Compact Flash Failure and I/O Device Error on Compact Flash Card

[PhyllisI]

My experience with CompactFlash has been less than stellar. I now have four CF cards and two have problems. My SanDisk 512MB card failured many months ago and I haven't explored whether it could be replaced with the SanDisk warranty. God only knows where the receipt is from when I purchased it at Costco. I put it into my computer tower's card reader again tonight to check it to try to remember what was wrong with it and a message pops up "I/O Device Error." What's that?

On my new card, one or two months old, a SanDisk ultra II 1.0 GB card, I took images tonight of my kids in brand new Halloween costumes. I viewed them on my computer screen then tried to retrieve the images through my picture editing program. Just attempting that, things started hanging. I tried to retreive the images from my picture editor program and I couldn't get anything from the CF. So I put it back into the camera to see if I can view the images there and I get a message on the camera screen which says "Card failure." One minute everything was working, the next minute I get card failure! Are the images still there? What do I have to do to get them back? What am I doing wrong? Online searches and reading claims CF technology is stable, the cards have a high read/erase cycle and some users are saying they're still using cards that are 5 years old. I've not had good luck with two of my four cards. It's like they foul up in 2-6 months! So, how do I begin to get the images off these two failed cards? Also, what is the protocol for deleting images? Is it best NOT to delete images when the card is in the media reader of the computer tower? Perhaps I should only delete them on the digital camera? I've read varying views on this.

[Cricket]

From what you've posted I wouldn't really blame the Compact Flash cards...I would be looking at the card reader in the computer.

What brand reader are you using?

What kind of computer is this? Home built or name brand?

What OS are you using?

What imaging editing program are you using?

What kind of background programs are running on the computer?

If you're using Windows, is it up to date with the updates from Microsoft?

Is the computer clean of viruses?

What about spyware and malware? Do you do regular scans to be sure your computer is clean?

What kind of digital camera are you using?

Cricket

[Panama Red]

Some Rules I've learned after creating my own problems.

1 - Always use the camera to delete pictures or format media. Never use the computer or the camera may not even recognize the media

2 - Use the Safely Remove Hardware icon near the clock before removing USB devices.

3 - Use the "eject" option when removing media cards from Card Readers. Right click the correct Removable Media location in My Computer and select "eject" to release the media before removing it from the computer. Removing media while the reader is "hot" can cause corrupted data.

[Gizmo]

Originally Posted by Panama Red 2 - Use the Safely Remove Hardware icon near the clock before removing USB devices.

I second that. I recently had a PSU blow up on me when removing a USB camera before using XP's "Safely Remove Hardware" utility to switch the device off. It caused a short that was enough to make the PSU react. Luckily it wasn't enough to cause data corruption on the harddrive or the camera's memory card.

[Science_guy]

Another tip is to frequently reformat the card using the camera's formatting command.