SD card mystery

[Jeff Layman]

HP G61 laptop. Win7HPx64. Fully updated.

I have been using a Sandisk 2G SD card (from a Ricoh compact camera)
with this laptop without problem for a couple of years. In the last
month, on plugging in the card, instead of the usual popup asking
whether I want to open folder to view files with Windows Explorer, I get
an error message. This states that the card is unformatted and must be
formatted before opening. If I try to view the card in WE, it says the
file format is not known, and the card must be formatted.

If I then eject the card (through the USB symbol in the notification
area), pull it and reinsert it immediately, Win7 behaves normally in the
way it always has (card is FAT32).

Any ideas? It's not a great problem as it is easily fixed, but it does
puzzle me. Result of an update, perhaps?

 

[John Williamson]

HP G61 laptop. Win7HPx64. Fully updated.

I have been using a Sandisk 2G SD card (from a Ricoh compact camera)
with this laptop without problem for a couple of years. In the last
month, on plugging in the card, instead of the usual popup asking
whether I want to open folder to view files with Windows Explorer, I get
an error message. This states that the card is unformatted and must be
formatted before opening. If I try to view the card in WE, it says the
file format is not known, and the card must be formatted.

If I then eject the card (through the USB symbol in the notification
area), pull it and reinsert it immediately, Win7 behaves normally in the
way it always has (card is FAT32).

Any ideas? It's not a great problem as it is easily fixed, but it does
puzzle me. Result of an update, perhaps?

Possibly there's a physical problem with the card reader, or (unlikely)
the card is about to fail totally. Do you use any other cards, and if
so, do you get the same problem with them?

They're cheap enough to throw away and replace with a new one nowadays
if there's any doubt. Certainly cheaper than going back to take the
pictures again. If you're using an external reader, then I've had
similar problems with a dodgy USB lead.

 

[Anthony Buckland]

HP G61 laptop. Win7HPx64. Fully updated.

I have been using a Sandisk 2G SD card (from a Ricoh compact camera)
with this laptop without problem for a couple of years. In the last
month, on plugging in the card, instead of the usual popup asking
whether I want to open folder to view files with Windows Explorer, I get
an error message. This states that the card is unformatted and must be
formatted before opening. If I try to view the card in WE, it says the
file format is not known, and the card must be formatted.

If I then eject the card (through the USB symbol in the notification
area), pull it and reinsert it immediately, Win7 behaves normally in the
way it always has (card is FAT32).

Any ideas? It's not a great problem as it is easily fixed, but it does
puzzle me. Result of an update, perhaps?

I have the same problem with a thumb drive that was fairly expensive
(32 Gby). I intend to keep on using it until it fails completely
(way out of warranty), and then replace it, so long as it keeps on
working on the second insert.

 

[Jeff Layman]

Possibly there's a physical problem with the card reader, or (unlikely)
the card is about to fail totally. Do you use any other cards, and if
so, do you get the same problem with them?

They're cheap enough to throw away and replace with a new one nowadays
if there's any doubt. Certainly cheaper than going back to take the
pictures again. If you're using an external reader, then I've had
similar problems with a dodgy USB lead.

Just tried a generic 1Gb SD card and it seems ok, even after a reboot.
I'll try it for a few weeks then go back to the old card. Thanks.

 

[Jeff Layman]

I have the same problem with a thumb drive that was fairly expensive
(32 Gby). I intend to keep on using it until it fails completely
(way out of warranty), and then replace it, so long as it keeps on
working on the second insert.

Thanks. Seems a strange fault, though. I wonder why the drives appear
ok on the second insert, but not the first. My SD card will be 5 years
old in August.

Makes you wonder about the long-term reliability of SSDs in place of HDs.

 

[Ken Springer]

HP G61 laptop. Win7HPx64. Fully updated.

I have been using a Sandisk 2G SD card (from a Ricoh compact camera)
with this laptop without problem for a couple of years. In the last
month, on plugging in the card, instead of the usual popup asking
whether I want to open folder to view files with Windows Explorer, I get
an error message. This states that the card is unformatted and must be
formatted before opening. If I try to view the card in WE, it says the
file format is not known, and the card must be formatted.

