Check or scan disc tool for Crio flash memory

[GWAyo]

Is there a check disc or scan disc tool to check for lost data clusters in the compact flash memory of the Crio?

[LVbum42]

Hello,

No set toolkit comes to mind immediately, however I will do some searching.  What cRIO are you using?  Also what data clusters would you be scanning for and why?

[GWAyo]

We have several 9014 CRios that record data on to the internal flash memory.  On a few of them we have found a half to a third of the data files were no longer present.  Our suspicion is that something occured to corrupt the file structure potentially resulting in lost data clusters or something similar.  My hope was to have a utility to scan for these lost clusters.

[LVbum42]

Unfortunately I don't believe we have such utility.  Were there specific files that you attempted to ftp through windows explorer and found missing?  Does the disk space reflect these missing files?

[GWAyo]

I was preparing myself to go find one of these controllers by asking about the tool.  Unfortunately, the units are mobile so I need to ask for an example to be found to gather more details.  The only information I received was one controller did not have as much data as the controller next to it and both should have had the same amount.

[LVbum42]

When you receive one of the cRIOs I would look at its disk by typing ftp://[RIO IP Address] and anaylyze the file hierarchy to make sure there isn't the possibility of unnecessary files on one of the cRIOs.  Also if you would like for each RIO to be identical you may try formating one and deploying the real-time application and files needed to stand alone in the field.  If you haven't looked into this already you may consider using RAD to create an image of one of your real-time targets and pushing it to other targets after reformatting them so that they identical.

[nathand]

How frequently are you writing to the flash memory, and how much data per write? Are you always writing to the same file? Flash memory has a limited number of write cycles, so your code should take some care not to write to the flash excessively and to combine small writes to a single file into one larger write. Also, rotating the file to which you write the data can help spread wear across the entire flash drive, versus rewriting the same file repeatedly.

[GWAyo]

The data is stored in multiple files and the ones reported missing are the older files as opposed to the most recent.  I have requested more information from our field personnel to get more detail.  The feedback I received thus far is to copy the data files from the Crio and compare the file size against the file size on the Crio to determine if lost data files are present on the Crio.