I am having trouble with SD card malfunction, or better the SD card gets corrupted and prevents the X1 from booting up. This happens with a various SD card types and sizes. It seems when the card is half full. Another ‘symptom’ is that when I have Cloud sharing enabled and the card malfunctions the printer loses connection and I can’t print anymore. When I remove the card the printer start working again, Reformatting the card will also solve this. Has anyone else observed this problem? Is there a problem with the firmware/OS handling and maintaining the file system?
What firmware is your printer running?
01.08.00.00
But I just got a message that there is a new version.
The new version updates the AMS firmware, but doesn’t change the X1 firmware.
Version 01.08.00.00 was already installed and seem to be the latest. The AMS version is 00.00.06.44 and seems to be the most recent one, but has most likely no relation to the SD card problem. Still leaves the problem unanswered. Am I the only one having this issue or am I just using bad, low quality SD cards? I would appreciate suggestions on brands and types of SD cards people have been successfully using without problems. Size and speed included.
Thanks for the input and help.
I personally use “SanDisk Extreme microSDXC™ UHS-I CARD, 64GB” from a reputable supplier without issue. I have 5 of these cards.
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Thanks for the information.
I have had my X1C for over a year with a 512GB SD card. It has been formatted extract with no issues until recently when I started experiencing problems similar to yours . I ended up having to format fat32 ( knew this a year ago but the cards been working just fine). I did this via linux kde partition manager. So far so good. So no t sure why I have been fine for so long and then the extfat started causing me issues…
Now my SD card is a genuine sandisk. I also ran an sd checker to make sure no bad sectors etc… All is good.
If you check out GRCs free validrive on the sdcard.
It will let you know if it’s fake or has issues. It’s very common to get fake ones these days.
Thank you that’s all great information. SD card do go bad after being written to a lot. I have had to throw out several of them that I used with my phone, my FPV cameras and tablets. They just stop working, some of them you can reformat, some won’t even be reocognized by any device, be it Windows, Android or whatever is used in the cameras. They are just dead. No recovery app works on them either. So I guess we just need to buy no cards every so often.
I just wonder if you could access more than 32GB on your card when you format in fat32. The extfat is used to access more than 32 or 64GB, if I remeber correctly. exFAT creates a larger file system and directory for that.
I will try to use the GRC Validrive fake drive detection app on my new SanDisk 64GB card I ordered to see if it is real or counterfit. Some of these fake brands look undistinguishable from the real thing.
Lastly I was just wnting to find out if there is something the matter with Bambu Lab’s firmware or even the card reader electronics. I sign of this would be if the problems become more frequent and the card slot begins to fail. But I think it’s just that crappy SD card technology that is the cause of it all. Dated technology.
Let’s keep an eye on it and keep us mutually posted for any additional info.
Best Regards.
Yes, you are correct. They will fail over time. That’s why I got a larger card, so there is more space to spread the writing before rewriting. Since this SD card does video mainly and those are large files, I went with 512GB. In Linux, you can format the SD card to fat 32 as it doesn’t have the same hard cap as Windows when using that format, and you can access all of it. I did run a test on the entire card and all sectors wrote and read just fine no issue.
I think my issue was that for whatever reason, it stopped liking extfat. in all fairness, bambu says to use fat32. The printer will support up to ~2TB cards. I would never spend the money to put one that large in there. 512GB has been perfect really for my needs.
I have seen some occasions where the card reader has been bad and the screen module needed to be replaced to get it working. Not many cases but a few over the past year.
We need to get the info from BambuLab if they want us to format any microSD card with the system’s format utility, always before use. FAT32 partitions can theoretically be as large as 8TB, but Microsoft has artificially limited the FAT32 partition size to 32GB in the past to promote its NTFS file system. So the Windows FAT32 formatting facility did in the past limit the volume size to 32GB. Windows 11 (10?) might not have this limitation anymore. I don’t know about Linux. exFAT was released by Microsoft to allow creation of files larger than 4GB in the file system compared to the 4GB limitation of FAT32. That’s for Windows Format. Does the BambuLab formatter use FAT32 or exFAT? There is no selection in the menu so I assume it’s FAT32. Windows 11 tells me that a FAT32 64GB SD card has a 62.4GB capacity and it’s a FAT32 file system after formatting with the X1C. Looks like 62.4GB should be available to the X1C, but with the 4GB file size limitation, right? Or? That would mean that you could run into file size limitations for time lapse videos for really long prints?
But all this doesn’t seem to impact the failure problem observed. So my conclusion is that there is either corruption during write access, during removal when the printer is still turned on and in the process of accessing the card or just a failure of the card itself. Also during the shut down process of the printer, files could be left open, i.e. corrupted, which would be the fault of the BambuLab firmware.
It doesn’t seem to happen often since there are not that many reports on it. Another thing to avoid, probably, should be viewing the sd card contents on a machine other than the printer. Windows always tells me when I do this that the sd card has errors and needs to be scanned and fixed. So I will avoid this in the future. Too bad and I will not be able to watch the silly timelapse videos on my computer anymore.
I have had several card readers corrupt the files on the SD card, not the device they were being used in.
Are you referring to USB adapter type readers? They are just interfaces. I do believe that the corruption occurs when the cards are not properly ejected, i.e. there are still open files or the card is still being accessed by the system. In Windows for instance there is the ‘Eject’ function for USB and other media storage devices. If the sd card access is not properly closed before removal, by the next insertion you might get the message that the card needs to be scanned and possibly fixed. With the X1C card reader there is no Eject funtion but I assume that when the printer is turned off a similar process of closing all open files and stopping access to the card is executed. However if the card is removed when the printer is still active or just powered on, corruption might occur. I don’t think the damage is of electrical nature as from a ‘spike’ or ‘surge’ from the reader slot during insertion or removal. But some of my microSD cards appear to be completely dead and unreadable. Static electrical discharge damage perhaps?
Yes I am. As far as everything else you stated, I am very much aware of. On the PC I use an app called " USB Safely Remove".