1841 Corrupt Flash Card.... beyond repair?

[daytrippin]

Hi,

Any help with the following would be much appreciated....

I have an 1841 router which will not load from the flash card.

device does not contain a valid FS
boot: cannot open "flash:"
boot: cannot determine first executable file name on device "flash:"

The router will only then boot in to ROMMON. I have attempted to reload the IOS to the card, via tftpdnld and xmodem, but I get similar errors stating that there is not enough room on the flash card.

rommon 1 > xmodem c1841-advsecurityk9-mz.123-14.T1.bin
Do not start the sending program yet...
device does not contain a valid FS
dir: cannot open device "flash:"

WARNING: All existing data in flash will be lost!
Invoke this application only for disaster recovery.
Do you wish to continue? y/n [n]: y
Ready to receive file c1841-advsecurityk9-mz.123-14.T1.bin ...
BB0
ERR:Image size exceeds free flash space

Is there anyway that I can re-format the card from the ROMMON prompt or is it beyond repair?

Thank you for any suggestions,
Nick.

 

[burtsbees]

Call Cisco---I have heard about these flash cards on the 1800's going bad too soon...I think they'd probably send you a new one. If the advanced security image is the one you had on it before, then I would say it's a bad flash card.

Burt

 

[Minue]

Hello
Try the the tftpdnld -r option,not to write to flash.Once the image is loaded.Try to work on the flash.
In any case it seem that the 1800 flash get corrupts very easily.
Regards

 

[plshlpme]

we have over 150 1841's all in various parts of the world... mostly africa.. not one bad flash card to date.
all these sites have terrible power and are constantly getting bounced around between the local ac and the generators kicking in.

so i wouldn't say that they are really prone to going early... but you do have to be careful as im not sure what could happen to one if it was ejected while the router was running..

i know a handful of times where the router came up in rommon because whoever was mounting it in the rack hit the little trigger and ejected the flash card.

 

[brianinms]

If you have a compact flash card reader for your laptop you can format it as fat and then copy the image to it. Then you can put it back in the router and configure it to boot the image.

 

[ITGeekMatrix]

I don't think it's appropriate to format the Flash Card on a PC because the binary it writes will not be readable in the 1800 series routers. The same applies when I format a flash card in the 6500 chassis, and put it in C7200-2FE+E, it will not work because it write different binary contents.

You can do a tftpdnld, there's no need for the -r, I never used it. Anyway, ones you have booted up. Issue a
format flash: (Flash is the Flash Card). I used this all the time at work.

then copy the flash on the TFTP Client server to flash:

like:

copy tftp flash:


See what happens, or you may need to call Cisco to order the proper working flash card for your 1800.

Just my 2 cents..

 

[brianinms]

I use a compact flash card reader to copy IOS to 2800,3800,4500, as well as 6500 and have been doing so for the past 2 years. I assumed an 1800 would be the same but I dont have access to one for testing.

 

[daytrippin]

Thank you for all the advice....

I have tried to call Cisco but my router is out of the years warranty and they wouldn't even let me log a call for advise.

I have re-seated the card a few times just to make sure that it hasn't come loose.

The tftpdnld -r option was bang on! Nice one.

This loaded from the IOS without writing to the flash card, which meant that I was then able to attempt to format the card.... unfortunatley I then get a format error - Format failure - First sector write

I'm now pretty sure that the card is corrupt beyond repair but I'm glad I got a bit closer to proving that.

Thanks again, Nick.

 

[brianinms]

You can actually use any Sandisk compact flash card, there is nothing special about it.