Error flashing image using balenaEtcher on Windows 10

balenaEtcher
1

Hello balena community,

I’m trying to flash a custom Raspbian Buster image using Etcher on Windows 10 but I’m running into errors. The image has been compressed in .gz format (which means I can directly use the compressed file with Etcher). I have had no issues flashing the image on Ubuntu 18.04 and macOS using Etcher so I’m a bit confused at this point. This is the error I get mid-way through the flashing process:

"Something went wrong. If it is a compressed image, please check that the archive is not corrupted."

Here’s the error log:

error-log
error-log1581×1193 175 KB

Is there any solution or workaround for this issue?

Best regards,
Abhishek

2

Hi Abhishek,
Can you clarify the version of balenaEtcher that you are using?

4

Hi @thgreasi,

The above error log is from version 1.5.69. Today morning I tested with version 1.5.70 but still faced the same issue.

7

Hi @thgreasi,

Just following up. Did you get a chance to look into this issue?

Regards,
Abhishek

8

Hey @abhishek sorry for the delay, but unfortunately we haven’t been able to make progress on this yet. We asked the maintainer of balenaEtcher to look into this as soon as they have time, we will keep you updated in this thread.

12

@nazrhom - Thanks for the update.

14

Hi one thing that might be worth testing to narrow down the area of code affected, would be to test if other .gz OS images fail to flash. Similarly if you could test a .zip version that would be of interest.

15

It would also be super useful if we can verify the integrity of the .gz by running a test using 7-zip as detailed here: https://superuser.com/questions/193290/testing-archive-with-7-zip

20

I’m getting the exact same error message on Windows 10 trying to flash SD card. Have tried multiple times with same message occurring.

21

@RDown1 what version of Etcher are you using? Could you try downloading the latest v1.5.111

Also, have you tried running it as administrator?

22

Hi - I have the same issue using an old version and the new 1.5.111- I surface scanned my SD card to make sure the SD cards are ok and they are all working. I then did an SHA256 on the file I downloaded and got the correct sha (so no download errors), I tried this compressed file and it failed. Then I uncompressed the file to an .img image and it failed, same message every time - Something went wrong, if it is a compressed image check archive is not corrupted. The writer process ended unexpectedly.

23

Hi @marcus, welcome to the balena forums!

First of all, are you running Etcher as administrator?

Next, can you please provide more information on your setup?
We usually ask for the following as they help us troubleshoot the issue:

  • Etcher version:
  • Operating system and architecture:
  • Image flashed:
  • Do you see any meaningful error information in the DevTools?

(You can open DevTools by pressing Ctrl+Shift+I (Ctrl+Alt+I for Etcher before v1.3.x), or Cmd+Opt+I if you’re on macOS.)

It’d be good to know if you see the same errors in the DevTools on the different Etcher versions you mentioned.

I see couple of open issues with similar error on Etcher’s repository. Collecting more information helps us to see if there is a common pattern here.