If I then eject the card (through the USB symbol in the notification
area), pull it and reinsert it immediately, Win7 behaves normally in the
way it always has (card is FAT32).

Any ideas? It's not a great problem as it is easily fixed, but it does
puzzle me. Result of an update, perhaps?

Thinking outside of the box....

Why don't you walk down to a store (Best Buy comes to mind) with that SD
card, plug it into a new computer or two, and see what happens?

Logically to me, if the card is the problem, then it won't work in the
new computers either.

If it works in the new computers, then your card is not your problem.


--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 11.0
Thunderbird 11.0.1
LibreOffice 3.5.0 rc3

 

[John Williamson]

Thanks. Seems a strange fault, though. I wonder why the drives appear
ok on the second insert, but not the first. My SD card will be 5 years
old in August.

Contaminated or loose contacts on the reader or card, a joint inside the
card going bad, there are a number of possibilities.

Makes you wonder about the long-term reliability of SSDs in place of HDs.

The normal problems with removable memory are related to the contacts
being made and broken.

With SSD, you don't get that problem, but are replacing the moving parts
of the HD with the long-term fragility of the writing and storage
mechanism of flash memory. The failure modes are totally different, and
depend on the environment that the device is in, with flash based media
players lasting better than HD based ones due to the repeated physical
shocks to the mechanism, as one example, and a possibility that SSDs
being used for a swap file having a shorter life than HDs in the same
application being another.

 

[XS11E]

I have been using a Sandisk 2G SD card (from a Ricoh compact
camera) with this laptop without problem for a couple of years.
In the last month, on plugging in the card, instead of the usual
popup asking whether I want to open folder to view files with
Windows Explorer, I get an error message. This states that the
card is unformatted and must be formatted before opening. If I
try to view the card in WE, it says the file format is not known,
and the card must be formatted.

If I then eject the card (through the USB symbol in the
notification area), pull it and reinsert it immediately, Win7
behaves normally in the way it always has (card is FAT32).

Any ideas? It's not a great problem as it is easily fixed, but it
does puzzle me. Result of an update, perhaps?

Yup, it's a USB problem. I sometimes (rarely) get a message that my
device can perform faster and I should plug in into a USB 2.0 port. I
DID plug it into a USB 2.0 port and, like you, the fix is to remove the
device and plug it in again.

I"m guessing it's a marginal contact in the USB port or the device but
it's too rare to try to troubleshoot.

 

[Char Jackson]

Thanks. Seems a strange fault, though. I wonder why the drives appear
ok on the second insert, but not the first. My SD card will be 5 years
old in August.

Makes you wonder about the long-term reliability of SSDs in place of HDs.

HD's aren't stellar examples of long term reliability, either. ;-)

 

[Anthony Buckland]

...
Why don't you walk down to a store (Best Buy comes to mind) with that SD
card, plug it into a new computer or two, and see what happens?

Logically to me, if the card is the problem, then it won't work in the
new computers either.

If it works in the new computers, then your card is not your problem.

Great. Remind me to never buy a machine from any store
that lets customers plug in cards containing something
or anything and then sells the machine they plugged it
into.

 

[Char Jackson]

Great. Remind me to never buy a machine from any store
that lets customers plug in cards containing something
or anything and then sells the machine they plugged it
into.

It's always a crap shoot when you buy the display model, take it home,
and start using it without taking into account what might have
happened in its young life.

 

[John Williamson]

It's always a crap shoot when you buy the display model, take it home,
and start using it without taking into account what might have
happened in its young life.

Or, buy the display model, saving some money, take it home, then
re-install Windows so you have a clean start. I even do that on the odd
occasion that it's not the display model, as I've had some grot on
machines in "sealed" boxes.

 

[Ken Springer]

It's always a crap shoot when you buy the display model, take it home,
and start using it without taking into account what might have
happened in its young life.

Char has it right, Anthony. Never expect that "open box" purchase to be
perfect in any way.


--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 11.0
Thunderbird 11.0.1
LibreOffice 3.5.0 rc3

 

[Jeff Layman]

Contaminated or loose contacts on the reader or card, a joint inside the
card going bad, there are a number of possibilities.

