Game data randomly corrupted

[Tenente D.]

Hello everyone, I'm new on this forum and this is my first post here.
I love everything related to SEGA and I'm happy to say that I'm a Dreamcast owner.

I've had my Dreamcast for only about one month now but one of my VMUs is already starting to give me some serious problems.
First of all, it restarts kinda often when it's not plugged into the controller. I have already changed the batteries so I don't think these are the problem.
Then, today I was playing Sonic Adventure and I transferred a Chao over to my VMU.
I played Chao Adventure for a while, and as I wanted to transfer my Chao back, I was about to switch the mode from game to clock, but as soon as I pushed the MODE button, the VMU froze with the ! icon on.
After some minutes the VMU turned off by itself. I was worried something might've happened so I put it back in the controller and turned the Dreamcast on. I browsed my VMU files and I saw that my Soul Calibur save file had a red cross on it and its "title" was gibberish.
Luckily I haven't played much on Soul Calibur yet but this is nightmarish.

Do you have any clue why this has happened? Do you know how can I avoid something like this in the future?
I have already made a backup file for Sonic Adventure and Crazy Taxi.

Thank you and have a dreamy day!

[Anthony817]

You could try reformatting it with VMU Tool, AKA Blue Swirl. It lets you do lots to them like defragmenting and more I believe. These being flash devices, they are inherently going to have a finite life and certain amount of writes to it before they just die.

[247]

I strongly suggest you not the deframment your vmu since it takes disk space for an unknow reason...

[poopidoop]

did it get wet? or have you had it open? kinda seems like its shorted out by something. anyway if its totaled you can take the guts out of a plain white one and re use your shell

[Tenente D.]

Hello, thanks for the replies!
I have already deleted the save file since I was kinda scared it might damage my VMU even further. (It's probably impossible but I'm paranoid sometimes)
poopidoop, I have opened it once to change the batteries and since then it has restarted randomly quite some times. I tried readjusting the batteries but I've had no luck. It still works as a memory since I can save on it and no other data got corrupted, but since it's only around 1 month old I wonder how this could've happened...

[beanboy]

That's sad to hear dude. But even though it super sucks, at least you took some precautionary measures, to try and save your vmu.

Interestingly enough, one thing I noticed, is that on reicast emulator, that weird writing, also seems to appear, with saves from Japanese dreamcast versions of games, like Vampire Chronicles and the Japanese version, of Super Puzzle Fighter 2 X. I find that rather Interesting.

Blocchi? That's Italian.
PAL dreamcast? Or language change?

[Tenente D.]

beanboy, that's pretty interesting!

My Dreamcast is a PAL one and I'm Italian, that's why I chose it as the system language ^^

[Ian Micheal]

It's pretty normal for the vmu batterys to last about 2 months I had a brandnew vmu back in 1999 it would go thru batterys about every 2 months. sometimes less.

[beanboy]

beanboy, that's pretty interesting!

My Dreamcast is a PAL one and I'm Italian, that's why I chose it as the system language ^^

Cool! I had a suspicion you might be Italian, and probably using a PAL dreamcast, when I saw the word blocchi in the pic.

Okay. Are you using some sort of region breaking, boot cd hacking thingy, to play a few Japanese region games, on your PAL dreamcast?
If so, it's possible that might explain, some of the strange writing, on some of your game saves.

[Tenente D.]

beanboy, that's pretty interesting!

My Dreamcast is a PAL one and I'm Italian, that's why I chose it as the system language ^^

Cool! I had a suspicion you might be Italian, and probably using a PAL dreamcast, when I saw the word blocchi in the pic.

Okay. Are you using some sort of region breaking, boot cd hacking thingy, to play a few Japanese region games, on your PAL dreamcast?
If so, it's possible that might explain, some of the strange writing, on some of your game saves.

No haha, I'm still a beginner with the Dreamcast and I don't plan on modding it or using pirated games on it anytime soon.
My Soul Calibur game is 100% PAL and working. That's why such a bad corruption was strange to me.