Camera SD Card Goosed

[Sand Dancin Donkey Walker]

Hi Guys

As the title says. The SD card in my camera is goosed.
It is showing Locked on the camera display. The camera will not take any photo's
Tried it in another camera and it is the same.
A new SD card is now in my Nikon and is working fine.
I haven't an SD reader at home, but it looks like it may be unreadable
Any suggestions.

Andy

[seoirse2002]

have you tried unlocking it?
There is usually a little switch on the side of the card that can inadvertantly be slid into the locked position when taking out or putting into the camera...its there to prevent you overwriting precious files accidentally.
GT

[Sand Dancin Donkey Walker]

have you tried unlocking it?
There is usually a little switch on the side of the card that can inadvertantly be slid into the locked position when taking out or putting into the camera...its there to prevent you overwriting precious files accidentally.
GT

Cheers for your reply.
The SD card became useless while out early this morning, had taken about 20 or so photo's then tried the next shot - and nothing. The card would be no where near full.
Have had the card in and out several times and the switch operated.
No luck at all.

Andy - SDDW

[northwest]

Put it in the bin and count your lucky stars. You could probably access it with a low level format utility but it is only a matter of time before it does it again, probably when full:doh:
If it makes you feel any better, I have an IBM micro drive upstairs (320Mb) cost a little over 700 pounds sterling:stalks:

[Sand Dancin Donkey Walker]

Hi Graham

I have bought the replacement all ready.
I would just like the photo's taken this morning.
There were a couple of good possibilities among them
Some of Swans on the nest and some low level sun reflections on water with the mirror image of the Swan in the reflection.
Ho well, before I am on call tomorrow I will be out there again trying to replicate them.
The original card will be binned.

Andy's - SDDW

[Mr Nad]

Don't give up yet. Get yourself a card reader - pop down to Wilkinsons and pick one up. Your PC shouldn't care whether the card is locked or not.

Even if it can't read the card, all is not lost.

Download a utility called Recuva (it's free) from piriform.com (http://www.piriform.com/recuva) and give it a whirl. It will recover files even from disks/cards than have been formatted. It's saved me plenty of heartache in the past.

Good luck.

For replacements, Amazon has a good deal on SanDisk Extreme cards. Worth checking out. I'm on the verge of getting a couple of new ones as I don't really trust the Veho cards I currently have - they are beginning to crack!

[Sand Dancin Donkey Walker]

Don't give up yet. Get yourself a card reader - pop down to Wilkinsons and pick one up. Your PC shouldn't care whether the card is locked or not.

Even if it can't read the card, all is not lost.

Download a utility called Recuva (it's free) from piriform.com (http://www.piriform.com/recuva) and give it a whirl. It will recover files even from disks/cards than have been formatted. It's saved me plenty of heartache in the past.

Good luck.

For replacements, Amazon has a good deal on SanDisk Extreme cards. Worth checking out. I'm on the verge of getting a couple of new ones as I don't really trust the Veho cards I currently have - they are beginning to crack!

Hi Lennny

Cheers for your help.
I am dropping by a mates house tomorrow to try a card reader.
If that doesn't will try your suggestion.
I also have a very nice offer from a forum member to try and recover the photo's for me. Nice man in deed
Will let you know how I get on.
Cheers again

Andy - SDDW

[Clive]

Was it a new card? I ask as there are many fakes which are tiny capacity flashed to pretend to be much larger.

[Sand Dancin Donkey Walker]

Was it a new card? I ask as there are many fakes which are tiny capacity flashed to pretend to be much larger.

Hi Clive

The card is about 3 years old. So not new.
It has been reliable. I do format it on a regular basis.
Not sue why, is that a good thing or not?
Hopefully the new one will last a bit longer than the last.
I bought a Scandisk 16gb.

Andy

[synsei]

Flash RAM has a finite read/write life. I'm not sure of the figures but basically they do wear out eventually. If you've used this card a lot over the three years you may have hit it enough times to kill it...

EDIT: Found this interesting info via Google:


Longevity/Lifespan

Unlike DRAM, flash memory chips have a limited lifespan. Further, different flash chips have a different number of write cycles before errors start to occur. Flash chips with 300,000 write cycles are common, and currently the best flash chips are rated at 1,000,000 write cycles per block (with 8,000 blocks per chip). Now, just because a flash chip has a given write cycle rating, it doesn't mean that the chip will self-destruct as soon as that threshold is reached. It means that a flash chip with a 1 million Erase/Write endurance threshold limit will have only 0.02 percent of the sample population turn into a bad block when the write threshold is reached for that block. The better flash solid state flash drive manufacturers have two ways to increase the longevity of the drives: First, a "balancing" algorithm is used. This monitors how many times each disk block has been written. This will greatly extend the life of the drive. The better manufacturers have "wear-leveling" algorithms that balance the data intelligently, avoiding both exacerbating the wearing of the blocks and "thrashing" of the disk: When a given block has been written above a certain percentage threshold, the solid state flash drive will (in the background, avoiding performance decreases) swap the data in that block with the data in a block that has exhibited a "read-only-like" characteristic. Second, should bad blocks occur, they are mapped out as they would be on a rotating disk. With usage patterns of writing gigabytes per day, each flash-based solid state flash drive should last hundreds of years, depending on capacity. If it has a DRAM cache, it'll last even longer.

This would suggest the failure risk is low, perhaps you were just unlucky...

[Sand Dancin Donkey Walker]

As you say, maybe just bad luck

Andy's - SDDW

[Sand Dancin Donkey Walker]

A mate in mine has been trying to recover the photo's off the SD card today.
No luck at all. Had tried several different progs and approaches and nothing, will not even show a file structure.
Tried the Piriform too and exactly the same.
Looks like bad luck.
One last ditch attemp, my mate will give the card to thier IT dept and see what they can do, not much hope really.
Cheers for all your replies and help.

Andy - SDDW

[seoirse2002]

http://theartofsound.net/forum/picture.php?albumid=122&pictureid=896Maybe this will cheer you up...I took it in Egypt,then added the text.

[Sand Dancin Donkey Walker]

Hi George

Yes that did bring a smile to my face. Something you don't see often
Well the SD card is most definitely goosed.
A very good IT dept could not do a thing with it.
I can't even format the thing.
Time for the bin I think.

Andy - SDDW