Hi,

A few months ago I bought a microtik board, and I really like how it works and what it provides. Now The problem I have is that my bad-blocks are always increasing. We bought 2 of them and both have the same problem. In the meanwhile I returned one already and 2 days ago I got a new one and it's running now for about 1d12h but it's already at 0.3% for the bad blocks, should I be worried again? :/

Previously, I had to reset/reinstall it 3 times as the bad blocks went over 5% (and this in a period of 4 months) and it couldn't boot anymore because of corruption, it increased like 0.1% a day if it wasn't sometimes slightly faster.

I mailed the seller, and they also said it wasn't normal. But should I be worried that the new one I got send will have the same problem?
It already was really odd that the 2 we bought got the same problem, and we thought it was a production error in a series of produced routerboards. Though the new one I got, I can see clearly that the print is a little bit different (I mean the letters printerd on the board, the color of it). So it should be an other batch.

Can it be that it's something wrong in the software of the board? Or can it be that the first days it will increase a bit because bad blocks of the production are found?
I don't think that it's meant that the bad blocks increase that fast, even in the beginning?

Edit: Model: RB493G

Can it be that it's something wrong in the software of the board? Or can it be that the first days it will increase a bit because bad blocks of the production are found?
I don't think that it's meant that the bad blocks increase that fast, even in the beginning?

Edit: Model: RB493G

I had the same problem with this board, finally returned it to reseller, got replacement unit but this issue occured again with a new board ... I suspect it is something either terribly wrong with the design of rb493g or there is a bug in the routeros regarding rb493g. either way, the board is totaly unusable since it only lasts a few weeks before it crashes because nand corruption.

p.s.: i have never seen this problem with other routerboards ... just rb493g.

I have similar problems with my Groove 52HPn one month ago. Groove had just 0.1% bad blocks and he worked ok but when I restated him I could not access Groove anymore from network side or from WIFI side. I guess OS in Groove become corrupted in some way. After restart I could see on the switch that network led went on for a few seconds and immediately before Groove become fully booted network led on the switch went off. Only solution was to try netinstall. So I went up to the roof brought Groove down to my office and used netinstal which made Groove working again. Now I noticed that bad blocks increased to 0.2% so now I am afraid to restart the Groove or some power loss as he may not boot again like the first time. My roof is not very user friendly and also weather is the key factor can I go up or not.

There is no extensive flash writes, for a 3 years and before I used netistall Groove had about 342K sector writes and I got 0.1% bad blocks. After netistall and after about 30 days, about new 24K writes Groove have now 0.2% bad blocks. I know this is not something by which I should be worry about, like I said before my problem is as I don't know what will happen if I restart Groove or if I have power loss.

I know that I am not the only one who is having these problems. Using netinstall with keeping reset button pressed on any Mikrotik device which are mounted on the roof is not very good idea. Maybe Mikrotik could find solution for using netinstall without keeping reset button pressed in these situation's. Something like that would help us allot. Should I mention that every time when someone goes to the roof which is not user friendly is risking his life.

Anyway I have some experience with MCU's coding and I know that netinstall can be made to work without reset button pressed, boot loader in Mikrotik needs to be modificated. Maybe just before loading the OS Mikrotik could check specific IP and if he detects netinstall running on that IP he could stop loading the OS and enter into netinstall mode.
Question is does Mikrotik wants to do that?

Any comment by Mikrotik guys will be very much appreciated.
Thanks!

Hi ,

I never replied anymore, but I had the problem solved by just removing the SD card I had put onto the board.
There is a list of SD cards which are working on those routerboards.
Although a friend of mine with the same board used an SD card which wasn't in that list.

TL;DR removing the SD car solved the increasing bad blocks:

The total Sector writes are almost since the start of this thread, so almost 5 years now

Check this to repair the bad blocks...
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=124561&p=646047&p613205#p613205