Can a Fault with an SD Card cause a crash?

Questions & Answers
1

I have a Sandisk Extreme 128Gb V30 U3 A2 card, been using it for a couple of months with my Mini 2, the only thing that has changed is the Mini 2 as Argos replaced it as one of the rear legs had excessive play (or so I felt anyway :grinning:)

Flown the new Mini for 3 batteries with no problems, then yesterday at the first location was a compass error, recalibrated but flew with caution, just straight up a few pictures and down.

Then moved to a new location over a lake! first battery flight fine, then the second flight hovered and checked the controls then moved into the centre of the lake
At this point, I got a warning “SD card speed low. Format SD card (Code: 10034)”
and then weak signal aircraft not connected!
At this point, I had no control and it just hung there! with me in a panic mode :grimacing:
Oh shit!!
Luckily Return to home then kicked in and as it gained height I got control back and landed
I tried another flight later and no problems and today I have flown 3 batteries but with another SD card with no issues

Can an SD card cause a lock-up, a problem with the flight controller?

The only thing I didn’t do when I changed the Mini 2 is format the card
Any advice on what has caused this much appreciated

2

Is this the same SD card you used in the previous Mini 2?

And you had zero problems with it in that one? :thinking:

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3

I know, I know the Drone gods are saying you shouldn’t have replaced me!

But the question is can an SD card cause this problem, It flew great today no problems with a different card

This is a quote from the DJI forum “Try a different SD card. Flying with a bad SD card in the air unit is dangerous and can lead to a lock-up”

Why did I lose connection with no obstacles in the way?

4

It comes down to how well the software is written and what happens when there’s delays in parts of the code. If the writing to the SD card overran and the software was praised on this thread because of it, it’s possible that other elements were waiting on the card writing to finish.
With that said, normally that scenario, being quite an obvious possibility with differing speeds of cards on the market would have been planned for so shouldn’t effect it, but if that planning was to detect card speed on initialisation and then not have fail safes should a fault generate mid flight…

Ultimately it’s possible, but I would have thought their software would have been tested for that type of error.

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5

Thank you @SparkyFPV for a useful and informative post albeit a warning of something that might well “go wrong”.

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6

That’s ok, we can all learn from each other.