SmartMedia losing its mind?

D.Myers · Jan 25, 2002

How many of you have experienced this problem:

You take a bunch of photos on a smart media card,

You view the photos on location via the LCD screen on the camera (3040 in my case)

You get home and put the card in a card reader to find that it says its empty

You put the card back in the camera and it says NO PICTURES

But you notice that for an EMPTY card it should hold more pictures that the camera says.....

what is the deal with that? i had a picture of BIG FOOT and a UFO and lost both my shots becuse of this error.

Daniella68313 · Jan 25, 2002

This look like a bad card.

did you try taking just a couple of test picture on top of that to see if you get the datas back..that is the UFO and the big foot

This never happend to me and i hope it will not. that's why i don,t like using card reader and i prefer to leave the card in the camera and touch it as little as possible. PS you should never put your finger on the gold part.

D.Myers said:
How many of you have experienced this problem:

You take a bunch of photos on a smart media card,

You view the photos on location via the LCD screen on the camera
(3040 in my case)

You get home and put the card in a card reader to find that it says
its empty

You put the card back in the camera and it says NO PICTURES

But you notice that for an EMPTY card it should hold more pictures
that the camera says.....

what is the deal with that? i had a picture of BIG FOOT and a UFO
and lost both my shots becuse of this error.

--Daniella http://www.pbase.com/zylenC7OO discussion group: http://www.homepet.com/cgi-bin/c700/UltraBoard.cgi

Inigo Montoya · Jan 25, 2002

If you haven't reformatted the card yet, you might want to try this program:

http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue

it's a free download to find out if it can recover your pics, but you have to buy it to enable the actual recovery. I've been fortunate enough to never have had to try it, but others have reported success.

D.Myers said:
How many of you have experienced this problem:

You take a bunch of photos on a smart media card,

You view the photos on location via the LCD screen on the camera
(3040 in my case)

You get home and put the card in a card reader to find that it says
its empty

You put the card back in the camera and it says NO PICTURES

But you notice that for an EMPTY card it should hold more pictures
that the camera says.....

what is the deal with that? i had a picture of BIG FOOT and a UFO
and lost both my shots becuse of this error.

Bad Dog · Jan 25, 2002

have you used your card reader to look in other locations (folders)on the smart media. If the 2 olympus folders are there can you move the pics to them?

D.Myers said:
How many of you have experienced this problem:

You take a bunch of photos on a smart media card,

You view the photos on location via the LCD screen on the camera
(3040 in my case)

You get home and put the card in a card reader to find that it says
its empty

You put the card back in the camera and it says NO PICTURES

But you notice that for an EMPTY card it should hold more pictures
that the camera says.....

what is the deal with that? i had a picture of BIG FOOT and a UFO
and lost both my shots becuse of this error.

--If you can smile when things go wrong, you have someone in mind to blame.

Surya · Jan 25, 2002

Let me guess.

Do you routinely use the PC to delete pictures from your smartcard.
By any chance do you use WindowsXP?

You can reproduce the problem as follows:

Step 1: Delete your pictures from the PC smartcard drive (Smart Card Inserted into reader).

Step 2: Remove the smartcard. (after this you will see an error on PC saying a delayed write failed).
Step 3: Put the smartcard back into camera and take pictures.

Step 4: put the smartcard back into the reader. (Now the delayed write kicks in erasing the newly taken pictures).
Fortunately it only destroys the FAT (File Access Table) I think.

IF you run CheckDisk on the smartcard drive (with the problem smartcard inserted) you may recover the pictures.

I had this problem twice. From then onwards I always use the camera to delete the images.

D.Myers said:
How many of you have experienced this problem:

You take a bunch of photos on a smart media card,

You view the photos on location via the LCD screen on the camera
(3040 in my case)

You get home and put the card in a card reader to find that it says
its empty

You put the card back in the camera and it says NO PICTURES

But you notice that for an EMPTY card it should hold more pictures
that the camera says.....

what is the deal with that? i had a picture of BIG FOOT and a UFO
and lost both my shots becuse of this error.

D.Myers · Jan 25, 2002

Surya you hit the nail on the head......

Daniella68313 · Jan 25, 2002

That sound like a wierd bug. It never happend to me and i always delete my photo from window explorer but i don't use a reader. I usually copy them on the hard disk first, then i delete them after i make sure they are copied.

