Bad Memory Card?

[deaner66]

<p>Has anyone ever had a problem with a bad memory card? I took a bunch of pictures on the 4TH, and towards the end of the night, I decided to take some fireworks shots. While taking them, I noticed that instead of the shot coming up on the screen, a black screen saying "The image was not stored".</p>

<p>This was while I was shooting in continuous mode. Sometimes, while shooting 3FPS, the buffer will back up and stop me from shooting until it finishes writing to the card, but I've never lost files because of it.</p>

<p>When I was done, all I ended up with was about 25 of my last fireworks shots. The rest of my files had the black screen with a message saying "Cannot display this image".</p>

<p>Even after I got home and downloaded the files in Lightroom, the bad files were a mish-mash of colors and patterns.</p>

<p>I can live with a day of lost pictures, I just don't want it to happen again.</p>

<p>So has this happened to anyone else? Should I just dump this card?</p>

<p>I have a K10D that has had no previous problems.</p>

[deaner66]

<p>Here is what the files look like in Lightroom.</p><div></div>

[mcmanamey]

<p>That looks vaguely similar to what Dad got when his card was having issues.<br>

First - what brand of card, or is it a "pentax" or no-name?<br>

2nd - get what you can off that card and format it in-camera. Just deleting images using the card reader on your computer will not do. Get your images, put the card back in the camera, then go through the menu to "Format Card". Then go out, and just shoot a bunch of test frames, say under near similar conditions (continuous). See what happens. If problem persists, buy a new card.</p>

<p>As I recall, Dad hasn't had any problems with his cheap, no-name SD card since he's been reformatting in-camera (on a fairly regular basis, btw). We've been lucky to not have any bad cards at all.<br>

We highly recommend the Sandisk Extreme II or III cards - haven't had one even blip on us, and I rarely remember to format in camera - and we never had until Dad lost images due to the goofy card. Now I reformat about every-other wedding or so, if I remember.</p>

[deaner66]

<p>My card was a no-name 4 gig, Class 6 internet card. I've never had any problems with it, before this.</p>

<p>I've always downloaded my pictures, then re-formatted the card in camera. I did shoot a handful of shots when I got home and they looked alright. But I don't want to risk this again. So, I'll probably just toss this card.</p>

[c_wyatt]

<p>I've had a few problems with photos not displaying or saving to the SD card. It was a while ago so I can't really remember what it said, but it did say something like "Cannot display this image". I figured it was the card and wasn't going to risk losing any photos so I just tossed it out and bought a new one. They're pretty cheap anyway. I think when I brought them up on the computer they wouldn't display anything either.</p>

<p>Someone I know using a Nikon had the same problem and just threw out their card.</p>

<p>This was with a cheap 'no-name' SD card on a Pentax K10D. Now I carry a spare card in case it happens to the card I'm using in the camera.</p>

[ibargureni]

<p>I once had a really bad experience with a 4gb CF card in my Nikon d70s. I shot 3gb of photos in other cards and then I started using that 4gb card. It worked perfectly and I stored around 1gb of photos there. This was a trip to Stockholm, and I didn't have any computer there. When I got home, I put the cards (including the 4gb one) in the card reader and reviewed all the photos but didn't copy them to the computer due to time constraints. Later that day I started copying my photos to the computer, but the 4Gb card couldn't be read. I tried all possible ways of recovering them (software, formatting, inserting it into the camera, different card readers, etc.) but it wasn't possible. At one point I managed to make the card work with 3Gb capacity (quite strange, by the way) and from that moment the card would act as if it were a 3Gb card, and the images were in the missing 1Gb :-((. Needless to say that card has been trashed. Well, in fact I have stored it just in case I came across a way of recovering the images contained in it one day...</p>

<p>With this experience, I learned two things. First of all, It's worthwile to buy known brand cards, as even if they certainly can fail, in the cases I found defective cards, the images could be recovered quite easily with recovery software. And secondly, having separate cards (and not very high capacity on them) is really interesting, even if they need to be changed more often, carrying 8, 16, 32 or even mor Gb of photos in just one card is quite dangerous. In another trip I got my camera stolen, with the card inside it, of course, but as it was the last day of the trip and I had shot with other cards, I had a bunch of photos remaining that were "safe and sound". Now, with my k20d, I use 3 4Gb Sandisk cards, and I'm quite happy with them.</p>

<p>Well, thanks for reading my "brick" and sorry for the bit of "off topic".</p>

[james_gay]

