Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Raspberry Pi B Crashing when Running on SD Card

I have been having surtax crashes with my Raspberry Pi B for a few months now and it is a very irritating intermittent issue.  The unit basically locks up and even on resetting the power it won't always turn back on, but rather just sit there with no lights and no display and I end of having to cycle the power 2-5 times to get it to start again.

Anyway, I finally figured out there it appears to be an issues with the SD card.  At first I thought that it was just an off brand card and the Raspberry Pi just didn't like it.  But after some testing and hands on trials I figured out that it appeared to be an actual problem with the electrical connection and even though the card seamed seated properly to poor connection would cause the card to be or become unreadable.  This was easy to verify by lightly pressing on the SD card and then turning on the Raspberry PI.  It turned right on and worked perfectly and as soon as I let go it died again.  I can't see any physical defects and the card looks to be seated and pressing firmly into the contacts but I guess it's not sufficient.




I found a simple solution, a simple light pressure chip clip/close pin on the SD-card solved the problem perfectly.  I added a bit of cloth above the SD card and ensured that the clasp was pressing just above the SD Card's contact points and placed it over the end of the Raspberry PI and it works like a charm.

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