Raspberry Pi imager failure modes

Jun 04, 2025 Last reply: 1 year ago 3 Replies

I've been trying to write an image file to a microSD and it seems that nothing happens. Even cancelling the write, nothing happens. The progress bars just keep flying across the window. It's been well over an hour, from a file in Downloads, so it can't be a network delay.



Presumably the microSD card is faulty, but I'd be more confident in that if some explict error message came up. It's especially odd that cancelling the write doesn't seem to do anything.



Anybody know what Imager failures are _supposed_ to look like?



Thanks for reading,



bob prohaska


Moments after hitting "send" Imager reported it couldn't open the device....

Sorry for the noise,

bob prohaska

If you're on Linux or Mac, take a look at dmesg ('sudo dmesg'). You may see errors with the kernel failing to access the SD card. Such errors sometimes aren't exposed to applications very well (eg everything may freeze rather than reporting a sensible error to the application).

FreeBSD likewise, although I don't know if Imager runs on it?

Not sure what Windows does in this scenario... something something Event Viewer?

Theo

This was on RasPiOS Bookworm. I didn't think to check dmesg.....

Thanks for writing!

bob prohaska

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required