Bad memory card? Bad camera?

I recently experienced something I've never seen before. My compact
flash memory card appeared to have layered itself... I had a bunch of
photos which mysteriously and suddenly appeared as though they deleted
themselves. Quite upset, but nonetheless, resiliant, I continued to use
the camera. As I took further photos they reminaed, and when I d/loaded
those photos onto my PC and deleted the entire card, the original
photos reappeared. As I said, it looked as though my memory card
layered itself, despite that I couldn't see them. The card also
occasionally plays up with some photographs, and when they d/load to my
computer, I can see the thumbnails but cannot view the whole
photograph. Its beginning to bug me because I'm worried that I'm going
to loose some precious photos at some point in the near future. Am I
right in assuming that its the memory card and not the camera causing
me the problems, and short of throwing it away (its not too old, and a
1GB 40x speed) is there anything I might be able to do to fix it?

 

No idea how a card could do that. Have you tried to format the card
in the camera? Have you tried a different card? they're cheap
nowdays, you should have a spare card anyway.

 

It could be either...

If you have other memory cards that do not show this fault then the
suspiscion has to be the card. Something intermittently gets in the way
of memory writes and allows the wrong bit of memory to be written.

You could try reformatting the card and/or cleaning the connectors in
accordance with manufacturers recommendations. Thumbnails usually
survive but the main image tends to get damaged. You may get any
combination of wierd colours, lateral shifts or undecodable images.

Try opening them in a web browser as they tend to be more tolerant of
corrupted JPEG datastreams.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

Not sure exactly how memory cards work, but the general way harddrives
and floppies and CD-R work is that a section of the storage space is
set up as a directory of the data which is stored on it. The o/s
simply sets a bit to make a file 'deleted' but not erased, and
unsetting this bit allows a file to be 'unerased'. It sounds like the
directory is corrupted on this CF card, so that pictures are 'deleted'
then 'undeleted' somewhat randomly. I suggest formatting the CF card
*in the camera* (formatting in your computer can create problems for
some cameras in no longer being able to write/read to the CF after
formatting!) and trying to use the camera with that CF card to shoot a
whole bunch of test shots that you won't care if they're lost. If the
CF still is flakey after formatting in the camera, throw the thing away
(or see if the manufacturer has a 'lifetime warranty' that applies to
their CF memory!).

 

My compact flash memory card appeared to have layered itself... I

What camera model are you using? Some of them are limited to a certain
folder size (ie, number of shots) and once you hit that size they'll
create a new folder so it might look as though your shots disappeared
until you download later on and see both folders ...

Just a guess, but it would make more sense to me if the camera was
doing this ... I don't see how a card could think this much on it's own


Bill

 

Format in camera.

 

Bill... I think you may be on to something here. I've just spent the
weekend in paris, and took my camera along with my old memory card
(128mb), thinking i didn't want to loose the photos I've taken, and its
done the same thing again, only this time has twice 'deleted' my
photos, despite the overall memory showing that the card is in use. The
camera is a Canon ixus 400 circa 2003. Is it likely that I can take my
camera to be serviced somewhere? As for limited folder size, I'd be
surprised. I took my 1GB to Turkey for 3 weeks and clocked up almost
700mb of photos, all of which stayed with no hassles (that was April
this year, and trouble begain in June). Any further thoughts?

 

I don't know how I can format this camera... IXUS 400... any
suggestions?

 

I don't know how I can format this camera... IXUS 400...

A Google search turns up these two links ... the second one describes a
problem similar to yours ...

http://www2.goldfisch.at/knowledge/245
http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00D9hy