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GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition errors, bugs & micro SD cards.
  • Hi, recently i bought a GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition camera with a SanDisk 32GB microSD card, and besides all the problems with the camera (freezing, not enought bus and stoping the camera, color changes in the same room/light in camraw protune filming mode, buttons doingwhattheywantanytime) suddenly it stops working and a "SD ERROR" appear in the screen so i plug it to my Mac to reformat it (the camera doesn't allow me to do that) and my Mac says it has no format and when i tryed to give a new format in only appears a 32MB (not GB) partition wich i tryed to format and doens't allow me in any case (i tryes it infinietly) so what i'm trying to do before i go to the shop where i bought the card and the camera is to completly erase all information as i use the card first to save passwords and sensitive information but as i can not access the card, how can i do this? any manual method to completly erase the card? (like magnetic o electric charges) i don't want to return the card to the store with this info inside it and i just bought it 2 weeks ago... Any ideas? Thanks.

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  • 24 Replies sorted by
  • but there is a gh3 topic for general discussion, and a different one for issues?

  • That's what i was trying to create, a new one for bugs and problems (this camera has so many that should be useful), freezing, red light of death, color shifting in cam raw...

  • @kaikerr I can't speak for the GoPro, but I can say the problem might be the card. I had two SanDisk 32GB microSD cards that failed a disc error test. Perhaps your card is bad, too. Get HDTune and run an error scan.

    http://www.hdtune.com/

  • I agree with Ralph. The 'Sandisk' brand is notorious for being used by Chinese counterfeiters. I have only used 64GB UHS-1 cards in my GoPro3, and have had no troubles.

    Please note that UHS-1 SDXC cards will be damaged if plugged into the SD card adapters in many computers. I have used SDXC adapters from Komputerbay, and an Expresscard adapter from Transcend, without difficulty, however. This is apparently because the older interface hardware does not give clean signals to the lightning fast UHS-1 card interface pins. When I started using UHS-1 cards I blew up two before realizing what was going on...

  • I bought the card that comes with the camera @gopro.com, anyway, i just wanto to recover the card if possible or if not to manually erase, magnetic style or something like this...

  • I'm one of the bad lucky guys.. got a bad camera. It was freezing just before the update, and now its almost dead. Mode button does not work anymore. In order to not f..k the original topic with sad stories I think its a good idea to use this one instead.

    What I've read so far, is that there are many malfunctions cameras that can act strangely, overheat and burn the micro sd card. Not sure if its a card or camera problem, I bought the camera a week ago at B&H with the recommended sandisk 32gb card. The card works normal outside the camera (with the provided adapter).. I contact the GP guys by email and they gave me an generic answer "You need update with the new firmware and blablabla ".. this new firmware is not that new, its the December version.. and to be honest, most of my camera problems came after this update.

  • New firmware was released earlier today. It'd be extremely interesting to see if it fixes the card problem, since it's one of the biggest issues with the previous firmware.

  • Got my GP3 Black yesterday and ordered the 64gb Sandisk UHS-1 micro. Hope that new firmware helps.

  • The new firmware did not solve my GP's problem. I think the last firmware killed the camera :-P

  • Go Pro Hero 3 Black just died on me after only a months usage. Will not start up at all. I hear this is a quite common problem. There are some youtube videos that supposedly offer help to fix the problem but really dont. Anyone here has an idea if there is something that user can do to fix it or is it simply best to return the crappy thing.

  • @Jasketti I had one of my Blacks fail to start after an upgrade. I fiddled with it for a while and it did come back after I did a hard restart. Haven't had any more problems with it. GoPro's have always had issues of one type or the other, The Blacks seem worse than the others but that's a lot of technology stuffed in that little case. I'd call them temperamental but hardly crappy.

    Sony's....are crappy!

  • @peternap Thanks!

    Ok I had it without a battery for a few hours and indeed it seems it came back alive. Before that I also tried the hard reset but it did not do anything for my cam. Well, really nasty temper then :) My point is they are trying to sell these as pro cameras... such failure to start up on random occasion for a tool thats supposed to funtion on a paid gig earns a reputation of little more than that just bad temper on my books :)

  • @Jasketti I can't argue with that Jasketti, but they do fill a pro niche like no others I've found. Their bad temperament is one of the big reasons I have more than one and that is a shame (as well as expensive)

  • My GP3 Black worked fine the first 5 times, after that I only get the NO SD message. Used a Sandisk 32gb class10 card. Tried 2 other cards, no luck. It were existing cards, so possible not the right format. Ordered a brand new Samsung card now, that is my last attempt. Formatting the Sandisk card on my Mac also did not help. I can see the card on my Mac, no problem, but not in the GP3. It looks like the Sandisk card killed my GP3 card reader.... al other functions on the camera still work properly. Any ideas anyone? (btw: I'm from Holland, bought my camera in Austin, TX)

  • I have two GoPro Black, been using them with Protune and Samsung Pro cards with no problems. About half my Sandisk cards won't work at all with the Black. I test each card by powering the Black from a 2.1Amp USB brick, and keep it recording protune until the card fails. The Samsung Pros don't fail, two of my Sandisk Ultra 64GB fail within 20 minutes, and more than half fail within an hour...

    I have seen no camera freezes, or things like that. The cameras are as solid as a rock, but they do need to be kept cool.

  • @trevmar So the Samsung ones are stable? I know the GoProUser forum has a done bunch of testing, and the GoPro Ultra microSD cards are very random in performance from one card to the next. Many can't sustain a write speed high enough for the GoPro 3 Black at higher quality/frame rate settings. Going on vacation next week, so maybe I'll pick up a Samsung card just in case.

  • I returned my 64gb card. At the moment loking at Sandisk Extreme Pro, these cards I read are reliable like how it was for the Driftwood hack on GH2.

  • @griplimited

    I used a Sandisk 64GB for a 4 hour shoot with the 4K @ 15 FPS video format. I had it in the frame and it didn't seem to overheat. However, it stopped recording after about 3 hours.

    I bought a 64 GB Transcend card and let it run for 14 hours continuously the other night with no problems. The Sandisk card is now my backup card. I am not sure that it is defective or not. However, I know that the Transcend card works great.

  • Good to know @mpgxsvcd I'm not recording anything professional, but even for family footage, I lost some underwater turtle chases with the wife which were fairly important.

    I'll check Amazon on the Transcend as it'll save some $$$. Thanks

  • @BBT Yes, the Samsung microSDXC are stable. The problem with the Sandisk UHS-1 is that they have garbage collection / sector allocation which occasionally takes a long time (I have seen 700msec on one test). The Samsung are a lot faster, and all three of my 64GB Samsungs work for 3 hrs continuous with 2.7K Protune in my two GoPro blacks. Three out of my 10 Sandisk seem stable enough to use, but I would only use them once my Samsungs are filled. I test each new card by recording (several times) from USB power for the maximum time the card will allow with 2K7 Protune. But you can use the Windoze program IOmeter to measure the delay between successive writes if you want to do things analytically...

  • I had the same problem!!! GO Pro hero 3 +. Immediately corrupted one and then another card. San Disk micro SD (10) 32 GB. Go Pro says I need to download a firmware update. But I can't because it need a working card. This has been a real drag. I am still not sure if it is the card or the camera. This has gobbled up a lot of time.

  • It's the card. GoPro even stopped stocking Sandisk cards because of their continued compatibility issues, and dropped the recording bitrate in firmware because of it (down to 35mb/s vs 45mb/s for newly qualified cards). The Ultras are very inconsistent in their write speeds.