I'm not convinced that it's a poor/intermittent contact problem. It
seems consistent that the first insert fails, and the second insert is
ok; with a dodgy contact you would expect more variability. And there
has never been a problem with the camera when I reinsert the SD card in
that. That doesn't exclude the laptop contacts as the problem, but
suggests that it isn't the SD card. But if it fails to occur with the
new SD card I'm trying, then we are back to the 2GB card as the problem.

 

[Wolf K]

On 05/04/2012 7:41 AM, Jeff Layman wrote:
[...]

I'm not convinced that it's a poor/intermittent contact problem. It
seems consistent that the first insert fails, and the second insert is
ok; with a dodgy contact you would expect more variability. And there
has never been a problem with the camera when I reinsert the SD card in
that. That doesn't exclude the laptop contacts as the problem, but
suggests that it isn't the SD card. But if it fails to occur with the
new SD card I'm trying, then we are back to the 2GB card as the problem.

I agree. FWIW, I haven't seen this problem on the newer, faster SD
cards. 2GB capacity suggests an older card to me. The min I see these
days is 4GB, and those are on sale, so I infer that 8GB will be the new
min. Current cards are "HC Class 4" or faster.

So I suspect that what you're seeing is a hiccup when Windows asks for
the (updated) directory information. The card's response is somewhat
delayed, and Windows thinks there is no directory, hence the "not
formatted" message. Or something like that.

Also, sounds like you've been rewriting the SD card quite a bit. You
could try copying the card's contents into a temporary directory, then
deleting all data or reformatting the card, and copying the data back to
it. Could clean up the directory, so that it responds faster next time.
But that's a (hopeful) guess.

Flash memory is actually rather delicate, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_leveling
for some details.

HTH,
Wolf K.

 

[Wolf K]

On 05/04/2012 8:31 AM, Wolf K wrote:

If your camera has a mini-USB port, use that to transfer images to the
computer. If it doesn't, that's could be another reason you "need" a new
camera.

Not always easy to justify "needing" a new gadget, I find. ;-)

Wolf K.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Jeff.

When I went out of state in 2010, I took along my new netbook. I saw a good
deal on a new SanDisk 4 GB "microSDHC Card with Adapter" and bought it.
Worked great in my laptop. But when I got home, my desktop computer refused
to read it. That's when I learned that SDHC is different - and I had to buy
a new adapter to read my new card in my older external SD card reader. The
micro card itself is physically much smaller; it fits into the
postage-stamp-size adapter, which fits into the card reader, but there is
apparently also an electronic difference. I've now added an internal card
reader that has slots for both size cards.

Something like that might be your problem, too.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2011 (Build 15.4.3555.0308) in Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1


"Jeff Layman" wrote in message
HP G61 laptop. Win7HPx64. Fully updated.

I have been using a Sandisk 2G SD card (from a Ricoh compact camera)
with this laptop without problem for a couple of years. In the last
month, on plugging in the card, instead of the usual popup asking
whether I want to open folder to view files with Windows Explorer, I get
an error message. This states that the card is unformatted and must be
formatted before opening. If I try to view the card in WE, it says the
file format is not known, and the card must be formatted.

If I then eject the card (through the USB symbol in the notification
area), pull it and reinsert it immediately, Win7 behaves normally in the
way it always has (card is FAT32).

Any ideas? It's not a great problem as it is easily fixed, but it does
puzzle me. Result of an update, perhaps?

 

[BillW50]

In R. C. White typed:

Hi, Jeff.

When I went out of state in 2010, I took along my new netbook. I saw
a good deal on a new SanDisk 4 GB "microSDHC Card with Adapter" and
bought it. Worked great in my laptop. But when I got home, my
desktop computer refused to read it. That's when I learned that SDHC
is different - and I had to buy a new adapter to read my new card in
my older external SD card reader. The micro card itself is
physically much smaller; it fits into the postage-stamp-size adapter,
which fits into the card reader, but there is apparently also an
electronic difference. I've now added an internal card reader that
has slots for both size cards.

Something like that might be your problem, too.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2011 (Build 15.4.3555.0308) in Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1


"Jeff Layman" wrote in message
HP G61 laptop. Win7HPx64. Fully updated.

