SDHC cards and my "devices"
 

The main question is my HP hx2495 iPAQ PDA. (spit).

It sports two expansion sockets - one for an SD card and one for a compact flash card. Shortly after purchase, and thanks to prices on ebay, I added a 4gb card to each of the two slots - so 8gb plus the device itself.

Browsing "the bay" recently, I discovered that they now make affordable 8gb cards - so I bought an 8gb compact flash, installed it, runs a treat; also bought an 8gb sd card, "Card Read Error".

The 8gb card will not work in my Canon digital camera, will not work in my HP Pavilion DV4000 series notebook, will not read from my HP 7310 all-in-one printer, nor from my hx2495 PDA.

Card salesman swears blind that the card I returned to him for replacement works perfectly when tested, and that anything above 2gb is now called SDHC and requires special firmware to run it.

If this is so, why do my devices all read the 4gb SD card - but not the 8gb?

Any thoughts?

Well, officially he's right - anything above 2GB (i.e. 4GB and up) should be SDHC, and needs to be supported by the device explicitly, and it often takes a firmware update. My camera got one, for example (Pentax *ist DS).

I haven't tried any 4GB cards, however, and (if Wikipedia has it right) there are 4GB cards around that are not SDHC, nor strictly SD spec. So that may be why you had 4GB working. But with 8GB it's definitely SDHC all the way, and you'll have to try the manufacturers. :uhoh:

Now that slightly makes sense as to a comment from the HP live chat helpline (HP Helpline? Oxymoron?).

The "technician" told me that the PDA would not work with anything larger than a 1gb card in it - depsite it having been running the 4gb for the last 18 months or more.

4gb Sd
 

I bought a 4GB SD (not SDHC) a couple of months back, but had to return it and swap it for 2x2GB as none of my devices (including a 4 week old Toshiba Laptop, a Palm T5, and Kodak 6490 camera, Jenoptic card reader/writer) recognised it/recognised it, but required formatting, and then couldn't format it