CF card problems

[digijim]

I have 2 cards, both Lexar; a 256mb and a 512mb.

The other day, I had erased a bunch of pics from the 256 card, and began setting up lighting which will be my standard for head shots in studio. I had shot 4 images and got a "card full" message. I thought that's weird, so I pulled the card and stuck it in my card reader attached to my Mac, and it showed no images at all. I tried the 51 and it did. So, I stuck the 256 back into the camera and go a "no image" message. So I thought fine... I'll just reformat, and I did. Then I took one shot, put it into the reader and it was fine. I continued and shot about 10 or 15 images, and this morning I pulled the card, stu\ck it into the reader and got nothing again, back into the camera and got "no image" message again.
I know I can go have a camera shop retreive the images, but what the hell is going to happen when I shoot an important event that I can't easily reconstruct? How can I trust my cards? Are any of you having the same problem? Is it a software issue? Card? Camera? Reader?

[mikeg]

I've had the same problem. Are you formatting th CF card with your PC or with the camera ? I formatted it on my pc in FAT16 and had problems with my D30. What I did is to format the CF with the camera and everything was fine ...

Hope this helps,


MikeG

[Pat Lepore]

I format my cards in the camera whenever they get reinserted into the camera after a download (onlt takes a few seconds). I never delete images on a PC and reinsert the card into the camera and I will only delete images from the card using the camera itself.

I have followed these basic rules since I purchased my camera and have never had any problems.

Pat.

[dblunt]

Vaguely related to this... I bought a SimpleTech 256MB Type I card for my D60 today and neither it nor a Kodak DC4800 will format it. (I don't have a CF reader for my PC)

The error on the D60 is '02'. Has anyone had a similar problem? dpreview.com suggests that the SimpleTech cards (albeit type II - which is only different in form factor) should work fine.

Thoughts? Return a dud?

[dblunt]

Just to close out my last message - it was a dud. I got a replacement from Amazon and it seems to work fine.

[spark]

I just found something about using PC to re-format the CF card. Both times (Micro-drive and a 256MB Cf) my CF card got destroyed by re-formatting.

Wondering if there is anything to do with the PC voltage..

[Dans_D60]

spark wrote:
I just found something about using PC to re-format the CF card. Both times (Micro-drive and a 256MB Cf) my CF card got destroyed by re-formatting.

Wondering if there is anything to do with the PC voltage..

Your CF card is not destroyed … at least I don’t think so …just not usable in the camera. Firstly, it would be pretty rare that a voltage problem would mess up a disk format. Voltage is just the “pressure” that moves electrons along. So more likely the problem is Operating System and options during the format. Windows Operating Systems format the clusters (byte grouping of data) in different ways depending on the detected volume size. Do not allow Windows 98/ME/2K/XP to format using FAT 32 or NTFS. For sure this will not work on your camera. I know Windows XP using FAT 16 (or FAT 12) will select a cluster size from 2KB to 64KB. I don’t know if the Embedded Operating System in the D60 can is compatible for all sizes. Anyway no matter what, the CF card data can be rescued and data recovered with software from several sources. PhotoRescue is a good choice: http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/ Also you may want to try and write something to the CF card while in the PC just to see if the card is actually functional. My thoughts. … Dan
http://www.pettusphoto.com