ResMed S9 SD Card Read/Write Errors

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AirBreather
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ResMed S9 SD Card Read/Write Errors

Post by AirBreather » Tue Mar 30, 2010 3:54 pm

ResMed S9 has displayed various error messages over recent days when its SD Data Card has been reinserted. Reinserting the card one or more times (sometimes several times) has seemed to correct the problem when it has occurred. I haven't written down the exact text of the messages, but they have been generally similar to "Defective data card, contact your supplier," "Deleting files," "Reformatting card," "Copying files," etc. Because re-insertion has always corrected the problems I have thought the true issue probably was poor contact rather than that the card was actually defective.

There hasn't been a similar problem reading the card in a PC card reader, until this morning. This morning the card couldn't be read and attempts to access it from Windows Explorer locked-up the computer and necessitated reboots. Following repeated failed attempts to read the card, I put it back in the S8. The S8 displayed something similar to "Reformatting card" followed by "Copying files." I then put the card back in the PC card reader and could access it without any difficulty. However, the detailed data files were missing and I only had daily summary data.

Have any of you had similar problems?

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Uncle_Bob
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Re: ResMed S9 SD Card Read/Write Errors

Post by Uncle_Bob » Tue Mar 30, 2010 4:40 pm

Yes in fact I'm getting really annoyed with inability to the transfer my data from the machine to my computer.

I've formatted my card twice, I've tried copying the default files over and not transferring them after a format. I get some of the messages you describe, sometimes i don't get all the data, just summary data. Sometimes i get the detailed data but not all of it. One time i got just flow data and nothing else in the detailed data.

Things are getting worse. Last time i inserted the card into my reader all the data was corrupt, even just opening the card in explorer all the folders names were scrambled.

I've been reading that someone is locking the data card so that ResScan cannot screw up the card (by writing to it) so when you put it back in your S9 its still good. Hopefully this will work out, it's what I'm going to try next. It would be really bad if it turns out to be the S9 that is corrupting the card.

Good luck

AirBreather
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Re: ResMed S9 SD Card Read/Write Errors

Post by AirBreather » Tue Mar 30, 2010 4:49 pm

I just returned from my local DME supplier. They didn't have a ResMed replacement SD Card, but they gave me a Respironics card that looks physically identical. I just plugged it in a PC and found that it is a 1GB card that is formatted FAT32. It had a folder named "P Series" that I deleted and no other files or folders. I am about to plug it in the S9 to find what happens.

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AirBreather
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Re: ResMed S9 SD Card Read/Write Errors

Post by AirBreather » Tue Mar 30, 2010 5:09 pm

The S9 displayed "Series 9" for a second or two when I inserted the Respironics SD Card. Then its display screen and power button lamp both went black for another second or two. Following that, the display screen lit-up and there were messages about copying files. The power button lamp came back on after those messages disappeared and I removed the card.

I plugged the card in a PC and have summary data for the days since I started using the S9 machine and an empty DATALOG folder that the S9 created. So, the Respironics SD Card appears to be compatible. I assume that detailed data will be written to it during the night tonight.

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Nord
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Re: ResMed S9 SD Card Read/Write Errors

Post by Nord » Tue Mar 30, 2010 5:33 pm

Hi AB...
AirBreather wrote:The S9 displayed "Series 9" for a second or two when I inserted the Respironics SD Card. Then its display screen and power button lamp both went black for another second or two. Following that, the display screen lit-up and there were messages about copying files. The power button lamp came back on after those messages disappeared and I removed the card.

I plugged the card in a PC and have summary data for the days since I started using the S9 machine and an empty DATALOG folder that the S9 created. So, the Respironics SD Card appears to be compatible. I assume that detailed data will be written to it during the night tonight.
Sounds right...

Is this you're first night or second??

Nord

AirBreather
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Re: ResMed S9 SD Card Read/Write Errors

Post by AirBreather » Tue Mar 30, 2010 5:57 pm

Nord wrote:Is this you're first night or second??

Nord
I upgraded from S8 to S9 a week ago.

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Arizona-Willie
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Re: ResMed S9 SD Card Read/Write Errors

Post by Arizona-Willie » Tue Mar 30, 2010 6:45 pm

LOCK YOUR CARD before you put it in your card reader to download data to your PC.

