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[obergix]

I've experienced problems booting off the external SD (8Gb SDHC 10) for some time. But the card looked sane when inserted in a reader on my laptop.

Unfortunately, I discovered that even booting from the internal card wouldn't work either. It appears that the internal uSD got corrupted : I removed it (by opening the case) and, upon just inserted in the laptop card reader, I'll get many failure messages in syslog.

I then removed it for good from the internal slot, and guess what: the external card boots very well now :-)

Can a damaged card in the uSD slot possibly cause problems on the external slot's card operation, given both are on the sides of the same internal card ?

Hope this helps, in case others have a failing internal card or boot issues on external card.

[Confusticated]

Can a damaged card in the uSD slot possibly cause problems on the external slot's card operation, given both are on the sides of the same internal card ?

Any connected corrupted\damaged block device detected as a HDD (eg a USB Flash Drive) will cause time-outs and delays.
if a USB device and the issue is severe, it can cause Linux to reset the USB bus.
If there are any read\write mounted file systems accessed via the USB Bus (such as in the Dreamplug) it will almost certainly cause loss\corruption (of the root file system).
I consider this to be a design fault of the Dreamplug, they should have used some interface other than USB (such as SPI) for the SDHC cards.

Connecting a flakey USB webcam\printer device etc. can trash your filesystem, which is why we all make backups first! Don't we