destroyed micro sd cards installing FPP 8.1

[rickg]

In early October I tried to install FPP 8.1 on a micro SD card (twice) and proceeded to destroy both SD cards.  Not long after that I was hit by two hurricanes (Francine and Milton). I have cleaned up from the hurricanes and now am ready to get back to my micro SD card problem. 
I currently have two P5 displays. The first is 6x7 with a Raspberry Pi 4 running FPP 8.0 with 2 colorlight cards.  The second is 3x2 with a Raspberry Pi 4 running FPP 7.5 with 1 colorlight card.  Both of these have a 32 Gig micro SD card.  I decided I needed larger SD cards so I bought two SanDisk Extreme 128 Gig  micro SD cards from Amazon.  I used Raspberry Pi Image to put FPP 8.1 on one of them.  After a few issues, I initialized FPP and set up my network.  I rebooted and was able access it both via WI-fi and my static Ethernet address.  At that point, I had to stop until the afternoon.  When I got back to it the SD card was destroyed.  By destroyed I mean the Raspberry Pi could not read it.  I tried to reformat it on my Windows laptop but it could not read it either. Normally when I put a micro SD card in the reader a D: drive shows up.  But now nothing.  I do hear the Windows music that says something has been inserted and I get the Windows other music when I remove it, but no D: drive and when I select storage on Raspberry Pi Image it doesn't show any device.  
I tried several different things and couldn't get it to work.  So I took the second micro SD card and started over.  Again, I setup my network and rebooted and everything seemed fine.  So I changed a few more parameters (Player mode remote, UI set to advanced, etc).  I then went to install ArtNet Advanced Features.  Right after I clicked on  install I got an error message saying the install failed.  At this point FPP stopped working and again the SD card was destroyed.
I believe these SD cards are unusable.  Did I do it? Did FPP 8.1 do it? Or were they just bad cards? 
I have several questions.  First, is there anyway to format a micro SD card that doesn't have a network letter assigned.  Second, I noticed that FPP 8.2 has just been released.  The release notes mention that several bugs were fixed that caused FPP to crash.  Is this one of those bugs?
Finally, where should I go from here?  I really don't want to keep buying new SD cards every time I try something and it doesn't work.
Here is my thought.  I have purchased two new micro SD cards.  This time I bought 32 Gig cards on the outside chance that the first two were from a bad batch.  Second, I will use dotNet Disk Imager instead of Raspberry Pi Imager.  I have used Raspberry Pi imager many times but I will try dotNet instead.  Third, I won't use FPP 8.1.  I was going to install FPP 8.0 which I have running on my 6x7 display, but now that I see 8.2 is available, I might use that.
If anyone has any thoughts, I'd greatly appreciate them.

[k6ccc]

This is what I can tell you.  I currently have four FPP instances that all have SanDisk 64GB µSD cards - two on RasPi-4 and two on PocketBeagles.  All four have had FPP 8.0, FPP 8.1, FPP 8.2, and an assortment of Master Branch beta versions installed.  The two RasPis were imaged at 8.0 and the PocketBeagles were most recently imaged at 7.something and all four were updated via FPPOS to 8.1 and again to 8.2.    What I'm saying is that there does not appear to be something native in 8.x that kills µSD cards.

With that said, someone else I was talking to a couple weeks ago had a similar result and they had also used RaspBerry Pi imager.  I am aware that the RaspBerry Pi images does add some extra stuff that is not part of the image file - makes your life easier IF you are going to be using the Pi for normal Pi stuff.  I am wondering if it is adding something that is messing up FPP.  Personally for several years I have always used DotNet Imager for FPP images, and prior to that I used Balena Etcher imager.  And yes, I do use the RaspBerry Pi imager for RasPis that are going to be used for normal Pi stuff - I have four of them sitting on a shelf in my data cabinet.

I would see if DotNet imager can do anything with the existing µSD cards, and if not use if to image a new card.  Sorry, I don't have any other insight on recovering the "damaged" cards.

Good luck.

[jnealand]

I also would recommend trying dotnetdiskimager.  The first thing to do using that software would be to wipe the card.  I've found that to work when windows would not recognize the card.  Good luck.

[JonD]

FPP uses a Linux file system.  Windows devices will typically not read Linux formatted SD cards unless you have a third party utility such as "Linux File System for Windows" installed.  Before using an SD card in Windows, that was formatted with a Linux file system prior, you need reformat the SD card with the below utility.  It may work without doing that, but it is better to use the below utility.

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/

Amazon and others have a well known issue of selling defective counterfeit SD cards.  Might try to buy one from a different source.  Bad USB card readers will cause havoc as well.  Make sure you have tried multilple SD Card Readers.

[rickg]

OK, just to finish this in case anyone else had the same problem.  I am up and running but I'm not positve what the problem was.  I bought two new micro sd cards.  I bought 64gig instead of 128gig in case there was a bad batch of 128gig cards.  I used dotNet imager instead of Raspberry pi imager in case Raspberry pi imager was adding some extra that was causing a problem.  And finally I used FPP 8.2 instead of 8.1
Normally, I would not made all of these changes at the same time, but when it failed it was leaving my micro sd cards unusable.
Anyway, this worked and everything ran for several days.  I then decided to get a different set of 128gig micro sd cards and these are working fine now for a week.  So I am staying with them.
I'm tempted to take the 64gig cards and use the Raspberry pi imager to see if I can make the problem happen again, but that probably won't be until after Christmas.

[JonD]

Glad you are working again!

[k6ccc]

Good news!

[k6ccc]

BTW, if you can't recover the "killed" µSD cards, I would offer for you to mail them to me.  If I can't figure it out, I have linux friends who really are experts, that might be able to recover them.  If recoverable, I'll mail them back.

[JonD]

I would offer for you to mail them to me.

That is a very nice offer.  From my experience if running the above utility from a good working card reader does not resolve, you may not want to trust the card again.  Definitely not a Linux guru though, so your friends may be aware of tricks I am not.  If you get it working I would be curious how it went for you.

[k6ccc]

As I told Rick in a direct message, I am taking it as a challenge.  He is going to send me the failed cards, and I will report on findings.

[jnealand]

As stated earlier in this thread, I have successfully recovered cards that windows would not read or format using just the dotnetdiskimager