I don't use XP and the more i hear about XP the less i want to use it

Surya said:
Do you routinely use the PC to delete pictures from your smartcard.
By any chance do you use WindowsXP?

You can reproduce the problem as follows:
Step 1: Delete your pictures from the PC smartcard drive (Smart
Card Inserted into reader).
Step 2: Remove the smartcard. (after this you will see an error on
PC saying a delayed write failed).
Step 3: Put the smartcard back into camera and take pictures.
Step 4: put the smartcard back into the reader. (Now the delayed
write kicks in erasing the newly taken pictures).
Fortunately it only destroys the FAT (File Access Table) I think.

IF you run CheckDisk on the smartcard drive (with the problem
smartcard inserted) you may recover the pictures.

I had this problem twice. From then onwards I always use the
camera to delete the images.

D.Myers said:

How many of you have experienced this problem:

You take a bunch of photos on a smart media card,

You view the photos on location via the LCD screen on the camera
(3040 in my case)

You get home and put the card in a card reader to find that it says
its empty

You put the card back in the camera and it says NO PICTURES

But you notice that for an EMPTY card it should hold more pictures
that the camera says.....

what is the deal with that? i had a picture of BIG FOOT and a UFO
and lost both my shots becuse of this error.

Click to expand...

--Daniella http://www.pbase.com/zylenC7OO discussion group: http://www.homepet.com/cgi-bin/c700/UltraBoard.cgi

R. Slaughter · Jan 25, 2002

Daniella said:
I don't use XP and the more i hear about XP the less i want to use
it

Surya said:

Do you routinely use the PC to delete pictures from your smartcard.
By any chance do you use WindowsXP?

You can reproduce the problem as follows:
Step 1: Delete your pictures from the PC smartcard drive (Smart
Card Inserted into reader).
Step 2: Remove the smartcard. (after this you will see an error on
PC saying a delayed write failed).
Step 3: Put the smartcard back into camera and take pictures.
Step 4: put the smartcard back into the reader. (Now the delayed
write kicks in erasing the newly taken pictures).
Fortunately it only destroys the FAT (File Access Table) I think.

IF you run CheckDisk on the smartcard drive (with the problem
smartcard inserted) you may recover the pictures.

I had this problem twice. From then onwards I always use the
camera to delete the images.

D.Myers said:

How many of you have experienced this problem:

You take a bunch of photos on a smart media card,

You view the photos on location via the LCD screen on the camera
(3040 in my case)

You get home and put the card in a card reader to find that it says
its empty

You put the card back in the camera and it says NO PICTURES

But you notice that for an EMPTY card it should hold more pictures
that the camera says.....

what is the deal with that? i had a picture of BIG FOOT and a UFO
and lost both my shots becuse of this error.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I just got in from an afternoon of picture taking with 122 exposures on the (128MB) card. I put the card in the card reader, saw a dialog indicating a delayed-write failure and no pics. Put the card back in the cam, it said "No Pictures" and showed room for 52 new pics. I resisted the urge to format the card, set it aside, signed on to ask about it and saw this thread right on top.

I see that Surya has exactly described the sequence for me (using XP) now the question is what now? I'll try the checkdisk thing and report back.

No bigfoot or UFOs on mine but I have (had) Elvis at the Kmart and a candid of Martha Stewart having no idea what to do with some pine cones and tissue paper.

Ricky--R. Slaughter'The wonder of the internet isn't how massive the network becomes, but how miniscule becomes the world.' ~~RLSC 54.772256-E2 (Z) http://www.pbase.com/nufsed/galleries~~

Inigo Montoya · Jan 25, 2002

I would try photorescue before chkdsk.... if that program shows it can recover your pics, you can then decide how much $$ (the registration fee) it's worth to recover them.

Chkdsk might work, but it could also do further damage as it also
must write to the card to make its changes.

R. Slaughter said:
Daniella said:

I don't use XP and the more i hear about XP the less i want to use
it

Surya said:

Do you routinely use the PC to delete pictures from your smartcard.
By any chance do you use WindowsXP?

You can reproduce the problem as follows:
Step 1: Delete your pictures from the PC smartcard drive (Smart
Card Inserted into reader).
Step 2: Remove the smartcard. (after this you will see an error on
PC saying a delayed write failed).
Step 3: Put the smartcard back into camera and take pictures.
Step 4: put the smartcard back into the reader. (Now the delayed
write kicks in erasing the newly taken pictures).
Fortunately it only destroys the FAT (File Access Table) I think.

