Sleepyead used, now card unreadable?

[paul85]

I might have missed it in the instructions somewhere, but I turned off my Autoset, pulled the card out, plugged it into my laptop, and pointed the sleephead software at it and read the card and got my info. Awesome. Then I shut the laptop off, pulled the card out, put it into my autoset, and it said the card was unreadable and after trying a few times, I formatted it and it works now, but all my previous days are gone.

Is this user error, or something I should have read about first and self inflicted as a feature of the sleepyhead software?

[Pachyderm's Nose]

Yes, user error. Sleepyhead creates a file on the card that Resmed machines do not like. Next time make the card read only before you access it with sleepyhead.

[paul85]

Awesome, thanks for the quick reply. It was only 3 days of info and not really missed.

[greatunclebill]

what is the name of the file that sleepyhead creates? does it put it on cards from all machines or just resmed? this is the first time i've heard this.

[Pugsy]

Yes, user error. Sleepyhead creates a file on the card that Resmed machines do not like. Next time make the card read only before you access it with sleepyhead.

Not totally true. I use SleepyHead daily with my ResMed machine and my computer and I never have had any extra file get put on my SD card and I never put it into read only mode. Never had one problem...since early February. I don't turn off my machine nor my computer.

Now there is an issue with some Mac computers sneaking a little file onto the SD card and I read one instance where someone had an odd Windows files show up on the SD card. I think the Mac issue was with a step missed in SD card ejection. Not all Mac users have had the problem. It may have something to do with a specific Mac OS.

SleepyHead itself doesn't do a thing to the SD card file contents...nothing. There simply is nothing in the software that does anything at all to the contents of a SD card.

Now if the SD card contents does happen to get changed for some reason then it is either from something the user did or the computer did. Maybe improper removal of the SD card or accidentally changing something.

We can blame several things maybe but not SleepyHead itself. There is nothing on the software that makes any alterations to the files on the SD card. It just won't/can't do anything to the SD card.

It is of course a good idea to slide the SD card to read only mode as a precaution but this SD card changing thing is a product of something else happening and not SleepyHead or ResScan doing something.

[paul85]

More good info. I didn't eject the card since I shut down the laptop and then pulled the card out. I don't know what else could have done anything to the card though as it is a personal computer, no encryption set up for removeable devices, nothing like that.

Oh well, I'll just back it up now before reading it with sleepyhead and see if that makes a difference.

[AHI15]

So far I haven't had a problem with my machine rejecting the card after reading in SH. I read it with Win XP in a Linux hosted VMware. I'm not sure if I turned off Window's indexing features. I probably did bc I hate such things.

A lot of operating systems these days think they are being clever by creating "indexing" databases, creating a whole slew of little hidden files on your media containing "view attributes" and other nonsense, and chewing up vast amounts of CPU horsepower. This royally makes me mad. I don't want my computer to do anything "smart" but what I explicitly tell it to do, and certainly not to create files in any location but the OSes dedicated directories. Even Linux is doing this BS these days.

[Pugsy]

I didn't eject the card since I shut down the laptop and then pulled the card out. I don't know what else could have done anything to the card though as it is a personal computer, no encryption set up for removeable devices, nothing like that.

It could simply have been a bad file for some reason or other. Things happen.
All it takes for the ResMed machine to reject a SD card is a tiny blip in what it expects it should see.
It is possible that a corrupted file happened during the machine writing the data to the SD card...things seemed okay and just a coincidence that you used SleepyHead and then the machine didn't like the SD card. Might have happened no matter which software you used or even might have happened if you had just pulled the SD card out and stuck it right back into the machine.

Should it continue to happen though....might want to think about getting a new SD card just in case this one has a bad sector or something. Any generic SD card will work. Doesn't have to be name brand.
Just yesterday I got a message from someone who thought their machine wasn't compatible with the software because they were getting a "cannot find media" message and come to find out the brand new SD card was totally to blame.
This was of course after going through all sorts of other work to determine if software was working and stuff. Sometimes the answer to problems is so very simple that we don't even think to consider it.

But you can rest assured that using SleepyHead or ResScan will NOT alter the contents of the SD card.
Something else might but using the software won't.

[Pachyderm's Nose]

Now there is an issue with some Mac computers sneaking a little file onto the SD card and I read one instance where someone had an odd Windows files show up on the SD card. I think the Mac issue was with a step missed in SD card ejection. Not all Mac users have had the problem. It may have something to do with a specific Mac OS.

SleepyHead itself doesn't do a thing to the SD card file contents...nothing. There simply is nothing in the software that does anything at all to the contents of a SD card.

Now if the SD card contents does happen to get changed for some reason then it is either from something the user did or the computer did. Maybe improper removal of the SD card or accidentally changing something.

Yes, I mis-remembered that one, I knew that something added a file. Even using ResScan I try to write protect my card before downloading data. Prevents me from doing something stupid and avoids the odd chance of getting a virus transfered to it. Thanks for the correction.

[archangle]

Yes, user error. Sleepyhead creates a file on the card that Resmed machines do not like. Next time make the card read only before you access it with sleepyhead.

SleepyHead never writes back to the SD card.

It's been reported that Macs do sometimes write some sort of file that screws up S9 data cards. This is the Mac itself, not SleepyHead.

paul85, do you have a PC or a Mac?

Some Windows users have reported having problems with damaging S9 cards due to having malware (virus, etc.) that writes data to the SD card.

There are so many scumbag programs out there that want to automatically "help" you by indexing all your files, that it wouldn't surprise me if "HipsterMusicPlayer" writes some index file on every SD card you insert into the machine.

[TalonNYC]

My guess is that it is a Mac. The "ejected the card" thing is kind of a giveaway =)

Yes, Mac's write metadata to cards you insert. For a PC, Linux, or another Mac, this is not a problem, but for the ResMed machines it's a BIG problem.

Just flip the little toggle switch on the card to Locked or Read Only before inserting it, and the metadata cannot be written, which avoids the issue.

[paul85]

Actually, its a Windows XP netbook.

I did just that, flipped the tab down on the card, and read it 3x since this thread, fri, sat, and sun nights, and when done, ejected the card, flipped the tab back to write mode, put it back in the machine, and have had no more problems since then. Thanks all.