[lug] Problems cloning SD card from Android

[Jed S. Baer]

On Sat, 5 May 2018 18:19:47 -0600
Matt Bidwell wrote:

> I recently ran in to the same issue. Couldn't copy media files over to 
> the microSD card on my Shield. Reformatted it from the Shield, still no 
> go. Put it in a laptop I still had booted into Windows for TurboTax,
> and realized it was formatted Fat32. After reformatting it from
> Windows, I was able to use it. Kind of a pain Android a) wouldn't
> format fat32, b) why the copy failed, and c) what the card was
> formatted as.

What ended up working for me was using an older laptop, booted to Win7. I
don't know specifically why, but maybe the USB is little slower. Well, I
first deleted all the music files, as those can be reloaded a bit here
and there, and then I copied all the files from the SD card into a tmp
directory, one directory at a time. Then I copied things from there to
the new SD card, again, one directory at a time. My only suspicion here
is that the light IO load is the main thing.

Another odd thing is that since the symptoms were the same with a brand
new card, the old one is likely fine too, so, back on the Linux box, I
used dd to stick a Raspbian image on it. No hangs or problems with that!

It also seems that using gnome-commander to copy files works better. I
mounted the new SD card on my Mint box, using a card reader, to stick
music files on it, and transferred a lot over without issue. I don't know
why using caja would be more prone to having the USB device disconnect,
as behind the scenes, it should still be calling the same file copy
system service, no? I mean, with the card mounted in the reader, not
using mtp through the phone, which seems even more prone to hang.