Susan,
I had a CF card go bad during downloading a while back before all the images were downloaded. I did a fair amount of investigating at that time and wound up sending the card to Photorescue in Belgium as we could not fix it here. I asked the same question about my card-is it useable and, if so, how. The answer as I remember it, was that once this happens the card might be able to function but is unstable and liable to lose images. I chose to replace the card. I have no knowledge about this other than as I relate.
Carl
Susan,
Sorry about your misfortune and thanks so much for the warning. Just for clarification. Are you saying that I should not detach my card reader from the USB port while the card is still in it?
Every USB card reader I’ve ever seen simply appears as another drive. There is no starting/stopping/dismounting option.
It either has media in it or not, just like CD ROM.
Now, PCMCIA slot usage on laptops…THOSE are supposed to be "stopped" before pulling the media out. Are you actually talking about that type interface, or USB connected card reader?
You are on a Mac, right? If using USB, it shouldn’t perform any differently than USB on PC, AFAIK.
Mac
On the Mac my CF card in its USB reader shows up as a device just like an external hard drive or an external floppy – and it appears that just like these should be dismounted before you pull the plug (either pulling the card from the reader or pulling the reader from the USB connection) – in OSX.3 the sidebar on the finder window makes it easy – there’s a little eject button beside each external device. I think the risk is that if you don’t do this the card could be busy writing and you can pull the plug as it does this – and the net result is scrambled card. I’ve done it before with floppy discs and with a small CF card – but in both cases while the data was scrambled reformating the disc fixed it. Of course i’ve also accidentally done it and had nothing go wrong at all except an error message from the Mac saying the device wasn’t properly put away before disconnecting (or something to that effect)
Every USB card reader I’ve ever seen simply appears as another drive. There is no starting/stopping/dismounting option.
It either has media in it or not, just like CD ROM.
It’s rare for me to disagree with you Mac, but this time, I do. Every OS has an eject option for memory cards. And as I’ve pointed out just a few days ago (on this board), you should always, always use the Eject function before removing either the card, or disconnecting the reader itself from the computer.
It’s a bad practice to simply pull the card or the plug of a reader with a card in it before dismounting the media in it.
As Susan just learned, you could damage the card both physically and logically.
Ray
Susan,
First, I’m sorry for your lost. Very annoying and, as you say, costly.
Have a look at this software :
http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/download.htm I haven’t tried it myself, and have very little experience in card problems, but perhaps this will do your card some good.
Ray
Mark,
Not unless you have ejected the card (through the OS) before.
Ray
Ray – the card died after I downloaded the images, so i just need to reformat it. Photorescue do have a drive diagnostics and format utility but it couldn’t see the card. The good news is that Fuji Australia will honour the warranty even for cards purchased overseas if i have proof of purchase (I bought this one in the UK). The bad news is that I can’t find the **** receipt anywhere – and I paid cash so I don’t even have a credit card record. I’m just going to send it to their service centre in Aus with a polite letter begging, pleading and grovelling and see if they can do anything with it.
I have always used the safely remove hardware on my compact flash reader. However….. Last week I purchased one of the multi-card readers. San-Disk usb-2,it shows up as 4 hard drives, and each of the four slots has a green lite if it is being used.
One of the reasons I got it was because the documentation SAYS, it is save to put the card in, or remove the card, or multiple cards, without haveing to eject the device, AS LONG AS the green lites are not flashing.
I haven’t put it into heavy use yet at one of my shows, but I am hoping it is HOT swappable as stated.
HERE’S HOPING
Ralph
<
http://www.darkstar.us>
Great info on this subject. Thank you all. I’m fairly new to card readers and this info may save me some headaches in the future.
Thanks kindly, Ron
The eject option in Windows is for, as you say, dismounting the drive.
Meaning, unplugging it on a PC while the computer is on. Has nothing to do with pulling CF cards in and out. Simple as that.
As long as the card is not being read from or written to at the time, it is perfectly safe to remove the card at any time.
Since I never unplug the drive while the computer is powered up, there is no reason to ever use the eject option.
