Machine startup has not completed.

I broke my Raspberry Pi’s SD holder. I brought my Raspberry PI to a Radio Shack to test a TFT monitor. When I brought the Raspberry PI out of the car, I dropped it, and a piece of the SD holder broke off. I fixed the SD holder with some cardboard and a little bit of gorilla glue, but Risc OS wont boot up properly. I’m getting a error at start up: Machine startup has not completed successfully: ‘The disc drive is empty’. Is there a way I can fix the error? If not, is there a way to backup the data on the SD card, or am I stuck with reformatting the SD card?

Note: The SD card slot reads and boots other operating systems. I’m only getting the error on Risc OS.

Edit: I reformatted a larger SD card (16gb) and it’s still doing it.

Note: The SD card slot reads and boots other operating systems. I’m only getting the error on Risc OS.

This happened to me. I’m not sure why it’s RISC OS specific, but on mine, I had to glue a bit of old credit card over the SD slot, as the card I used first time was a bit too flexible. It seemed as though RISC OS was checking for something that nothing else was – does SDFS check for something mechanical with the SD slot that the Pi initialisation doesn’t worry about?

In my case, the data on the partition was fine. Try holding the card in place with a clamp or suitably insulated bulldog clip – something that applies sufficient pressure – and check again. That’s what worked for me – that and a fair amount of trial and error to work out where the pressure needed to be applied.

In the end, the credit card repair worked fine, and I have read of other people doing that and using a separate sliver of card between, in my case, the Visa bit and the SD card itself to apply pressure exactly where needed.

Me too… and similarly, I was able to boot linux by holding the card in place with a couple of small clamps, but not RISC OS. To fix it, I soldered some ribbon cable between the SD card holder contacts, and a micro-SD card adaptor, and now use a micro-SD card to hold the RISC OS image. At the same time, I soldered closed the switch at the back of the card holder that lets the pi know there’s a card physically present. It looks messy, but it works.

What I did was cut a small piece of cardboard from a cracker box. I folded up a coupon for the SD card to have a snug fit. I can boot in to Debian with out any problems. Could the partition be corrupt from the SD card sliding out while booting up (before I added the coupon)?

http://imageshack.us/a/img713/7715/raspberryrepaired.jpg

At the same time, I soldered closed the switch at the back of the card holder that lets the pi know there’s a card physically present.

I think that was the issue for me, if I’m honest. This may be worth investigating as the cardboard and paper trick might not be holding the card securely enough to keep the wire switch pressed in. Obviously I can’t see what’s happening with mine now, because there’s a big bit of plastic obscuring it! But I do seem to remember this being part of the force I had to exert.

I can boot into other operating systems with out any issues at all. I’ve tried using multiple SD cards including a SD card with a micro-SD slot. Is there anything else I can try besides soldering a micro-SD adapter? I’ve tried holding the SD card in place and it wont boot properly. Whenever I boot my PI it shows the Risc OS logo and then it shows the error message.

Edit: I got it working. The back spring was glued causing it not to boot properly.

Thanks for your replies.

I had the same problem. Glued a piece of a plastic bagclip (Ikea) onto to the SD-card slot. Images see: http://sdrv.ms/1efwT2M.

Please tell it also on www.arcsite.de or http://forum.acorn.de ;-)