Post by thread:[EE] Dead CF card

I have an old Canon Digital Ixus camera which has a 1GB Sandisk (supposedly - it was bought off ebay) that has died. The card claims to be a SanDisk ultra II 1.0GB, but has no serial number on it anywhere, but another SanDisk card that a colleague owns has a serial number and country of origin printed on the edge, so I suspect it to be a rip off card. It was working fine in the camera, but the camera is a pain to use on USB to download the images, as one needs to use the specific Canon software to get to it, and the software could be better. The camera does not appear as a removable disk when plugged into the USB. So I put the card into a USB CF card adapter, and the PC saw it as a drive for a short time, but then it went awry, and now will not work in the adapter, or the camera. The camera will not format it, nor will another camera here at work that takes CF cards. Is anyone aware of any reason why the CF card could die when used like this? If the card has no likely means of recovery, I am tempted to try and open it. It looks like there is a metal cover each side which should pry off easily enough.

Hmmm, other card physical formats (SD, MMC, xD, etc.) rely on contacts rather than pins. The standard failure of CF cards is bent pins on the 'host', and 'stretched ' contacts on the card. This sounds like neither. Perhaps it is a victim of cheap knock-off's. Certainly, a card that behaves 'suspiciously' can never be trusted again, even if it does appear to work again. I am a serious amateur photographer, and I would never use a flakey card for anything valuable. Thus, I would consider the card to be dead, and go ahead and dis-assemble it. Perhaps you can see if there's a stretched socket, and fix that. Otherwise, play with it, then chuck it. Before you destroy it though, if it were me, I would try it in a linux machine. Even if the existing file-system is corrupt, it may be able to re-format it. Rolf Alan B. Pearce wrote: {Quote hidden}> I have an old Canon Digital Ixus camera which has a 1GB Sandisk > (supposedly - it was bought off ebay) that has died. The card claims to be a > SanDisk ultra II 1.0GB, but has no serial number on it anywhere, but another > SanDisk card that a colleague owns has a serial number and country of origin > printed on the edge, so I suspect it to be a rip off card. > > It was working fine in the camera, but the camera is a pain to use on USB to > download the images, as one needs to use the specific Canon software to get > to it, and the software could be better. The camera does not appear as a > removable disk when plugged into the USB. > > So I put the card into a USB CF card adapter, and the PC saw it as a drive > for a short time, but then it went awry, and now will not work in the > adapter, or the camera. The camera will not format it, nor will another > camera here at work that takes CF cards. > > Is anyone aware of any reason why the CF card could die when used like this? > > If the card has no likely means of recovery, I am tempted to try and open > it. It looks like there is a metal cover each side which should pry off > easily enough. > >

On Mon, Jan 29, 2007 at 11:05:01AM -0000, Alan B. Pearce wrote: > So I put the card into a USB CF card adapter, and the PC saw it as a drive > for a short time, but then it went awry, and now will not work in the > adapter, or the camera. The camera will not format it, nor will another > camera here at work that takes CF cards. > Is anyone aware of any reason why the CF card could die when used like this? I have been able to revive CF cards on several occasions by plugging them into a Linux host, and erasing them by issuing this as root: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdX ( <--your CF card ) No need to specify length, the command will stop at the end of storage space. Careful not to specify a drive with good data for the output file (of) !! CAREFUL NOT TO SPECIFY A DRIVE WITH GOOD DATA FOR THE OUTPUT FILE (of) !! Although this does not 'low level' the card, it does seem to knock down the bits that confuse windows or the embedded device (like your camera). I do not know why CF cards get like this after some use, but after using dd to 'erase' them, they appear to work again... most of the time! Take care, -Chris -- | Christopher Cole, Cole Design and Development spam_OUTcoleTakeThisOuTcoledd.com | | Embedded Electronics and Software Design http://coledd.com |

> Hi Alan, have you tried formatting it on PC, removing partition, using > some kind of tool...? > And trying to connect the whole USB/CF to another PC? The problem is that when I plug it into the adapter, and plug the adapter into the USB, I get no recognition of the card by WinXP. Looking in the device manager it gives a little exclamation mark, and won't do anything. On this basis I suspect the card has had a hardware failure.

Alan, On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 11:05:01 -0000, Alan B. Pearce wrote: > I have an old Canon Digital Ixus camera which has a 1GB Sandisk > (supposedly - it was bought off ebay) that has died. The card claims to be a > SanDisk ultra II 1.0GB, but has no serial number on it anywhere, but another > SanDisk card that a colleague owns has a serial number and country of origin > printed on the edge, so I suspect it to be a rip off card. I'd bet folding money on it - SanDisk always have a serial number on their cards (on the edge of CFs, on one of the faces of thinner cards like SD). >... > So I put the card into a USB CF card adapter, and the PC saw it as a drive > for a short time, but then it went awry, and now will not work in the > adapter, or the camera. The camera will not format it, nor will another > camera here at work that takes CF cards. > > Is anyone aware of any reason why the CF card could die when used like this? It could easily be a broken connection inside, caused by bad manufacturing and vibration/shock, or even just electrical load. > If the card has no likely means of recovery, I am tempted to try and open > it. It looks like there is a metal cover each side which should pry off > easily enough. I've never taken one apart (amazingly - I do that to everything else :-) but there were photos on a web site, I think Digital Depot, who have a shop in Stevenage, of a real and a failed fake card from a famous maker, and the differences were obvious. They found and photographed the failure, and it was a visible physical break in a connection between the chip and the external contacts. If yours is terminal, as it seems, I see no reason not to dissect it and have a look. Cheers, Howard Winter St.Albans, England

>> printed on the edge, so I suspect it to be a rip off card. > >I'd bet folding money on it - SanDisk always have a serial >number on their cards (on the edge of CFs, on one of the >faces of thinner cards like SD). I was figuring that too. The card actually belongs to a work colleague, who is lending me his digital camera while I go over to Nurnberg for the week, to go to the Toy Fair, and have some holiday. He is going back through eBay to the trader he bought it from, though the trader is no longer a listed eBay seller, and had 4 name changes at 4-6 month intervals. He also has Paypal to fall back on to get his money back, something like all of £11, so it looks like I won't get a look inside until that is all over.