Junk files/'directories' appearing

[HEXdidnt]

Recently treated myself to the JagGD and have been enjoying playing some of the games I wasn't able to buy back in the day. I've had a few issues getting things working.

 

The Kingston 32Gb card I bought was initially unreadable, worked briefly after a quick reformat, and has been working 'properly' since I did a full reformat. However, some of the first batch of ROMs I downloaded don't work - some don't load at all while others, like Tempest 2000, show the title screen for a moment before the screen blanks (thankfully I have that on cartridge, so don't need the GD to play it!). Downloading from an alternative source yielded better results in individual cases, so I guess there's a 'your mileage may vary' thing going with some of the ROM archives.

 

Something I've noticed over the last few days, though, is that the card has started developing junk files that read as directories on the GD itself, but as either junk files or inaccessible directories on my computer. Three of the junk files read as about 3Gb each, yet the card itself reports less than 4Gb in use, in total.

 

I can't delete them, so how worried do I need to be about these files? That is to say, where are they coming from, and why are they appearing?

 

[SainT]

Very odd, I’ve never seen that before myself — it may have something to do with the memory card, or just power issues with the Jaguar in general.

 

And if a ROM boots, it should work (the cart checks it’s not damaged / corrupted before boot), so failing during play points more toward the Jaguar being marginal than anything else. You may find a recap and new voltage regulator will help.

[Zerosquare]

Where did you buy the SD card from? If it's eBay or Amazon, the card may be a counterfeit (this happens regularly).

 

You can use software like https://h2testw.org/ to check whether your card is working correctly.

[HEXdidnt]

@SainT A recap and replacement voltage regulator would probably be wise at this point - the Jag was in storage for years before I installed a 50/60Hz switch and got back to using it semi-regularly. On the whole, it's been working perfectly, with just a few issues when I plug in the JagCD (very fussy about how it gets plugged in) and the GD has been fine other than these odd files.

 

@Zerosquare I ended up buying from a local phone shop, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turned out to be counterfeit. Last time I added to it, my PC reported problems with the Micro SD card, and then kept insisting it was still in use when I tried to remove it. Thanks for the heads-up on the test software - I'll give that a go.

[HEXdidnt]

@Zerosquare I ran the MicroSD card through that test software and it checked out OK... For the time being, I've just reformatted the card and put the ROMs and .MRQs back in. I'll continue to monitor it and look into recapping the Jag if the problem reoccurs.

[Clint Thompson]

Looks like a virus to me...

 

but most likely just a garbage SD card.