"Corrupted" SD Cards with GDEMU in 2023?

[BLueSS]

Hey DC-Talk family, I'm jumping back online after a few years away. I picked up some new games for my Dreamcast, and when trying them on my gdemu I noticed a new issue, where after 2-3 minutes the game would freeze/lockup/crash.

Searching the forums I found mentions of checking the PSU (not my issue) and SD Card - which was my issue. Using a different card, with all the same files, magically worked. This was the previous thread I found: https://www.dreamcast-talk.com/forum/vi ... rd#p130412

My questions are, was a fix ever discovered to prevent this from happening? GDEMU update? GDMenu update? Does it still happen in 2023, and I should be prepared to have 2 SD cards with all my files on them, to swap back and forth if needed?

Thanks!

[MikeStutzzzz]

recently I have seen a lot of my older samsung micro sd cards have been failing (even the ones in my phone and tablet). Are you using full size or micro? recently moved my gdemu to a full size card working pretty well so far.

[BLueSS]

Interesting. I haven't really seen any MicroSDs get issues in my time.
My "failed" card was a MicroSD - Official Samsung - not a fake.

I'm moving all my files to a full-sized SD card, PNY this time.

[ufdm]

I also encountered this issue, where out of two similar age and spec Samsung MicroSD cards, one worked fine, but the other would stop working in the GDEMU after a few minutes. The problematic card has no issues with other devices.

Hopefully it can eventually be narrowed down why this happens, as it was a big disappointment to copy many games onto an empty card and then find out it was a waste of time.

[trickymainly]

I also experienced this problem, where one of two Samsung MicroSD cards of a comparable age and specification functioned flawlessly in the GDEMU, but the other would cease operating after a short while. Updating the app helped.

[ItalianGrandma]

Hey DC-Talk family, I'm jumping back online after a few years away. I picked up some new games for my Dreamcast, and when trying them on my gdemu I noticed a new issue, where after 2-3 minutes the game would freeze/lockup/crash.

Searching the forums I found mentions of checking the PSU (not my issue) and SD Card - which was my issue. Using a different card, with all the same files, magically worked. This was the previous thread I found: https://www.dreamcast-talk.com/forum/vi ... rd#p130412

My questions are, was a fix ever discovered to prevent this from happening? GDEMU update? GDMenu update? Does it still happen in 2023, and I should be prepared to have 2 SD cards with all my files on them, to swap back and forth if needed?

Thanks!

Does your GDEmu have the 3d printed tray and the ribbon cable that extends the sd card slot up to the tray? If so, I wonder if the real problem could be that SD slot ribbon extender.

[WedgeStratos]

Does your GDEmu have the 3d printed tray and the ribbon cable that extends the sd card slot up to the tray? If so, I wonder if the real problem could be that SD slot ribbon extender.

It's all of the above from my experience, plus a bit more. Part of the issue stems from the FAT32 filesystem, power-on and power-off cycles while the SD card is being accessed can seemingly impact the filesystem, even though GDemu is read-only.
Power supply instability can cause its own headaches, and should probably be extracted for an isopropenyl scrubbing every couple of months. Same can be said for reseating extenders, but I've had SD card issues even plugged directly into the GDemu, so I can't confidently say it's down to extenders only. It would be very nice if we could find an extender that uses a proper wire ribbon cable as opposed to the thin flex cable, though.

Best case, try to set up your card with all the games you want from the very beginning and avoid randomly adding a game here or there. I'm not sure if there's any proper garbage collection being done on these cards, and it seems like I'm better off when I have the card fully configured from the get-go. Alternatively, you could have multiple SD cards with maybe half of the catalog on one card, other half on another, a card for translated games, a card for hacks of Half-Life and junk like that, one for Atomiswave, one for homebrew and emulators, etc.

[sirwompus]

I've had the same experience where a set of roms are working on a card, I add or remove some and then the whole card is rendered useless.