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So I got a Raspberry Pi B+ and it worked very well. Some day something happened and the microSD was broken. I checked it using badblocks. Now I got a new microSD and wanted to rearrange my structure but the pi won't boot at all. Everytime I connect it with the power supply the green LED just blinks 2 times and thats it, constant red and no signal. I tested this with all cables besides the power supply disconnected and even switched the power supply several times. I really don't know what to do.

Is my pi broken?

NaCl
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  • 2 blinks is actually good; none would mean it can't read the card at all, and more than two would mean there's something wrong with firmware, etc. on the card. I have been confused this way before after thinking I fried it -- I presume you've tried this with a monitor plugged in? Is there no output at all? Make sure you have hdmi_force_hotplug=1 in config.txt. – goldilocks Dec 31 '14 at 14:29
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    No input at all, not even a LAN-cable nor HDMI nor VGA. I wrote a new downloaded Raspbian image to the file and even tried older versions that worked before with the same microSD type. I wish it would blink more, as those patterns are well documented but I cannot find any documentation for 2 blinks, so I don't know whats wrong. :( – NaCl Dec 31 '14 at 14:38
  • 2 blinks is what it does normally, and it will not blink at all if you remove the SD card. But I have not found documentation for exactly what it means either. Did you drop it? – goldilocks Dec 31 '14 at 14:47
  • No, there was no drop or anything like that. It was lying in a box for about 2 weeks working and then magically it stopped and here we are. – NaCl Dec 31 '14 at 14:49
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    What about the LAN lights? If those go up, it's established a low level ethernet connection, meaning the kernel is running (this does not mean it's actually connected to an IP network tho). – goldilocks Dec 31 '14 at 14:51
  • Its just ACT flashing 2 times on connection and the PWR without any flickering. – NaCl Dec 31 '14 at 14:53
  • You have my sympathy ;| – goldilocks Dec 31 '14 at 14:55
  • So we can assume that it's broken? "._. Then the reason must be the power supply. – NaCl Dec 31 '14 at 14:59
  • Might be possible. Some percentage of them must break at some point, nothing is perfect. – goldilocks Dec 31 '14 at 15:21
  • any USB devices attached? if so power off unplug and try again. – rob Dec 31 '14 at 21:29
  • have you tried to re-image your new microsd? – geoffmcc Jan 01 '15 at 03:21
  • @rob: No, just the power supply. – NaCl Jan 01 '15 at 15:13
  • @geoffmcc: Sure I tried, I even used older images just to see if it works with them. – NaCl Jan 01 '15 at 15:14
  • @Nacl, are you using Raspbian, noobs or another distro. How are you writing the image, are you in Windows or Linux when you do it? – geoffmcc Jan 01 '15 at 15:24
  • @geoffmcc: I'm using Raspbian and I write the image using dd if=[raspbian name].img of=/dev/mmcblk0 count=1M – NaCl Jan 01 '15 at 15:52
  • Try this: but I'm not sure if order maters. This is how I do it - dd bs=4M if=raspbianname.img of=/dev/mmcblk0. The only other thing I can think of is if this don't work try noobs (assuming you downloaded rsspbian image again to be sure was full download) – geoffmcc Jan 01 '15 at 16:05
  • Also the dd command I provided came from http://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/linux.md – geoffmcc Jan 01 '15 at 16:07

1 Answers1

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Just to put in answer form. Per official raspberry pi site, the dd command should be 

 dd bs=4M if=2014-09-09-wheezy-raspbian.img of=/dev/mmcblk0

Edit: obviously changing image name to that of your image.

geoffmcc
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  • so bs=4M is needed... – NaCl Jan 01 '15 at 17:05
  • But you got it working though right? – geoffmcc Jan 01 '15 at 17:07
  • yes it works now. Adding bs=4M fixed it – NaCl Jan 01 '15 at 17:07
  • Okay cool. I read your comment wrong at first and thought you said bs=4 wasnt needed. Glad your up and running..... If you have a USB drive to spare, I would move file system to USB so it will perform better and not burn out your SD card. If interested check out http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=44177 but powered drives work better than thumb drives. Plus you can over clock to turbo and not worry about slow SD read/write speeds giving you issues – geoffmcc Jan 01 '15 at 17:12