Compact Flash card problems

[Cornish Jack]

Hi all!
Home brew Athlon 1100, 512 Mbs RAM, 80 Gb HD + 20 GB secondary, W98SE.
Have used a 64 Mb CF card, amongst others in Digi camera (Minolta Dimage 7) for some time and downloaded shots to two different laptops - no problems. Latest series of shots similarly d/l'd to laptop but decided to d/l direct to desktop via RCA Lyra parallel port card reader. Appeared to be OK but on looking at the photo's, one was split at about the 2/3 point. Tried to repeat the download of that particular shot but 'pooter' froze. Rebooted and found that the CF card showed 'garbage'. Not able to delete the garbled files nor to re-format the card. Put the card back in the camera and it gave a 'card error' message on all positions. .... Now for the really nasty bit .... Took the bad card out and put in a known 'good' card - and that gave a 'card error' message as well!!
Does anyone know WTH is happening here, please.?

[innuendo]

A wild uneducated guess. Could you have formatted the first card using the computer?
There are a few posts in www.DPReview.net that say that formatting the card in the computer rather than the camera has caused problems. Something about FAT32 formatting rather than FAT, from the computer being the problem.
There have been suggestions that formatting the card in the camera can correct the problem. You could try a search in DPReview or ask your question in the Minolta Forum . There are a lot of very knowlegable people there. Good luck.

[Cornish Jack]

Innuendo
Neither wild nor uneducated - spot on! :o
The second card was sorted OK on advice from Minolta tech support but the original is still unusable in the camera although it shows the full 64 Mb available. Many thanks for the url - will see if there is any way of PROPERLY re-formatting it. :(

[innuendo]

You might try asking for advice in here:
http://www.dpreview.net/forums/forum.asp?forum=1023

That is the Storage and Media forum in DPReview. There are some true boffins that sometimes contribute there who might have an answer.

[A-V-8R]

It is not well known, but CF, SD cards need to be scandisked and defragged just like hard drives....

Search any of the pocket pc forums and you will be able download a small utility that will do it for you.....

After scandisking the card, check for a fragmented file and maybe you can repair it....

[gas path]

CJ

If the photos are valuable to you try Photo recovery (http://www.flash-card-recovery.co.uk/index.htm). It can be expensive though!

[innuendo]

I have not really looked into this site but it was mentioned in a thread in DPReview where someone had lost valuable images.
http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/

Here's another one.
http://home.arcor.de/christian_grau/dir/index.html

The poster was full of praise for the program.

[Cornish Jack]

innuendo, gas path and A-V-8R
Many thanks for those tips. I have managed to get both cards working again as 'film' cards by formating them in my Dimage 1500EX. The 1500 was able to do this even though the Dimage 7 couldn't. :confused:
It sounds as though the defrag/scandisk route would be useful so will go searching.
The dpreview.net forums are absolutely HUGE - most interesting.

[Cornish Jack]

Just an update, chaps and chapesses - for anyone else with similar problems. Windows XP has the ability to format CF cards if they can be connected as a recognised drive - say e.g. parallel port but not as a PCMCIA. The requirement is to select the FAT option not the FAT 32.
Additionally, I have an RCA Lyra MP3 player and the REAL parallel port software has a recent upgrade which incorporates a CF Format function. This not only formats the card correctly but will also do a Scandisk and 'fix' any problem clusters.
For those with an interest in MP3 and similar, it appears that WMA files are playable on some MP3 players and offer a much improved compression ratio with no detectable loss of sound quality.