Shares drive on Windows unreliable and random

[stigzler]

Hi all,

The wonderful precious + random world of Linux strikes again...

I have a 128 GB SD card and Raspberry Pi installer. Installing 7.1.1-Reloaded onto a Pi 3b+.

So, I do the following for the first half of today, which had no problem in my being able to access a Shares drive when plug the sd card into a card reader on windows:

1. Open Disk management. Delete all volumes on SD card
2. Install recalbox via Pi Manager
3. Insert SD card into pi - start and wait (takes a while)
4. Switch off. Remove card. Put into PC card reader

I must have done this 6 times this morning (I'm troubleshooting another bug I've found, which I won't cover here - but requires a fresh install to isolate the problem)

However, about 2 hours ago, it just randomly stopped working! I do exactly the same steps, but the drive that used to be the "share" drive, now just shows as blank and if I try to open it, I get the error: "you need to format the disk" To repeat: exactly the same!!!!

Whilst I do love what Pi + linux can do, man, it's brittle and fickle..... (I'll await the rtfm boys baulking back...)

Any ideas? How frustrating

[Zing]

@stigzler I am a Windows user, but I have enough knowledge to tell you that Linux is more stable, and, sorry, but your claim that the problem is that Recalbox is based on Linux, does not proceed.

This type of error has already happened to me (not in Recalbox, not with anything based on Linux, but only on Windows), in the times when it happened to me, the problem was either the defective SD card adapter (needed to force more than normal for the card to be recognized correctly, until one day it didn't work anymore), or, the problem was in the SD card itself (so much formatting, it corrupted, I needed to recover with windows).

If you are going to be deleting partitions many times, I recommend that you use a suitable program, Windows can give you a headache (or you can use Linux gparted, but I have the impression that you don't like Linux ).

The Raspberry Pi Imager already formats before installing Recalbox, doesn't it?

[stigzler]

Ah well - I won't get into the age old debate of windows vs linux. It's not my hardware. I accept it could be shonky interfaces between linux and windows. I did find a solution which is to open disk manager and manually assign a drive letter to the Share partition.

[Zing]

@stigzler

open disk manager and manually assign a drive letter to the Share partition.
It's not my hardware

Sorry, I think I got it wrong, if it was just assigning a letter on the SHARE partition it is not really a hardware problem, but it is a Windows bug (and it happens even with NTFS partitions).
I don't want to sound like a Linux fanatic - I'm a Windows 10 user.