If you're using Rescan 3.10 you can use that to reformat your card and then stick it in the S9 and it will write the required files to the card.

THEN < LOCK the card > put it in your card reader and copy the datalog directory to some place on your PC where you can find it easily ... the desktop can work nicely. Then if the card gets corrupted because you forget to lock it, you can copy the files back to the sd card. You should probably copy those files at least once a week.

But, if you LOCK THE CARD, it should not get corrupted.
Windows does ungood things to the SD card when you remove it without going through that routine to remove hardware.
But if the card is LOCKED Windows can't screw it up.

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AirBreather
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Re: ResMed S9 SD Card Read/Write Errors

Post by AirBreather » Tue Mar 30, 2010 8:01 pm

I have determined how to avoid corrupting ResMed & Respironics SD Cards when reading data with a PC card reader without mechanically locking a card. SD Cards should not be removed from a PC card reader until they have been "ejected" by Windows. The proper way to eject a card after data has been read from it is to:

1) Start Windows Explorer*.

2) Right-click the card reader drive letter.

3) Select "Eject" from the pop-up menu.

4) Remove the card from the card reader.

*If you don't have a desktop icon to start Windows Explorer, right-click the Windows Start button and select Explore from the pop-up menu.

If an SD Card is removed from a PC card reader without following this procedure, not only can data on the card be damaged, but the PC card reader can be left in an unusable state until the computer is rebooted.

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Re: ResMed S9 SD Card Read/Write Errors

Post by KatieW » Tue Mar 30, 2010 10:23 pm

AirBreather, just to clarify the order of things, do you close ResScan before following this procedure? And after you use Windows Explorer to "eject" the card, you remove the card from the card reader, and then unplug the card reader?

On my Toshiba laptop with Vista, I have a little Icon called "safely remove hardware". Would this accomplish the same thing? Thanks.

With ResScan 3.7, I always opened the program 1st, before plugging in the Card Reader, then inserted the card. Then, I would close the program, uplug the Card Reader, then remove the card. I have followed this same procedure with ResScan 3.10. But I have been getting some skewed data, so will try this tomorrow. Thanks.

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AirBreather
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Re: ResMed S9 SD Card Read/Write Errors

Post by AirBreather » Tue Mar 30, 2010 10:57 pm

Yes, you should close ResScan before ejecting the SD Card, although that might not actually be necessary, depending on whether or not ResScan programmers wrote the program to close the card data files immediately after use. That usually is the done in well-written programs, but sometimes programmers don't go to the slight bit of extra trouble to do that and let the Windows operating system close data files when the main program closes. Ejecting after closing ResScan will be correct in either case, so that is the best procedure to follow (removing data files that haven't been closed is a bad thing to do and can cause a variety of problems). After ejecting a card it should be physically removed even if you plan to use it again for some reason, because it cannot be used again until it is physically reinserted.

All versions of Windows starting with Windows 2000 have the same small icon to "Safely remove hardware." The functional difference between using that and ejecting a card is that a card reader can be used repeatedly to read multiple cards without unplugging and replugging the card reader to reinitialize it each time if cards are "ejected." That is not a big issue with external card readers, but it is with built-in card readers that cannot be easily unplugged and reconnected. If a built-in card reader is "safely removed" it cannot be used again until the computer has been rebooted.

Stated more simply, "Ejecting" removes software references to files on a card so the card can be safely removed. Clicking the "Safely remove hardware" icon removes software references to a card reader so the card reader can be safely removed.

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dave21
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Re: ResMed S9 SD Card Read/Write Errors

Post by dave21 » Wed Mar 31, 2010 12:10 am

I'd agree with Arizona-Willie and AirBreather.

1) Lock the SD card
2) If you don't lock the SD card, then do the Eject method on XP (or Safely Remove on Vista as Katie mentioned)

Basically windows has something called WRITE CACHE that from Windows 95 onwards to speed up writes to hard disks they turned on Write Cache. What this means is if you write a 1mb word document to disk by clicking the SAVE button, even though Word says it's saved the document, it hasn't actually done so. It's in a write back queue in Windows and Windows will write it out within a few minutes to not reduce systme performance.

