SD card problems

[Fareastdriver]

I bought an 8 Gb SD card a couple of days ago. This is in China knocking her down from 280 to 150 yuan. Got home and my camera, a Canon 640 came up with 'memory card failure.' I then tried it in my computor using a Typhoon 8 in 1 card reader. This time it came up with 'I/O failure.' Nothing wrong with the camera or reader as a 1Gb SD card works fine.

Somewhat peeved I took it back to the shop and they tried it in one of theirs. Up it came, no problems. However, they changed it for another one and I tried it at home again. Same result in the camera, same in the computer.

Some time ago I tried to upgrade my RAM on my laptop to its stated 2 Gbs using two 1 Gb memory cards. It refused to boot with both in though it was fine with either of them plus one of the old 250 Mg cards. This made me believe that the laptop's motherboard couldn't handle the memory.

Just for the hell of it I bought a simple SD/USB adaptor for 15 yuan and tried that. BINGO, up it came and it works fine. Still won't work in the camera though.

Would anybody know why it wont work in my cardreader but does in a dirt cheap adapter.

[stickyb]

I suspect the answer lies in the formatting of the card. There are various file systems around, starting from FAT which goes back to DOS days, through more FAT in various guises to NTFS.

SOmething like Windows 2K or XP supports them all, but someolder cameras do not support NTFS or new FAT32 implementations, which are neded for large capacity/large files/long filenames

Your PC will tell you which version the card is currently in if you do right click on the drive icon and select properties.

Check you camera manual to see which filesystem it uses. You may have a fighting chance if you let the camera format the new card.

[timmyneedham]

Card might be SDHC and your camera may not be SDHC compatible.

[Nightrider]

Check the manual, does the camera accept 8GB cards or only smaller ones?

[Fareastdriver]

I bought the camera here in China so the manual is in Chinese though there is a choice of 25 languages built into the camera. The camera reformated the card immediately though I only got 4Gbs available which is better than a kick in the pants. The only problem now is that it has been renamed CANON_DC(H:) and I have only 4 Gbs available when I put it into my computer. I have tried reformating it but it is still locked at 4 Gbs. Any ideas of how to get the other 4 Gbs back.

[MacBoero]

The maximum capacity for the Canon A640 for SDHC cards is 4GB, as you have probably deduced by now.

[Fareastdriver]

I'll just get another card for the computer. My hard drive is in NTFS so that is why I originally had 8Gbs available. The camera refomatted it in FAT32 and as the computer hard drives accepts both I cannot tell it to reformat it in NTFS. Another 15 quid, what the hell.

[Bushfiva]

Canon A640 for SDHC cards is 4GB

Can you quote a source for that info? Kingston offers 8GB C6 and 16GB C4 cards for that camera.

[MacBoero]

The Steves-digicams Review (http://www.steves-digicams.com/2006_reviews/a640_pg2.html) mentions it, although looking at it again, it may have been because in 2006 when the review was written, there was nothing higher than 4GB to test against.