IF you run CheckDisk on the smartcard drive (with the problem
smartcard inserted) you may recover the pictures.

I had this problem twice. From then onwards I always use the
camera to delete the images.

D.Myers said:

How many of you have experienced this problem:

You take a bunch of photos on a smart media card,

You view the photos on location via the LCD screen on the camera
(3040 in my case)

You get home and put the card in a card reader to find that it says
its empty

You put the card back in the camera and it says NO PICTURES

But you notice that for an EMPTY card it should hold more pictures
that the camera says.....

what is the deal with that? i had a picture of BIG FOOT and a UFO
and lost both my shots becuse of this error.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I just got in from an afternoon of picture taking with 122
exposures on the (128MB) card. I put the card in the card reader,
saw a dialog indicating a delayed-write failure and no pics. Put
the card back in the cam, it said "No Pictures" and showed room for
52 new pics. I resisted the urge to format the card, set it aside,
signed on to ask about it and saw this thread right on top.
I see that Surya has exactly described the sequence for me (using
XP) now the question is what now? I'll try the checkdisk thing and
report back.
No bigfoot or UFOs on mine but I have (had) Elvis at the Kmart and
a candid of Martha Stewart having no idea what to do with some pine
cones and tissue paper.

Ricky
--
R. Slaughter
'The wonder of the internet isn't how massive the network becomes,
but how miniscule becomes the world.' RLS
C 54.772256-E2 (Z)

http://www.pbase.com/nufsed/galleries

Inigo Montoya · Jan 25, 2002

I've used a Lexar combo reader, and a Zio, and both enable
the option to "eject" your drive when you right click on the main
drive icon. While neither can physically eject the SM card, what it
does is tell Windows that you're planning on removing the card and
that it needs to make those last minutes writes now .

The Zio driver even puts up a "Safe Eject" pop-up afterward stating
"it is now safe to remove the media from the drive".

Other ways to avoid problems... if you're going to delete the
files using your reader, highlight them then press Shift-Delete.
This tells Windows NOT to try to move them to a recycling bin,
and to simply remove them straight away.

Personally, I find it just as fast/easy to copy everything off in the reader,
and then reformat the card in the camera (faster than a "delete all" usually).

jim kelly · Jan 25, 2002

Eric Carlson · Jan 25, 2002

I always format my cards in the camera before I reuse them, and I always use Windows "Eject" feature to tell windows to "give up" the card before I pull it out of it from the reader.

Every time, before you remove the card from the reader do this:

1. Make sure any other drive letter is highlighted, not the SmartMedia letter.

2. Right click on the SmartMedia drive letter

3. Select "Eject" from the pop-up menu

4. Wait till Windows is done (a few seconds, and you should see the highlight change)

5. Remove the card from the reader.
--- Eric, http://www.InvisibleRobot.com/

R. Slaughter · Jan 25, 2002

Eric Carlson said:
I always format my cards in the camera before I reuse them, and I
always use Windows "Eject" feature to tell windows to "give up" the
card before I pull it out of it from the reader.

Every time, before you remove the card from the reader do this:

1. Make sure any other drive letter is highlighted, not the
SmartMedia letter.

2. Right click on the SmartMedia drive letter

3. Select "Eject" from the pop-up menu

4. Wait till Windows is done (a few seconds, and you should see the
highlight change)

These are all good sugestions. I did delete a large number of pics from the card in the reader and then later (much later) removed the card. I then put the card in the camera and formatted the card there. From what I gather here, the real issue is not formatting in cam but the fact that XP hadn't given permission to remove it, therefore, the next card (any card)stuck in the reader was due to get screwed. I usually "eject" the card to be safe but didn't do it this time. I won't make that mistake again.

I know the pics are still on the card I just have to figure out how to recover them now.

Ricky--R. Slaughter'The wonder of the internet isn't how massive the network becomes, but how miniscule becomes the world.' ~~RLSC 54.772256-E2 (Z) http://www.pbase.com/nufsed/galleries~~

Eric Carlson · Jan 25, 2002

Did you try running Scandisk?