Employing the EJECT / SAFELY REMOVE method means that you are telling Windows to WRITE everything it has in WRITE BACK CACHE to that particular drive / SD card to ensure everything is written before you safely eject it. By removing a card technically before something has been written to it means that you could corrupted the SD card.

Now for us, we shouldn't be writing anything to the card as we're just importing the data, but unfortunatley we don't know if ResScan is doing anything to tag any files. It doesn't appear that ResScan is because if you write protect an SD card ResScan doesn't have any problems. However, there are other software programs on the PC that could be opening and reading the files. e.g. take antivirus scanners or even malicious software that want to tag spyware/viruses onto other files, they might be doing something.

If the S9 is finding errors on a daily basis as Bob you suggested, then I would
1) Insert the card into the PC
2) Backup the Datalog folder just so you have it
3) Do Start RUN then type CMD and click OK (On Vista just click START and in the text box type CMD and press enter)
4) in the black command prompt window type CHKDSK {drive_letter} /F.

You need to know which drive letter your SD card has been labelled as, you can check this in My Computer. So if your SD card is drive F: then you'd type CHKDSK F: /F

Using /F parameter will fix any errors with the SD card.

If fixing SD card still fails randomly when inserting the card into the S9 then I would try purchasing a new SD card, formatting it as FAT32 in Windows and then inserting it into the S9 and using that card instead. It's possible that the SD card just might be bad.

If using a new SD card still provides the same random error results on the S9 then it could be the card reader in the S9 isn't reading the contacts on the card properly and the card reader might be bad.

Thanks
Dave

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Re: ResMed S9 SD Card Read/Write Errors

Post by gpk111 » Wed Mar 31, 2010 8:21 am

I submit this as a reference point:
1. I have never used the "Safely remove feature." I simply make sure the USB unit is not accessed and remove the unit. No problem related to possible premature withdrawalin years.
2. I copy the full SD card from my S9 daily. Each day gets a separate folder so I can see what's going on. I lock the card as soon as I take it out of the S9. If I forget to unlock it, the S9 tells me.
3. I temporarily use a camera as my card reader. The camera writes folders onto the card when you forget to lock it. The S9 responded by wanting to "erase" the entire card. Rather than fixing it as discussed here elsewhwere, I just let it erase it, therbey losing prior detailed data from the card.
4. When I started, I used 3 different SD cards. They all got "erased" by the S9 when first inserted and then worked fine.
5. New cards get treated with ALL summary data (up to 365 days, according to the book) and detailed data for that day when you turn off the machine. All prior DETAILED data is LOST.
6. ReScan properly stores all detailed data and updates the current summary data each time you feed it data.
7. I now have S9 detailed data for 12 days on ResScan from 3 different cards.
8. I now have 7 days of detailed data on the current SD card and am waiting to see how it restricts the details to 7 days on the card (I assume the ResScan storage is unlimited).
9. I haven't tried it, but I assume if I ever want to copy one of my daily backup folders back onto an SD card, I assume the S9 will read it. Come to think of it, though, I don't know if I'd ever want to do that as long as I have the detailed data on ResScan.
10. I also back up the ResScan data once a week or so.

Bottom line:
If you have problems with a card, you should be able to put any card in the S9. The S9 should erase it prior to use. You can test it by removing it and reinserting. It should say "Reading SD card." I wouldn't mess with pre-formatting or FAT vs NTFS or any of that. If the S9 doesn't give you an "erase" or "reading" message, have the S9 checked out.