<p>Does the image come up scrambled like your example when you import the image using the Pentax supplied software (PPL, and/or PPB) vs. Lightroom? Is the image in JPG, or RAW (PEF or DNG) format? </p>

[jpo3136b]

<p>This is nothing that can't be fixed with some liberal HDR. </p>

[jtk]

<p>I had a Sandisk fail ... the rough-edged SD slot in my PC damaged the skinny plastic strip that protects the end of the card contacts. Now I only use the SD card gizmo that comes "free" with cards.<br>

Cards are incredibly cheap vs film...I carry a half dozen 4G in a Hakuba media card case.</p>

[ibargureni]

<p>So SD cards are quite fragile then... I'll try to handle them with more care from now on... just in case.</p>

[john_shriver]

<p>NAND flash, which is what is inside <em>all</em> flash cards, has a finite life. Only so many write cycles, and you start getting too many errors for it to correct. It's like CD-ROM, the NAND flash chips are <em>never</em> 100% accurate, they depend on serious error correcting codes to work at all. There's also about 10% extra capacity on the raw NAND flash chip, to make up for the inevitable bad blocks.<br>

SD cards include flash controller chip, which hides the errors. Some are better implemented than others. The better ones probably cost more.<br>

Of course, there are some 4GB no-name and counterfeit flash cards that actually contain less than 4GB of NAND flash. They are betting you won't notice, even though the FAT32 header claims it is a 4GB device. (Those ever-honorable Chinese manufacturers.)<br>

Oh, NAND flash doesn't remember forever, either. The bits leak slowly but surely. Not for long-term image storage, ever.</p>

 

[tomadakis]

<p>Some rules of thumb learned over the years (some the hard way)<br>

Never use anything other than Sandisk Ultra II cards or better.<br />Format them on the camera quite often.<br>

Never delete any shots on the camera.<br>

When the card is full turn off the camera before replacing it.</p>

<p>BTW you can download recovery software from Sandisk.com</p>

[ibargureni]

<p>John, by any chance, do you know any software that can mark / unmark bad blocks in flash memory cards? I know scandisk (or chkdsk or whatever it's called now) does mark bad blocks, but what about unmarking? Now that you talk about bad blocks, I think something like that could have happened to my 4gb card.<br>

Antoni, regarding card models, is there a real reliability difference between regular Sandisk cards and Ultra II (or Extreme III, IV) cards? I'm aware the higher end cards do have higher speeds and perform better in extreme conditions, but are the regular ones known to fail more?<br>

As for image recovery, I have successfully used TestDisk (free, btw) in a number of cases and it worked flawlessly. Moreover, it is available for Windows and Linux.</p>

[mcmanamey]

<p>I did just remember - and Antoni mentioned it - SanDisk gives you free recovery software (which is more for when you've accidentally deleted. I don't think it will help in this particular case).<br>

The Extreme IIIs include the recovery software on CD w/ the card.</p>

[c_wyatt]

<p>I didn't think SD cards were thought of as fragile - I thought they were very tough. Can withstand extreme temperatures, being trampled on etc.</p>

[deaner66]

<p>Antoni, why not delete photos in-camera? I've never heard that before. I always have plenty of batteries so during downtime, I usually check for obvious poor shots and delete them to save time later.</p>

[tomadakis]

<p>Steve,<br>

I never had a problem personally with deleting on the camera, but have been advised by a photographer that has tons of experience and makes his living taking photos to never do it. He had corrupted images by doing it at a wedding. I helped him recover the images from the card. He actually has purchased one of the Epson Backup/Viewers because of what happened to him. He backs up his cards at the first chance he gets on that device.</p>

[james_gay]

<p>Consider checking your SD card reader.<br>

I was having a dificulty getting uncorrupted files (PEF and JPG) into my computer (DNG files seemed to move OK). The problem was random with no real pattern. After a ton of fussing around, I found rather than the SD card, my computer has a defective built-in card reader. Now, I move all image files via the USB port and they (JPG, PEF, and DNG) transfer perfectly.<br>

Cheers...</p>

[levy_fulop]

<p>Hi,<br>

I had many problems with Kingston on my K20Ds, and when I say (s) I mean, several K20Ds. Plus one of my friends on K200. I shoot 99.8% RAW (PEF and sometimes DNG). The main massage is: "This image can not be saved" or something very similar to that.<br>

Never had issues with Sandisk, Adata, some no-name brands.</p>

<p>Good luck.<br>