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2 inner sd cards/lost firmware?

N

Nimander

Lurker
Hey all.
I recently purchased a generic tablet off ebay.
10.1 running kitkat 4.4.2
32gb allwinner quad core processor, 1gb ddr3 ram.
Right now to the juicy bits :(
I can see my 2gb partition as well as 10gb internal sd card.
There is an inner card as well which is 16gb.
I have never been able to access this card for storage. It did contain text files and folder which only used up 600kb!
This partition started showing 0mb used and 0mb available. consequently I no longer have superuser installed (came with this installed and ready).
I tried everything to get this accessible, and only today, once plugged into the pc, it came up with "this drive must be formatted before use" blah blah
now it is usable at 16gb, but nothing copied there would ever show up or be usable, or seen in file explorer.
I managed to track the manufacturer (no mean feat believe me), and have found firmware and allwinner tools. Problem is all the instructions are very much in Chinese lol
No way I am gonna download and try to fudge the install!
Does anyone have any experience with these or have a better way to get hold of firmware?
Cheers in advance
Tony :confused:
edit* Manufacturer is Yones toptech
 
Forget the firmware, the Tablet is running fine.
Installed a separate Superuser app
problem with the inner card (not internal sd), is that it is 16gb still, but once media etc is copied onto it, it no longer is accessible after a reboot ie music is there but will not play.
Any ideas on this one chaps?
 
I believe I have the same tablet, and the same problem, BUT this morning I lucked out and found a solution.

What I did was the following to get back a zero-size partition that as 16GB called "inner card".

1. Unmount/Mount - no impact
2. Plugged into PC and ran Paragon Hard Disk Manager 14 (I suspect any partition manager will work)
3. Formatted to FAT (standard settings)
4. Did a check integrity - it was still corrupt - and the instructions were to run CHKDSK
5. Ran CHKDSK x: /F in order to make a fix, converting lost space to files. It ran ok, but no files appeared, so it thought there was lost clusters. Later checking I found a folder called FOUND.000 and it had 3 items in it for 24kb.
6. Created a folder and copied a couple files onto the space - in my case test music - but later only found 1 in the folder.
7. disconnected/rebooted
8. checked with setup - found it aok with full size
9. checked with ESFILE and it traversed it fine, but only 1 file was in the folder (not sure what happened there)

The fact it came back is the key, so may be this is something you can try.

Good luck, Don


Nimander said:
Hey all.
I recently purchased a generic tablet off ebay.
10.1 running kitkat 4.4.2
32gb allwinner quad core processor, 1gb ddr3 ram.
Right now to the juicy bits :(
I can see my 2gb partition as well as 10gb internal sd card.
There is an inner card as well which is 16gb.
I have never been able to access this card for storage. It did contain text files and folder which only used up 600kb!
This partition started showing 0mb used and 0mb available. consequently I no longer have superuser installed (came with this installed and ready).
I tried everything to get this accessible, and only today, once plugged into the pc, it came up with "this drive must be formatted before use" blah blah
now it is usable at 16gb, but nothing copied there would ever show up or be usable, or seen in file explorer.
I managed to track the manufacturer (no mean feat believe me), and have found firmware and allwinner tools. Problem is all the instructions are very much in Chinese lol
No way I am gonna download and try to fudge the install!
Does anyone have any experience with these or have a better way to get hold of firmware?
Cheers in advance
Tony :confused:
edit* Manufacturer is Yones toptech
Click to expand...
 
Hi Don604,

I recently purchased the same tablet for my grandson's xmas and also have 0GB available on the inner card after trying to copy some files to it. Did you manage to recover the use of the 16Gb inner card with your instructions 0-9?

In 2., did you plug the tablet into the PC via the usb ports or download partition manager directly to the tablet and run it? The tablet was not visible when I connected it to the PC via the usb port.

I would appreciate your help with this as I have not used a tablet before.

Thanks for any advice you can give me.
 
In 2), I plugged the tablet into the PC. The partition manager is a PC-based software package that works on the drives over the USB cable.

Sadly, that 16GB partition did disappear on me again. It appears to be some weird bug that will recur. I rarely used the space out of caution.

So in response to your message, I'd done it again and logged exactly what I've done below.

What I did do was run a CHKDSK and it found errors (surprise, surprise). A CHKDSK H: /FIX reported a bad link at "\" which is weird. Attempting to unmount wouldn't work, so I pulled the USB plug and rebooted. It was giving me a lot of error dialogues concerning the tablet about the UI.

ESfile did not show the partition. "Internal Storage" (not SDcard) showed 16GB, but I believe space use is corrupt. Plugged it in again for USB storage mode, and waited a bit for the mounts to actually work. They mounted, but no name on the 16GB partition, and eventually it reported it corrupt or unreadable.

I tried EASEUS Partition Manager (free on Windows) for a partition format. It had reported it as unformatted in its displays. During the process, I changed the allocation unit to 32KB (most stuff are big files anyway). It formatted and mounted. I copied a simple picture over.

Then I opened a CMD window and typed in CHKDSK H:. It showed errors, and offered to convert lost chains to file, and I said YES. Nothing showed up, and still errors, so I reran CHKDSK from the CMD window as CHKDSK h: /F to force a fix. The lost file stuff was recovered somewhere (missing on Win7 window), but subsequent CHKDSK said it was a happy camper. Closed all windows and EASEUS and then rebooted tablet.

At this point, ESfile showed intsd as a drive with my picture file, a directory called FOUND.000 (where the lost file stuff is put), a LOST.DIR (empty, as I believe this is Linux), and standard Android folder.

So, the tablet back. But don't know how long. I will leave the FOUND.000 folder alone. Maybe it needs that to protect the funny segments that cause partition corruption. Only time will tell, but int he meantime, I won't be putting life and death stuff on that partition/drive.

GOOD LUCK!! Don
 
Hi Don,

Many thanks for your fast and comprehensive reply. It certainly sounds like a hardware/firmware problem within the tablet. Given what you have tried and found, I wont even try to recover the lost 16GB as any data stored on the inner card may be lost at some time in the future. I have ordered a low cost (£3.28) 16GB micro sd card which should restore the original 32GB functionality.

I bought the tablet via AliExpress from a Chinese supplier Ankaka who liased with the manufacturer to try and resolve the problem but, unfortunately, they could not come up with a fix. Ankaka were very good by offering to take back the tablet and refund the US$83.50 cost or refund US$5, equivalent to the cost of the 16GB version, if I wanted to keep it. I asked if they would consider sending the case/usb keyboard option, which costs an extra US$12, instead to compensate me for the hassle and they agreed and have shipped it out.

In conclusion, I am relatively happy with the (perhaps limited) level of support they were able to provide and , assuming there are no more future problems with the tablet, my grandson will have a high level of functionality for the cost to me.

I am very grateful for your response as it has saved me going down a route which may have given my grandson some heartache in the future if he lost some precious data.

KINDEST REGARDS,
Dan
 
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