Flex 6400M Backup SD

John - K3MA

I am wondering if others that have made a back-up of the internal SD Card have used a consumer grade SDCard rather than buying the commercial grade 256MB Micro SDCard?  If so what brand, class and size was used.  My Flex 6500 is long out of warranty and I am thinking about making a backup of the SDCard to cover the time from failure to Flex replacement received.  If others have used a consumer grade SDCard then I would use the same since it would be a short duration use if needed.

Nick RN3KK

I use Kingston 16 Gb (price 4-5$ in Russia)
For 100% result, need use "dd" util in linux. 

DL4RCE

I had a Sandisk 2Gb & a 256MB "noname".

Volker

Chris DL5NAM

both work well? You have tested?

73 Chris

DL4RCE

Yes

Nick RN3KK

No difference between sd. Use any.

N8AUM

Does the Maestro also use an SD card? Last year my new Maestro got corrupted while performing an upgrade and it had to be shipped back to mommy for repair. It would be nice to have spare image on hand to get back on the air while waiting for mommy to send replacement to avoid Flex withdrawal to a minimal 

Tim - W4TME

No, it does not.

BL7IB

The original 256M SD card is nice stuff from Flex, do not swap it by another SD (you might consider faster, 100X?)   It is very different from consumer grade SD card.

As mentioned by Flexradio officials, original 256M SD cards are in industrial grade, suppose to handle more write cycles than consumer grade cards.

If you search for "Industrial grade 256M SD", most product describe as SLC (Single-layer-cell), the are

There are many articles on the web explaining the difference of SLC NAND flash and TLC NAND flash (most Gigabyte size SD cards are)    such as https://www.delkin.com/technology/flash-endurance/    The endurance difference is 100k cycles for SLC vs 500 cycles for TLC, alarming enough?

Although wear levelling mechanism can mitigate the problem, but NAND flash block size increased in most Gigabyte size consumer SD card, changing a value in a 30 bytes config file may cause a 16k page re-written, also causing the SD card wear-out faster.

Even a 16GB SD is deployed, having 64x in capacity of the original SD, more cells avaliable to rotate for wear levelling, it is not enought offset the 100000:500 cell endurance dirrerence, and page/block size difference.

If you are out of warranty and your only option is to restore from an image to new SD card, larger the SD card better as the SD card has more unused blocks for wear levelling rotation.   However, it is not known if Flexradio support SD cards larger than 16GB, or SDXC format   - from a technical aspect, the official answer say this is a BIG NO NO

Nick RN3KK

If you make a dump of the original sd once, you can create a hundred sd and do not think about it. My flex6400 year is working fine. If having does error, replacing sd is not difficult.And no need sending radio to repait it!

John - K3MA

@NG Rocky, if you look at my original question you will see I am looking to cover the gap between the Flex SD card failure and the delivery of a new Flex SD card.  This could be as little as a few days and as much as a week or more depending upon the date of failure and number of holidays or shipping transportation delays.

Your points might be technically correct (I do not really know) but to cover use of the my out of warranty radio during that short time period is not a BIG NO NO.

If you are talking about the substitue SD card as a replacement for the life of the radio then I might agree but that was not the situation you replied under.

BL7IB

R R

Big no no because Flex official won't endorse self replacement of third party SD.   
I hope no one lose warranty.  

N8AUM

I still have my OSHA approved steel toed shoes from way back when I worked/played at the St. Petersburg Times newspaper, now that was a fun job, and they paid me for it ! You do WHATEVER IT TAKES  to get the paper out !  I was hired as an  "electronics technician" and the machinist let me play with their toys/tools and all I can say is I sure learned A LOT milling out cannons and custom tools for myself. Ok, got way off topic but INMO since most of us here are HAMS and when the radio takes a dump and all it needs is a spare SD to get radio going.....

George M.

I think having a backup SD card just for the interim between diagnosed SD card failure and Flex sending a new card for short term usage should not be an issue IMHO.. You will not be keeping the non-hardened card in the radio for more than a week.

I recently had this issue and yes Flex support sends the replacement out ASAP, they do a great job. But what happened to me was USPS ended up miss-shipped the card to Hawaii and I live in New Hampshire. Tim did a great job of sending another one out again via UPS and that one arrived on time. Still waiting on the miss-shipped one a week later.

So down time is very frustrating.

Mike-VA3MW

this discusses all options.

https://youtu.be/3TDRmP8GpbE

Hiram W2UH

Im not a tech but I do have street smarts. I don't see how copying a card will void the warranty - that sounds ridiculous. That representative from Flex that said the needs to explain why that is? The more I read these threads the more I realize there is more to this SD card stuff than meets the eye.

1) What makes the Flex "Commercial Grade" cards better than a SanDisk purchased at Walmart?
2) Why are they only 256MB capacity? Can they be - say - 4GB capacity?
3) Could the problem also be that the 256MB capacity is too small and as you upgrade the software it keeps writing more and more information until it maxes out?
4) What is loaded onto these cards anyway and why can't we just download it and write it on to a card ourselves?

The reason I ask is that Ham operators are not dumb when it comes to technology. Someone somewhere will be so curious and start dissecting these files and soon enough all the hackers will have a field day (no pun intended) with these cards and all the firmware and so on.

Just my thoughts and thanks for reading.

W2UH, Hiram

David Decoons, wo2x

The information on the microSD card is small enough that you don’t need a bigger card. Just that buying cards today you get a 4 GB card for probably the same price the 256 GB cards were when the 6000 series first came out.

Hiram W2UH

Hi Dave - we have QSO'd before. Hope all is well. I too am waiting for the card they sent me. Just that all this card stuff made me curious.

Mike-VA3MW

@Hiram W2UH

I think you will find we answered many of your concerns in this video.

https://youtu.be/3TDRmP8GpbE