes they work sometimes they don't.


QUOTE(FAST6191 @ Jul 14 2009, 03:59 AM)

To me it sounds like corruption is the symptom not an effect of the problem: I often see it on dying drives usually as windows tries to access many things that are "not" there. The fact it happens later and that you can transfer some files (presumably after a reformat) points to a later sector on the card (or at least the part the file system uses).

Things to try:
linux (liveCDs like puppy linux should work just as well): it has a slightly more robust reading mechanism (something I am very thankful for as I am going through such a thing with my external drive as we speak). It probably will not do anything for you as far as writing goes but it could allow you to grab save files from it.

sector by sector format as opposed to quick format: all decent flash memory has sectors to replace the corrupt ones and if not you will likely just lose some space from the drive. By doing a sector by sector you essentially test the each drive sector and it will hopefully nuke the corrupt sectors. You might want to repeat this a few times.

awful kludge: partitioning the drive to skip those later sectors. Even large half decent SDHC cards are not that much these days so I will give more specific instructions if it is called for. If you do fancy looking up people either did this when 2 gig first came down to a sensible price and GBA slot carts were adding support or more recently if something went wrong and they needed to create a larger partition (same method for the most part and certainly same tools).

A lot of that went over my head. I have no idea what you mean by linux, but as of yet this cards got few enough save files that I don't care about keeping so I'm not worried about that right now. I don't know how to do a sector by sector format. When I format my drive I right click on it and go to format, however when I do it normally it seems like it freezes on me and takes forever, yet if I click the option for a quick format it's done in a minute. I also have no idea what you mean by awful kludge or how do to that.

And I have an 8gb card so I'll take a look at your link Demon thanks.

 

[xanth]

It's the cycloDS usb transfer thingee. Mine always does the exact same thing, and I've heard of other people complaining about the same thing before in other places. I troubleshooted the card, windows drivers, etc, didn't solve the problem. The CycloDS reader is just a cheap piece of crap. Which is kinda sad, because the CycloDS rocks.

For me, I just got around it by putting the MicroSD in the SD card adapter it came in. My comp. has slots for different types of memory cards so I just stick it right in and transfer the files. Never had a problem doing it that way.

So my suggestion is buy a better card reader for $10-$15.

 

[leiger]

Things to try:
linux (liveCDs like puppy linux should work just as well): it has a slightly more robust reading mechanism (something I am very thankful for as I am going through such a thing with my external drive as we speak). It probably will not do anything for you as far as writing goes but it could allow you to grab save files from it.

This has saved me several times with my HDD. Not sure how effective it will be for a microSD though.

QUOTE(Blaze_Up @ Jul 15 2009, 11:18 AM) Originally I tried transferring like 25 games, but it soon became apparent how futile that was. Now I'm moving them 1 game at a time and sometimes they work sometimes they don't.

Whenever I transfer games onto my microSD I just do them one at a time. Too big a bunch of files and explorer.exe just freezes completely (and I have to restart is using Task Manager). I only dump games one at a time, as I buy them, so there's generally no need for a bigger group of files unless it's a pile of homebrew I've just downloaded (which I rarely do anyway). Haven't had any problems since doing it like that.

 

[Blaze_Up]

It's the cycloDS usb transfer thingee. Mine always does the exact same thing, and I've heard of other people complaining about the same thing before in other places. I troubleshooted the card, windows drivers, etc, didn't solve the problem. The CycloDS reader is just a cheap piece of crap. Which is kinda sad, because the CycloDS rocks.

For me, I just got around it by putting the MicroSD in the SD card adapter it came in. My comp. has slots for different types of memory cards so I just stick it right in and transfer the files. Never had a problem doing it that way.

So my suggestion is buy a better card reader for $10-$15.

Yeah, I just got it working, ironically before reading this post. I was playing with the adapter that came with the MicroSD card (not the Cyclos) and noticed a sliding lever on the left with the word "lock" near it. I put in the MicroSD card and when I noticed it wasn't physically locked in I started thinking. I had tried it this way yesterday, but anytime I tried doing anything it said it was all read only, so I gave up on it pretty quick. I tried it again tonight with it "unlocked" and everything worked perfectly, I had no problems transferring 4-5 games at a time. Seems it was just the T-Flash adapter after all. Thanks for all the help guys.

 

[DeMoN]

Glad to hear you got it working.

The Cyclo used to come with a much better reader (the silver one with a black cap), I don't know why they switched.