I have been using a Sandisk 2G SD card (from a Ricoh compact camera)
with this laptop without problem for a couple of years. In the last
month, on plugging in the card, instead of the usual popup asking
whether I want to open folder to view files with Windows Explorer, I
get
an error message. This states that the card is unformatted and must
be formatted before opening. If I try to view the card in WE, it
says the file format is not known, and the card must be formatted.

If I then eject the card (through the USB symbol in the notification
area), pull it and reinsert it immediately, Win7 behaves normally in
the way it always has (card is FAT32).

Any ideas? It's not a great problem as it is easily fixed, but it
does puzzle me. Result of an update, perhaps?

I too can't read anything larger than 1GB SD card on my 9 Gateway and 5
Alienware card reader slots. Although my 3 netbooks can read at least up
to 16GB (I have three 16GB) cards just fine. And I too found that for
the other machines, you need an USB card reader to read the larger
(SDHC) cards.

I haven't checked on eBay lately, but I won auctions for them for 1 cent
or 6 cents each with free shipping from China. I don't know, but I have
over a dozen of them left and I have given many of them away. And they
work surprisingly great. So that is an option. They look a lot like this
one.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/180855915622

I guess now they go for less than 2 bucks each. The only flaw I found
with them is that they still will write to the card even if you have the
write protect switched on with the card.

 

[Jeff Layman]

On 05/04/2012 7:41 AM, Jeff Layman wrote:
[...]

I'm not convinced that it's a poor/intermittent contact problem. It
seems consistent that the first insert fails, and the second insert is
ok; with a dodgy contact you would expect more variability. And there
has never been a problem with the camera when I reinsert the SD card in
that. That doesn't exclude the laptop contacts as the problem, but
suggests that it isn't the SD card. But if it fails to occur with the
new SD card I'm trying, then we are back to the 2GB card as the problem.

I agree. FWIW, I haven't seen this problem on the newer, faster SD
cards. 2GB capacity suggests an older card to me. The min I see these
days is 4GB, and those are on sale, so I infer that 8GB will be the new
min. Current cards are "HC Class 4" or faster.

So I suspect that what you're seeing is a hiccup when Windows asks for
the (updated) directory information. The card's response is somewhat
delayed, and Windows thinks there is no directory, hence the "not
formatted" message. Or something like that.

The card is a Sandisk Extreme III 2GB SD (not SDHC), which will be 5
years old in August. I guess it could be showing signs of wearing out
in some way. It's only shown this in the last month. No problem in the
previous 2 years with Win7. I have an old XP machine (USB1 ports only!
I had to add a USB2 card to be able to use faster transfer rates)
which does not like reading /any/ memory cards through the USB2 card,
and frequently just stops reading them. No problem with the USB1 ports,
or indeed, USB2 using an external HD to backup.

Also, sounds like you've been rewriting the SD card quite a bit. You
could try copying the card's contents into a temporary directory, then
deleting all data or reformatting the card, and copying the data back to
it. Could clean up the directory, so that it responds faster next time.
But that's a (hopeful) guess.

I've just reformatted it (NB it was FAT, not FAT32 as in my OP). It'll
be interesting to see if that helps. If not, new cards are cheap
enough.

Flash memory is actually rather delicate, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_leveling
for some details.

Interesting article. Thanks.

 

[John Williamson]

In R. C. White typed:

I too can't read anything larger than 1GB SD card on my 9 Gateway and 5
Alienware card reader slots. Although my 3 netbooks can read at least up
to 16GB (I have three 16GB) cards just fine. And I too found that for
the other machines, you need an USB card reader to read the larger
(SDHC) cards.

I haven't checked on eBay lately, but I won auctions for them for 1 cent
or 6 cents each with free shipping from China. I don't know, but I have
over a dozen of them left and I have given many of them away. And they
work surprisingly great. So that is an option. They look a lot like this
one.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/180855915622

I guess now they go for less than 2 bucks each. The only flaw I found
with them is that they still will write to the card even if you have the
write protect switched on with the card.

The OP's problem isn't that his netbook never could read the card, it's
that since an undetermined date, he can't read it on the first attempt.
The card used to work with the reader in his computer, so *something*
has changed, either in the computer or in the card.