Digital BW, The Print

I was using a Dane-elec 1 gig compact card in an Olympus E20. I
took several exposures during the day...checking them as i went
along and all seemed fine. I tried to copy the exposures using a
card reader and nothing was being transfered from the card to my
computer. The drive that the card was on showed nothing. I put the
card back into the camera and the camera program stated that I was
trying to use an unfomatted card. I knew that I would loose the
exposures that i had made but i reformatted the card anyway. After
reformatting in the camera, the program told me that the card was
full. I knew that wasnt the case. I do know that the camera was
functioning properly as i put in another card and was successfull
using the same card reader and copying to the computer.
Has anyone else had the same experience. I imagine that the card is
fried.
Any assistence would be greatly appreciated
Rick Zeidman

This is my theory of how this happens to memory cards:  When the write to
card is interrupted for any reason, an incomplete image/file is created.
This file doesn't have the proper end of file or some other significant
code. An attempt to read, write or format the card becomes impossible by
resulting in an infinite attempt to read.

Reformatting may have doomed your files.

I use a program which I downloaded for free to recover lost images. When the
images are read there is usually one which is truncated, but the recovery
program gives it the necessary coding to be read.

I have had luck in recovering the seemingly fried cards by putting them in
another brand of camera which doesn't read the existing files and formatting
there.

Then the card can be properly formatted in the original camera.

Avery



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Something similar happened to a colleague at work with, of course, an 
upcoming presentation that was to use the images on the card.  I used 
Photorescue from www.datarescue.com and was a hero for a day.  The 
US$29.95 license fee was money well spent especially after I 
inadvertantly deleted some files on one of my cards as well.

Roy

On Sep 16, 2004, at 5:14 PM, morganbaily2001 wrote:

> I was using a Dane-elec 1 gig compact card in an Olympus E20. I
> took several exposures during the day...checking them as i went
> along and all seemed fine. I tried to copy the exposures using a
> card reader and nothing was being transfered from the card to my
> computer. The drive that the card was on showed nothing. I put the
> card back into the camera and the camera program stated that I was
> trying to use an unfomatted card. I knew that I would loose the
> exposures that i had made but i reformatted the card anyway. After
> reformatting in the camera, the program told me that the card was
> full. I knew that wasnt the case. I do know that the camera was
> functioning properly as i put in another card and was successfull
> using the same card reader and copying to the computer.
> Has anyone else had the same experience. I imagine that the card is
> fried.
> Any assistence would be greatly appreciated

On 16 Sep 2004 at 17:34, Avery Minor wrote:

> This is my theory of how this happens to memory cards:  When the write to
> card is interrupted for any reason, an incomplete image/file is created.
> This file doesn't have the proper end of file or some other significant
> code. An attempt to read, write or format the card becomes impossible by
> resulting in an infinite attempt to read.
> 

I don't think it's that complicated, digital cameras use the FAT file system, named 
after the File Attribute Table.  It really means Freakin' Absolutely Terrible file 
system, what it does, is at the end of each block of data, it puts a Cylinder-Head-
Sector pointer to the next block.  Take a 256MB card, it appears to have 64 sectors 
per head, one head, and 4096 cylinders, each sector being 1024 bytes long.  

So it's reading a long, and the next pointer states cylinder 7254, the software 
doesn't know what to make of this, so it, states that the card has a problem.  Which 
it does, the cylinder number isn't in the normal range of numbers.  Reformatting 
simply states that the media is empty, because it's not really a disk, it's a block of 
memory.    This is actually preferable to if every camera maker designed their own 
memory access scheme.  

> I use a program which I downloaded for free to recover lost images. When the
> images are read there is usually one which is truncated, but the recovery
> program gives it the necessary coding to be read.
> 

For the bext success, if you need this, always download then erase the whole card, 
because what happens then it that each photo will cover sequential sectors, so the 
recovery software can simply sequentially read the card, throw away the CHS 
pointers, and read block after block, into the same file, until it sees another image 
JPEG or RAW header, which it will take as the beginning of the next photo.

W

thanks to every one who has responded to my problem.  I tried photo 
rescuse and the program didnt see the card on the drive.  I got a 
message stating "Wrong volume is in the drive.  Please insert volume 
in Drive H".  I know the program works because i put another card in 
the card reader and Photo Rescue recognized it.  So may be the card 
is toast?.  I still need to find someone who can reformat it in 
another camera that will take a micordrive such as this one.
Thanks to all again
Rick