Mac
Hmmmm,
Perhaps I’m one of those who is on the list for "it" to happen, but thus fare it has not. I routinely just pull the card out of the reader. The same for the Flash Drive I use.
In my twisted logic, it makes no sense to dismount the drive just to take the card out. Then, in order to use it again you must unplug the reader and plug it back in.
Dick
Yup.
Any platform, too.
I have a SCSI external HD on my old Macintosh.
Should I dismount it every time I’m NOT using it to write/read files? Of course not.
I have SCSI CD-R drive on my PC. Should I "eject" it everytime I’m not using it. Of course not.
Same with my USB card reader.
Mac
I am probably the most lucky guy in town, but the Eject function in my (now unused) Windows machine served only to eject the card, not dismount the reader itself (Sandisk USB 2.0) The light remained on and as soon as I inserted another card, it would show up, without me having to disconnect/reconnect the reader. Which makes me thinks that the Eject function was really an Eject function, not a dismount.
And, on my Mac, I use the card reader included in my printer, and when I use the Eject option (right click on the drive icon on the desktop), I most certainly don’t have to either turn off / on the printer, or disconnect / reconnect the printer USB cable before I can use another card. I simply put in the other card and it shows up on the desktop.
But everyone is entitled to their own opinion and their way of doing things. Still, for greater security, I prefer to eject my cards before pulling them out of the reader 🙂
Ray
I have a Sandisk 8 in 1 Reader/Writer. In the quick start guide on page 7 the directions for removing media states:
windows-1. open my computer
2. right click on corresponding drive
3. select eject (not applicable in 98 SE)
4. pull the media out of slot
mac-drag the untitled removable disk icon to the desktop Trash icon and then pull the media out of the slot
—
Have A Nice Day, 🙂
James Hutchinson
http://www.pbase.com/myeyesview http://www.myeyesviewstudio.com/
Raymond Robillard wrote:
But everyone is entitled to their own opinion and their way of doing things.
Ray,
That’s what makes horse racing, so they say. And, BTW, I did discover the eject function with the right click. I was thinking earlier about the "safely remove hardware" icon in the system tray.
Dick
Hi Susan, sorry to hear about your card problem. Have you tried the First Aid option in Disk Utility in the Mac OS? I just put my 16MB card that came with my camera (don’t want to ruin my 256 one), let it mount, then I opened Utilities –> Disk Utility and selected that disk from the list and then chose the First Aid tab. Not sure if this is an option to correct your problem, but you may want you give it a try. Hope it works for you!
One more thing you have to be very careful with CF cards in the camera too, never turn off the camera when it is writing to the card, that’ll cause potential damage too. You’re not alone, in the beginning with my card reader I got that message that I didn’t eject or dismount the disk prior to disconnecting a number of times before I realized exactly what could happen. That’s the only way to learn…been doing that for the past two years with all this digital stuff and haven’t destroyed anything yet, but came close a few times!
Barb
EDIT: OOPS…I didn’t see the computer wouldn’t recognize it either, sorry.
Susan, I just had the same thing happen to one of my cards (a Lexar 16X 256mb unit), and it wasn’t because I pulled it out of a reader. In fact, because I had been using two cards that day, I reformatted both in the camera (that went fine) put one away and left one in. The next time I went to use the stored card, (a week later) it was no good.
I suppose the good news is that Lexar has given me an RMA# for return. On their email with the RMA#, it states please ‘try’ to enclose a copy of the receipt. If your card is a model that is recent enough that it HAS to be under warranty, then I think they should replace it, receipt or not.
One thing I forgot to mention, these little babies have a limited lifespan. They won’t last forever. I think (and I emphasize on the word THINK, I don’t have any link to explain this) that their limit is roughly one thousand writes (fully filling the card). It might be a good idea to check with the manufacturer’s website to learn how many writing operation a card can take before being subject to failures.
As time passes, I kind of collect CF card. Some are of the same size and brands as previous ones. So, I wrote a number on each card, and when possible, the date it was acquired. For instance, I have three 256MB Sandisk cards. Knowing which one is the oldest, when taking special pictures (trips, for example), I’m less likely to use this one as my first and main card, just because it’s the oldest and might fall the first.
