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02/18/2003 10:03:20 PM · #1 |
| Anyone have any luck returning compact flash cards? I have had two new ones die on me, both were rather expensive and I am not sure if it was something I did or not. Will the company replace them? Should I deal with Lexar Media or take them to where I purchased them? |
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02/18/2003 10:12:42 PM · #2 |
WOW that's bad luck Paige. I have the originals that I got when I bought my camera. I've taken over 8000 shots between the two them. How have you stored them? Heat? Sun? Dampness?
I think getting with Lexar would be where I'd start. Also check the web [google] and see if anyone else is having the same troubles.
Good luck. |
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02/18/2003 10:44:45 PM · #3 |
Are you sure the card is defective and not either corrupted or not being read properly? I would recommend reformatting the cards and seeing if the problem goes away. If it doesn't, try the card in a different camera. I can't say I've ever heard of a CF card dying, so the chances of two going at the same time are astronomical.
-Terry
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02/19/2003 11:26:07 AM · #4 |
| Thanks Terry and Justine, I did try reformatting them to no avail, my other two CF cards are working fine, the ones that don't work anymore will not work in my camera or my CF reader. I have stored them properly, I think it is possible that I ejected them before they were ready to be ejected. I will contact Lexar, I have had bad dealings with them before in regards to a CF reader and gave up, but this time I will be more aggressive. |
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02/19/2003 12:44:09 PM · #5 |
I had a 64 Meg card go, I think it may have been duff from the outset. I can write to it, but when I get to about 1/2 full, it starts giving errors.
Neither camera nor cardreader can handle the duff sector (or whatever the CF equivalent is), but I did manage to rescue most of the images on it.
By the time I discovered the fault, Id had it for about a year (I had two cards, and must have been filling the other one up when I got that far). By the time I found out, Id tossed the receipt and packaging, so Ive still got the card, it may be useful one day.
Win98 and early Linux 2.4 series kernels hung when they tried to read the bad sector, and reformats didnt do anything to solve the problem.
I later bought a 256M card, and made a point of filling it up to check all of it out first. |
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02/20/2003 08:56:07 AM · #6 |
Some of the utilities at Photorescue might be helpful, particularly the card writer/ cleaner/ tester.
But if the card is showing bad sectors, then something is dead, as the drive controller on the card should hide those - I guess at some point there get to be too many to track? |
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02/20/2003 10:07:07 AM · #7 |
Originally posted by Gordon:
Some of the utilities at Photorescue might be helpful, particularly the card writer/ cleaner/ tester. |
Or I could man mkfs and hope help hasnt had a visit from the grim reader (aka info).
Or even read this page.
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02/20/2003 10:13:07 AM · #8 |
Originally posted by UberFish:
Originally posted by Gordon:
Some of the utilities at Photorescue might be helpful, particularly the card writer/ cleaner/ tester. |
Or I could man mkfs and hope help hasnt had a visit from the grim reader (aka info).
Or even read this page. |
Yup, you can - does mkfs do a full surface scan ? Theoretically you should never see a bad sector on a CF card though, as the controller on the card is supposed to hide all the errors on the memory from the accessing device. |
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02/20/2003 11:21:54 AM · #9 |
Originally posted by Gordon:
Yup, you can - does mkfs do a full surface scan ? |
Dunno, but now I know its a vfat underneath, I can fsck it. I did pootle about with those things when it first went wrong, but I quickly lost interest and moved on to things that didnt freeze my PC.
I will have a go when I get a moment and report back on this thread.
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02/20/2003 11:41:53 AM · #10 |
Originally posted by Paige:
Anyone have any luck returning compact flash cards? I have had two new ones die on me, both were rather expensive and I am not sure if it was something I did or not. Will the company replace them? Should I deal with Lexar Media or take them to where I purchased them? |
I had the same kind of problem with mine, when I called the manufacturer one of the first questions they asked me was if I had had a virus on my computer anytime recently and if I used a card reader. My answer was yes to both. The virus had written itself on to my card through the reader. The tech support talked me through healing the virus on the card using my virus scan. My card is working fine now, and I now run a virus scan just before I download any photos now. The 25 minutes for my virus scan is a lot simpilar than the hour plus it took the tech to find the virus and talk me through healing it. |
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02/20/2003 11:59:21 AM · #11 |
Originally posted by Gordon:
Some of the utilities at Photorescue might be helpful, particularly the card writer/ cleaner/ tester.
But if the card is showing bad sectors, then something is dead, as the drive controller on the card should hide those - I guess at some point there get to be too many to track? |
Thanks, Gordon! I just was able to recover most of my photos, of course I can't save them though without buying the download, I am headed over right now to see if they can fix the card so it is usable too! |
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02/20/2003 07:02:27 PM · #12 |
Ok, In Linux (mdk 9.0), as root, my broken 64M card in the USB reader.
cdrecord --scanbus
is a good way of seeing what SCSI devices are where.
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/cf
allows me to access the card in a bash shell (cd /mnt/cf) and ls/cp the files off one by one. This is what I did originally.
When I hit the part of the card that is corrupted, system hangs, probably some low level IO problems, possibly even at the BIOS level.
umount /mnt/cf
to allow the dosfsck and mkdosfs tools to work OK.
dosfsck -tvr /dev/sda1
Gets through the existing files, but eventually hangs the system when it starts searching for bad clusters to repair.
mkdosfs -F 32 -v /dev/sda1
Starts the format OK, but again hangs the system when it gets so far. Repent, reboot, retry.
Interestingly,
mkreiserfs -d /dev/sda1
gets some way towards completeion, but again, hangs.
Looks like my card is well and truly stuffed.
Grabbing an old 16M card:
dosfsck runs to completion OK in about 1 minute, I would assume this would fix most problems.
mkdosfs also cleanly formats the new card, which would also fix most problems.
mkfs -t ext2 -V /dev/sda1
puts an ext2 filesystem onto the card.
Because this works, it means that it is possible to do some cool stuff like put encrypted file systems onto cf cards, for when you want to transfer sensitive data between home and office.
mkreiserfs wont get out of bed for less than 32 meg.
One day I might see if I can rescue images and fix a card from within a small linux distro such as TomsRootBoot
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02/20/2003 09:14:50 PM · #13 |
| You should bring it back where you got it as long as its not over a year old! I had a Lexar 128 and it failed on me also, I swapped it for a Sandisk. I have had Sandisks of all sizes 32 to 256Mb for over 3 years and never had a problem. |
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02/20/2003 09:18:51 PM · #14 |
Paige
Never disconnect a card when it is being read or written to,this can cause dammage. |
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