R. Slaughter said:
I know the pics are still on the card I just have to figure out how
to recover them now.

--- Eric, http://www.InvisibleRobot.com/

Atlanta-Mike · Jan 25, 2002

I had something similar happen to me. After filling the card, I put it in the reader and tried to copy the files to the PC using Windows Explorer (Win 2K server PC). All my files were corrupt and gave me a Bad CRC error, except one. The one photo that was good, was taken about a month earlier. Of course I had filled and deleted the card several times since that photo, but somehow it was back. Ever since then, I have been formatting the card in the camera before each use. It doesn't add that much time and I have had no problems since.

Mike H

D.Myers said:
How many of you have experienced this problem:

You take a bunch of photos on a smart media card,

You view the photos on location via the LCD screen on the camera
(3040 in my case)

You get home and put the card in a card reader to find that it says
its empty

You put the card back in the camera and it says NO PICTURES

But you notice that for an EMPTY card it should hold more pictures
that the camera says.....

what is the deal with that? i had a picture of BIG FOOT and a UFO
and lost both my shots becuse of this error.

Dan Ausbun · Jan 25, 2002

Everybody who's had the guys from the black helicopters come and put the computer chip in their brain knows that UFO pictures go on Memory Sticks and Bigfoot only poses for Compact Flash cameras. Sheesh...

D.Myers said:
i had a picture of BIG FOOT and a UFO
and lost both my shots becuse of this error.

jarhead · Jan 25, 2002

D.Myers said:
How many of you have experienced this problem:

You take a bunch of photos on a smart media card,

You view the photos on location via the LCD screen on the camera
(3040 in my case)

You get home and put the card in a card reader to find that it says
its empty

You put the card back in the camera and it says NO PICTURES

But you notice that for an EMPTY card it should hold more pictures
that the camera says.....

what is the deal with that? i had a picture of BIG FOOT and a UFO
and lost both my shots becuse of this error.

This happened to me last week and I took the sm card out of the zio reader,put in back in the camera and downloaded the pics directly from the the camera to the compluter(slow process), and then like others have said I put it back in the camera and did the format thing.

jar

R. Slaughter · Jan 25, 2002

jarhead said:
This happened to me last week and I took the sm card out of the zio
reader,put in back in the camera and downloaded the pics directly
from the the camera to the compluter(slow process), and then like
others have said I put it back in the camera and did the format
thing.

jar

JH: This would not help in my case because the reader error corrupted the file system on the card and the cam could no longer 'see' them.

Thanks to Inigo's suggestion, I downloaded the photorescue demo and ran it on my card...it promptly 'found' the pics and displayed thumbnails for each! The demo won't support saving them (purchase is required) so I purchased the program and am now waiting for email confirmation to run it. It appears that it will have no trouble with the recovery...I'll let you know.

Ricky--R. Slaughter'The wonder of the internet isn't how massive the network becomes, but how miniscule becomes the world.' ~~RLSC 54.772256-E2 (Z) http://www.pbase.com/nufsed/galleries~~

R. Slaughter · Jan 25, 2002

R. Slaughter said:
Thanks to Inigo's suggestion, I downloaded the photorescue demo and
ran it on my card...it promptly 'found' the pics and displayed
thumbnails for each! The demo won't support saving them (purchase
is required) so I purchased the program and am now waiting for
email confirmation to run it. It appears that it will have no
trouble with the recovery...I'll let you know.
Ricky

I got the email of the full version. It performed as advertised and all photos were recovered! Great stuff!

Now... I will "eject" the card and then format in camera and go abnout taking pictures again. Thanks again to all, especially, Surya for the explanation and Inigo for the link.

Regards,

Ricky--R. Slaughter'The wonder of the internet isn't how massive the network becomes, but how miniscule becomes the world.' ~~RLSC 54.772256-E2 (Z) http://www.pbase.com/nufsed/galleries~~

Bad Dog · Jan 26, 2002

Am I seeing a problem with just 1 type of card reader or are there other card reader manufacturers that are having this problem??

D.Myers said:
How many of you have experienced this problem:

You take a bunch of photos on a smart media card,

You view the photos on location via the LCD screen on the camera
(3040 in my case)

You get home and put the card in a card reader to find that it says
its empty

You put the card back in the camera and it says NO PICTURES

But you notice that for an EMPTY card it should hold more pictures
that the camera says.....

what is the deal with that? i had a picture of BIG FOOT and a UFO
and lost both my shots becuse of this error.

--If you can smile when things go wrong, you have someone in mind to blame.

SmartMedia losing its mind?

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