Accessing SDHC Cards with 8 GB

["Richard Rauch" <rrauch at itrgmbh dot de>]

Dear  All,

has anybody tried already to read from SDHC Cards >= 8GByte?
We ported SDCard driver to our hardware, which is working well with a bunch of SDCards.
But with SDCards >= 8 GByte we have problems.

We found , that the eCos FileSystem/Partition Manager is not able to interpret the MBR.
After analyzing we found strange content of MBR, which we cannot explain.
Even if SDCard is formatted with GUUID/GPT format, in MBR/LBA0 there should be a valid partition entry at offset 0x1BE, which protects the SDCard content with a "protective" MBR partition entry with code 0xEE.

But HexDump of our SDCard shows only text, where the partition table should be. We verified with formatting the card on different systems (Windows 7 64 Bit, Windows XP 32 Bit), but result is the same.
So the MBR in our opinion actually looks invalid, but the SDCard is readable on every PC bases system.
We still have not found the key hint in web, how to interpret such an MBR. Maybe somebody has already an idea.

By the way... we found also, that some "8GB Cards" have a few sectors less than 8GB and this cards are formatted in well known manner.

Content of MBR (partition table at 0x1BE has text content only):

000 - EB 58 90 4D 53 44 4F 53 35 2E 30 00 02 08 22 00 |?X.MSDOS 5.0..... 
010 - 02 00 00 00 00 F8 00 00 3F 00 FF 00 00 00 00 00 |.....?.. ..?..... 
020 - 00 E0 EC 00 1B 3B 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 |.??..... ........ 
030 - 01 00 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |........ ........ 
040 - 00 00 29 91 D3 18 B0 4E 4F 20 4E 41 4D 45 20 20 |....?..N O.NAME.. 
050 - 20 20 46 41 54 33 32 20 20 20 33 C9 8E D1 BC F4 |..FAT32. ..3??.? 
060 - 7B 8E C1 8E D9 BD 00 7C 88 4E 02 8A 56 40 B4 08 |.?N?... .N.?V... 
070 - CD 13 73 05 B9 FF FF 8A F1 66 0F B6 C6 40 66 0F |?.s.??? ?f..?.f. 
080 - B6 D1 80 E2 3F F7 E2 86 CD C0 ED 06 41 66 0F B7 |.?.?..?. ???.Af.. 
090 - C9 66 F7 E1 66 89 46 F8 83 7E 16 00 75 38 83 7E |?f.?f.F? ?...u8?. 
0A0 - 2A 00 77 32 66 8B 46 1C 66 83 C0 0C BB 00 80 B9 |..w2f.F. f??....? 
0B0 - 01 00 E8 2B 00 E9 48 03 A0 FA 7D B4 7D 8B F0 AC |..?..?H. .?....?. 
0C0 - 84 C0 74 17 3C FF 74 09 B4 0E BB 07 00 CD 10 EB |.?t..?t. .....?.? 
0D0 - EE A0 FB 7D EB E5 A0 F9 7D EB E0 98 CD 16 CD 19 |?.?.??.? .??.?.?. 
0E0 - 66 60 66 3B 46 F8 0F 82 4A 00 66 6A 00 66 50 06 |f.f.F?.. J.fj.fP. 
0F0 - 53 66 68 10 00 01 00 80 7E 02 00 0F 85 20 00 B4 |Sfh..... ........ 
100 - 41 BB AA 55 8A 56 40 CD 13 0F 82 1C 00 81 FB 55 |A.?U?V.? ......?U 
110 - AA 0F 85 14 00 F6 C1 01 0F 84 0D 00 FE 46 02 B4 |?....??. ....?F.. 
120 - 42 8A 56 40 8B F4 CD 13 B0 F9 66 58 66 58 66 58 |B?V..??. .?fXfXfX 
130 - 66 58 EB 2A 66 33 D2 66 0F B7 4E 18 66 F7 F1 FE |fX?.f3?f ..N.f.?? 
140 - C2 8A CA 66 8B D0 66 C1 EA 10 F7 76 1A 86 D6 8A |??f.?f? ?..v..? 
150 - 56 40 8A E8 C0 E4 06 0A CC B8 01 02 CD 13 66 61 |V.????.. ?...?.fa 
160 - 0F 82 54 FF 81 C3 00 02 66 40 49 0F 85 71 FF C3 |..T?.?.. f.I..q?? 
170 - 4E 54 4C 44 52 20 20 20 20 20 20 00 00 00 00 00 |NTLDR... ........ 
180 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |........ ........ 
190 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |........ ........ 
1A0 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0D 0A 52 65 |........ ......Re 
1B0 - 6D 6F 76 65 20 64 69 73 6B 73 20 6F 72 20 6F 74 |move.dis ks.or.ot 
1C0 - 68 65 72 20 6D 65 64 69 61 2E FF 0D 0A 44 69 73 |her.medi a.?..Dis 
1D0 - 6B 20 65 72 72 6F 72 FF 0D 0A 50 72 65 73 73 20 |k.error? ..Press. 
1E0 - 61 6E 79 20 6B 65 79 20 74 6F 20 72 65 73 74 61 |any.key. to.resta 
1F0 - 72 74 0D 0A 00 00 00 00 00 AC CB D8 00 00 55 AA |rt...... ..??..U?

Thanks

Richard


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