Sandisk Ultra II 4GB card trouble

[Lee4145]

I've now bought two of these cards. Bought one, had trouble, took it back and exchanged it.

Everything works fine while shooting. Chimping, zooming, all the file info, everything works as expected.
Take the card out and insert it for download to my computer and there is nothing there. Corrupt files.
Put it back in the camera and now the camera can't read them either.

Anyone familiar with this?

[S_Egbert]

It almost sounds like the card reader is trashing the files or the file registry (probably not the right term).
Are you using a built in reader or an external? I would sure give a different reader a try.
Just my very uneducated thoughts.

[Lee4145]

I never thought of that. Thank you Steve. I actually have both so I'll see if it's more an issue with one than the other.

[mcbit]

I actually had this happen to me twice last night with an Ultra II 4GB and an Extreme III 4GB out of two seperate cameras. I thought I had a card problem when the first one did it. Recovery software couldn't read it so I checked in the camera again and the first file was corrupt so I deleted it in camera. After that I was able to read the card in Explorer but not in LR so I was safe anyway. 1hr later when downloading the card from the other camera the same thing happened. "Your card is not formatted, do you want to format it now?"

I thought that this was too much of a coincedence so swapped to another reader and 'No problem'

I just hope that your's is the same.

[felix.reichardt]

Same problem here. A simple chkdsk helped to repair the somehow messed up FAT.

[Rockbottom]

Same problem for me, solution was a new card reader.

[Lee4145]

Originally Posted by mcbit

I actually had this happen to me twice last night with an Ultra II 4GB and an Extreme III 4GB out of two seperate cameras. I thought I had a card problem when the first one did it. Recovery software couldn't read it so I checked in the camera again and the first file was corrupt so I deleted it in camera. After that I was able to read the card in Explorer but not in LR so I was safe anyway. 1hr later when downloading the card from the other camera the same thing happened. "Your card is not formatted, do you want to format it now?"

I thought that this was too much of a coincedence so swapped to another reader and 'No problem'

I just hope that your's is the same.

Unfortunately when this card won't read, it won't read anywhere. I have three different readers.

Originally Posted by felix.reichardt

Same problem here. A simple chkdsk helped to repair the somehow messed up FAT.

Hmmm, I'll try that. Thanks Felix.

Originally Posted by Rockbottom

Same problem for me, solution was a new card reader.

Interesting. I'm assuming it's not the card because the same thing has happened with two cards now. Thanks.

[ront]

Lee4145, please correct me if I am wrong here, but I think that you are shooting with the Sony A700, is that correct?
I had a Sony A100 and 2 of the Sandisk Ultra II 4GB cards and never had any issues at all. I sold the A100 and purchased the A700 and all of a sudden, both of those cards became very unreliable. I switched to the Sandisk Extreme III 4GB cards and have not had any issues at all.

Ron

[Lee4145]

Yes I am! That's nice to hear because I'm about to give up.
I can use that card in any other camera and it works fine. I format it in my old 7d (or anywhere else) and it works fine. But when I put it in the 700 it's sketchy as hell.

So you never found out what was wrong? It's obviously something the camera is doing when writing or formatting or something, right?

Anyway, thanks for the info, Ron.

[00silvergt]

Lee are you formatting these cards in Camera? Some cameras uses a different file allocation table or format that when Windows "see's" the card and tries to correct it, it will render that FAT useless. Problem is that if you format them in Windows, then some cameras won't recognize the card. I suggest reading the card ( don't use a card reader at all) from the camera and see if that works.

[Lee4145]

Yep. Formatting in camera and then just card reading them via USB. Never thought about hooking the camera to the computer because I've never had to before.
Thank you.

[ront]

I am not so technically minded that I actually figured out what was was wrong, I just know that I changed CF cards and the issues went away. I had all kinds of issues from pictures that did not show up at all to ones that only 1/4 of the picture would show up and the rest of the picture was gray to no pictures on the card when I knew there was.

Ron