need some forum help or advice

i recently bought a 16 gig compact flash card for the d3. i was shooting a pro bb game the other night and had over 900 images on it. as usual the best ones were toward the end of the card. they showed up on the lcd but when i transferred to the hd once i got home, the last 200 or so were black. i know that i have a recovery unit somewhere around, i got it about 3-4 years ago when i bought another card, but i haven't seen it in a while. i called ecost where i bought it and they had what sounded like a bunch of kids working for them. i explained that i needed the card right away, but the best they could do is email me a return authorization. turn around was going to be at least a week and probably more. to me that wasn't acceptable. but that was all they were going to do. of course a supervisor was not available. it's monday morning and no number has been emailed to me yet.

i'm at a point where i wonder if i should format the card, lose the images that were black and give it another go. i did shoot a few more on the same card when i returned home and they seemed okay. my other cards are fine. i shot bb again with them yesterday and with the d3, no problems.

i know it's a little chancy buying such a big card, but i do have off brands of 4 and 8 gigs and never a problem. this card is ADATA and was only about 70 dollars so 16 gig sounded great.

any suggestions for now. format or continue to wait for a return authorization or call them and see what the hold up is. ecost is a big reputable company. i expected better since i buy from them all the time.

Ron Gallegos said:

this card is ADATA and
was only about 70 dollars so 16 gig sounded great.

Click to expand...

What! What!! 70 dollars for a 16GB card! Come on Ron, get real mate. I don't know what you think you were buying, but that is just surreal. Time for a reality check I think.

Put some milk on it, I bet it goes snap, crackle and pop.

--
Dave (Sgt. Pepper), England.
http://www.pbase.com/davecq

I don't trust the 16gig cards, no matter who the manufacturer. 8 gigs is my limit, and I'm fine carrying a few extra in my bag. Better safe than sorry.
--
http://brick.smugmug.com/gallery/2049931#P-1-15
http://www.irwinphotografix.com

i think the cost of compact flash is going down fast. ecost is a reputable company. as i said i've never had any problems before with flash cards or off brand batteries, this was a first. i'm going to keep after it. i even saw where they are starting to make 32 gig cards now. 16 will probably be my limit for now. so again, options are: foremat and lose everything, wait for a return authorization number from ecost, (i even called adata but they were all at lunch, so no help there.) in losing all on the card, there were some nice shots but they were yesterday's news. no good today other than for resume.

Hi Ron... I feel for you. BUT I would NEVER chance my photos on no brand/off brand cards... There is a difference in performance both in Capture as well as uploading. You spent US$5000 on the camera, why skimp on the "film"? I have had problems wirh my off brand cards (Transend and even Kingston!). I now stick with Sandisk Extreme (III is a good balance at the moment) - no problems now!

...last time I looked 8 GByte was the maximum Nikon recommends
Cheers
Laos

If you put the CF back in the D3, can you still see the images? If so, then hook the USB cable to the D3 and the computer and try having the D3 transfer the images across.

You might try putting the card on another CF reader. Seems my CF reader on my computer is getting flaky and causes some bit shifting when I use Nikon Transfer.

You might try and see if there are other off brand CF recovery tools available to read everything left on the card and then try to recover.

I used to just use 512 MB cards when I started out in digital because those would easily back up to 640 MB CDs (1 card 1 CD).

With DVDs, that upper limit is 4.6 GB, so a 4 GB card now makes sense.

I'm not into BluRay storage yet, so for now I cycle on 4GB and 2GB cards as these are easier to archive to DVD.

Using the smaller cards 4 GB is cheaper in the end ($30 for 4GB Ultra II). Put 2 in a D3 and that's 8GB storage there. Also less chance of losing lots of images if a CF goes bad or gets lost. At least the shoot is spread out over several CFs.

Using off brands for critical work is just asking for trouble. Some cheap cards are just that, cheap knock offs and one runs the risk of losing the images. You get what you pay for. Why on earth one would want to go cheap after spending $5000 on a fantastic machine is just ludicrous. If one can't reliably store and retrieve the images, then everything was a waste of money.

The weakest link of the system will be the system's downfall as you have just discovered.

There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (TANSTAAFL)

wasn't it nikon who also used to ask what kind of card you were using when your camera failed. if one sticks only with the recommendations of nikon, i doubt i would ever get off the ground. i have used kingston and transcend cards for years with absolutely no issues. problems can and do happen with any and all cards. one can be extra careful and never use an off brand card or an off brand battery, in fact, i feel somewhat fearful every time i take my d3 out or my 600 afs, hope i don't trip and drop it, did that once with the 600 and a monopod, 1200 to fix but ins paid for it. even though i am fearful of dropping it or getting equipment ripped off, i learned to live with it, otherwise i would never shoot or go places where i'm apt to get the shots. sometimes you've gotta do what you've gotta do.

thanks jeff for the advice. i just ran the scan disk utility on xp. it took about two hours to complete so i'm going to check the disk now to see it repaired it. trouble is, once it fails on you, you can never really have complete confidence that it will be okay. it only failed after 700 plus shots so before i can reallly see if it fixed it, i have to run off about a thousand shots. man, what to do? thanks again to you and everyone else who gave suggestions. ron

I'd advise getting a couple new cards to use in the camera and hold the problem card until you can exhaust all the tests that you might think of.

If you're taking 900 shots at a time, you should have several cards anyway. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. If they're really important shots, the D3 should be set to backup mode on the cards rather than overflow. It takes more cards, but redundancy can save you from some problems.

Cards are readily available, so get yourself a couple extra for the meantime and work on the one card with the problem. It's your call whether to format the card, since only you know how much to value the pictures on it.

thanks dwight, good comments. i formatted the card and lost all the shots. oh well. i do have several cards 3 one gigs, 1 4 gig and 8 gig in addition to the 16. i have plenty of storage. should keep me set for a while. i like the idea of using the second slot as a backup. i currently have it set up for overflow although for a while i had slot one for nefs and slot two for j pegs. many options there.