Gerry

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Re: ResMed S9 SD Card Read/Write Errors

Post by dave21 » Wed Mar 31, 2010 10:01 am

gpk111 wrote:I submit this as a reference point:
1. I have never used the "Safely remove feature." I simply make sure the USB unit is not accessed and remove the unit. No problem related to possible premature withdrawalin years.
It depends on whether there's anything left in the write back cache in Windows. Windows is the worst OS offender by far. You see this more on slower machines or on USB 1.1 writers more than on USB 2.0 but it's there and will pose a problem. If Windows really flips out then you will get a write error after you disconnect it (even though it might have not been accessing the writer for 30 seconds to a minute) - I've worked in the software development industry for 20 years and we had thousands of customers hitting these problems when USB came out and still have customers hitting these same problems today. If you're just reading from a card on a PC it's not a problem, but if something is writing to the card (whether you want it to or not) then you can hit into this problem. Windows tends to be bad because a lot of time it surpresses a copy error because it realises you've ejected the card manually or removed the USB appliance, and that's where it's at the most dangerous because you may have a file that has been opened in write mode rather than read mode, and if it can't write a close statement to the file then the file becomes corrupted at that point. Basically if an application opens a file in write mode, it has to read the file then re-write the entire file (in most cases). Some apps are more aware and just append to the file if they know they're writing to the last buffer point in the file, but that's where you get the partial corruption sometimes. Like I said, it happens more un slower PC's, slower card readers and slower SD cards. I don't see it that often, probably about a dozen times a month when I'm using SD cards and I write about 1000 cards a month.

In short, to be safe just write protect the card
gpk111 wrote:Bottom line:
If you have problems with a card, you should be able to put any card in the S9. The S9 should erase it prior to use. You can test it by removing it and reinserting. It should say "Reading SD card." I wouldn't mess with pre-formatting or FAT vs NTFS or any of that. If the S9 doesn't give you an "erase" or "reading" message, have the S9 checked out.
Correct you can do that, I just prefer to be in control of formatting the card
gpk111 wrote:8. I now have 7 days of detailed data on the current SD card and am waiting to see how it restricts the details to 7 days on the card (I assume the ResScan storage is unlimited).
It'll leave 8 days worth on the card but on the 9th day it will erase day 1 high resolution data.
gpk111 wrote:9. I haven't tried it, but I assume if I ever want to copy one of my daily backup folders back onto an SD card, I assume the S9 will read it. Come to think of it, though, I don't know if I'd ever want to do that as long as I have the detailed data on ResScan.
No it won't work. S9 needs to have the header files written correctly from the machine, to the card. If I do this the S9 fails to read the card. What you have to do is take a blank card, insert it into the S9, then let it write out the summary data it has in memory to the new card, then take the card out of the S9, go to your backup and copy the DATALOG folder to the newly created card that you put in the S9. Once you've written the datalog backup to the new card, re-insert that into the S9 and you'll have your full card restored.

Don't ask me why it won't read the card initially, I still believe there's some CRC information in the header files that knows at which part of the SD card it's written to (or it uses the unique serial number of the SD card) and embeds that into the CRC file. I haven't worked that one out yet - tbh really haven't spent time looking at it, but if you follow those steps you'll get a resurrected SD card from a backup

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Re: ResMed S9 SD Card Read/Write Errors

Post by AirBreather » Wed Mar 31, 2010 12:58 pm

An added point that many SD Memory Card users may not realize is that SD in the name is an abbreviation of "Secure Digital." They are named Secure Digital Memory Cards because they have a hidden storage area where Digital Rights Management (DRM) data can be saved. It was mistakenly thought when standards for the cards were originally developed that the music industry would would put data in that hidden area to prevent music piracy. Despite that expectation, it has been used very little, if at all, and merely wastes storage space. Even so, by design, SD Memory Cards become totally unusable if the hidden area becomes corrupted and reformatting an SD Memory Card does not reformat the hidden area.

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Re: ResMed S9 SD Card Read/Write Errors

Post by Nord » Wed Mar 31, 2010 1:07 pm

AirBreather wrote:An added point that many SD Memory Card users may not realize is that SD in the name is an abbreviation of "Secure Digital." They are named Secure Digital Memory Cards because they have a hidden storage area where Digital Rights Management (DRM) data can be saved. It was mistakenly thought when standards for the cards were originally developed that the music industry would would put data in that hidden area to prevent music piracy. Despite that expectation, it has been used very little, if at all, and merely wastes storage space. Even so, by design, SD Memory Cards become totally unusable if the hidden area becomes corrupted and reformatting an SD Memory Card does not reformat the hidden area.
Interesting... didn't know about the DRM data area... but it figures.

Thanks for the info.

Nord