As people are moving up towards bigger and bigger cameras, they’re likely to buy new cards to go along, problems with cards will appear as people keep their first cards while also using the newer ones. I think it’s a good practice to be able to identify which card is older.
Ray
My failed CF card had nowhere near that many writes onto it – it was my newest one, and even if I’d written every single image I’d ever taken onto it, (I’m up to 4100 on this camera) that’s only the equivalent of filling the card 40 or so times. I would think the shutter on my camera is more likely to expire before the CF card (256Mb card, holds 125 or so 4Mpixel Highest quality Jpeg images, so 1000 writes fully filling the card is around 125000 shots. Unless of course it means 1000 formats of the card – even so, i’d only reformat the card a couple of times a week, so it should be expected to last some years. Sandisk and Transcend provide a 5 year warranty here in Australia (with a receipt!! – naturally I can’t find the receipts for my other cards, although I do have a credit card record for those) which seems to indicate that they would be expected to last a while.
It all does seem to suggest that you may be better off buying several smaller cards (I use 256Mb cards) rather than one large one, as the consequence of failure of a big one is potentially much more catastrophic in terms of lost pictures.
Susan S
Unlike SmartMedia card or Sony Memory Stick, CF card has the "brains" in the card itself (a chip). And chips can always fail.
You have to remember that MTBF (mean time between failure) is just that, a mean. Means that half the devices fail before and half fail after that figure.
Just like hard drives, a CF card might last 10 years or 10 months, and how much it’s used might not figure into the equation at all.
And absolutely, many pros use smaller cards than the going largest capacity ones, just for that reason.
It’s also one reason that the IBM MicroDrive didn’t achieve more popularity than it has — the "all the eggs in one basket" idea. (that, and the fact that other media, especially CF, shot up in capacity, and with no moving parts).
Mac
Mac – Pedant mode on – if half the devices fail before and half after then it’s actually the median time before failure, not the mean….But in general terms you are quite right, and I was not thinking accurately – it’s just that my card was a long way out on the distribution if Ray’s data on expected life was correct. (I have – pity the poor students who suffered through it – taught basic stats at a tertiary level despite it being the one branch of maths about which I do not have a Clue. I shouldn’t have made that error!)
Yep, always did get those two mixed up 🙂
But MTBF does refer to "Mean Time Between Failures" or "Mean Time Before Failure". So, it’s how long the manufacturer "expects" it to last, an "average".
But of course, this is done somehow in lab testing, it’s not an actual representative sample from users AFAIK (As Far As I Know).
As always YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) with any device, whether it’s a computer or a car. And there can always be a BDOTAL (Bad Day On The Assembly Line) with anything.
Mac "member of Acronyms Anonymous" McDougald
Mac "member of Acronyms Anonymous" McDougald
Mac, FWIW I know a good MCSW who can help
Dick
Mac, FWIW I know a good MCSW who can help
Microsoft Certified System Weirdo?
M
For a number of years, I was involved with I.T. for a book publisher here in Canada.
On one support call I had a woman (a pretentious name-dropper and social climber) chirp to me that her husband had just become an MCP. Though I knew what the acronym meant (Microsoft Certified Professional), it was worth feigning ignorance to see the look on her face when I said "Oooh, that must be distressing," then, after a small pause, continued with "to suddenly find out your husband is a Male Chauvanist Pig!"
Mac, that should have been LCSW! But your def is a good one.
Dick
Update: all credit to Fuji Australia: despite the fact that I had no proof of purchase and the card was bought overseas, they did in fact honour the warranty and I received a replacement in the post this morning. (of course it came 24 four hours after I had to go and buy a replacement because I needed to use it, but that’s hardly their fault!)
Susan S
Susan, you never have too many CF cards…! Glad they came through for you.
Chuck – especially as I have just started to shot a lot more RAW, which effectively halves the capacity of the cards! The replacement is a higher speed card too, which was nice of them.
Susan S
Susan, that’s very nice of them, indeed. And just as Chuck said, you can never have too many of those little things!
Ray
