450D: bug or hardware failure?

[costa76]

Hi all,

I've been having a random problem with my camera reading my SD cards (2 x 4GB). Now I've just found that I can reproduce the behavior.

0. Camera on
1. Erase the pictures
2. Take out the card
3. Turn off the camera
4. Take out the battery
5. Put back the battery
6. Turn on camera (wait until complete boot)
7. Insert card and close the lid
8. Now the "Card not formatted..." is displayed
(9) Cannot format card...
(10) The other card is also not recognized.
(11) After some switches and using a 16 MB card it works again.

Could someone try this on his(her) 450D? I was driven nuts by this thing!

Thanks a lot!
Costa

 

[mbrowne]

Hi all,

I've been having a random problem with my camera reading my SD cards
(2 x 4GB). Now I've just found that I can reproduce the behavior.

0. Camera on
1. Erase the pictures
2. Take out the card
3. Turn off the camera

Not good to take out the card with the camera on.

4. Take out the battery
5. Put back the battery
6. Turn on camera (wait until complete boot)
7. Insert card and close the lid
8. Now the "Card not formatted..." is displayed
(9) Cannot format card...
(10) The other card is also not recognized.
(11) After some switches and using a 16 MB card it works again.

Could someone try this on his(her) 450D? I was driven nuts by this
thing!

Thanks a lot!
Costa

 

[costa76]

Yes, it is not a good idea to take it out while something is being written. But I do this when the camera is idle. Also, a good firmware should at least take care that if something is wrongly written to the card, one can at least format it.

 

[nokem]

If SDHC probably a software bug.

--
Shoot.

 

[costa76]

SDHC, I have two 4 GB cards, different vendors.

 

[Paul De Bra]

Sometimes (rarely actually) when I insert the card and turn on the camera it says "Card not formatted". What I then do is turn off the camera, take the card out, insert it again, turn the camera back on.

In no case would I try to format the card which you know is formatted. Just take it out and reinsert.

Hi all,

I've been having a random problem with my camera reading my SD cards
(2 x 4GB). Now I've just found that I can reproduce the behavior.

0. Camera on
1. Erase the pictures
2. Take out the card
3. Turn off the camera
4. Take out the battery
5. Put back the battery
6. Turn on camera (wait until complete boot)
7. Insert card and close the lid
8. Now the "Card not formatted..." is displayed
(9) Cannot format card...
(10) The other card is also not recognized.
(11) After some switches and using a 16 MB card it works again.

Could someone try this on his(her) 450D? I was driven nuts by this
thing!

Thanks a lot!
Costa

--
Slowly learning to use the 450D and and the Canon G6.
Public pictures at http://debra.zenfolio.com/ .

 

[costa76]

I also tried a couple of times not to format it, but after reinserting cards and having no luck, I tried to format it. There would be no obvious reason not to do this, it should go smoothly...

I have posted the same (appearently?) issue on this forum two months ago, but I had no answers:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1031&message=29067117

That happened randomly, but now this is the first time I could reproduce it in a step-by-step manner. This at least makes me think that there is a problem with the software, but I can also suspect some hardware latchup (more or less reproduceable). I would like to see the schematics...

 

[mbrowne]

If you can only reproduce the problem by taking the card out while the camera is on, I'd say that it narrows down the variables quite a bit. Can you get the problem without doing that?

 

[costa76]

Yes, it happened before, this was just how I reproduced it.

Normally, I wouldn't have thought of that but last time it happened I was thinking of what I have done before that happened and changed some variables. So the starting point was that I removed the card to copy the pictures on my PC and also put my battery in the charger; deleted the pictures from the card; afterwards I inserted the battery, started the camera, put the card in the slot and that was all - no more card access.

see this post:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1031&message=29610316

 

[Paul De Bra]

for not trying to format the card is that the card is formatted, so the camera is wrong in saying the card is not formatted.

I also tried a couple of times not to format it, but after
reinserting cards and having no luck, I tried to format it. There
would be no obvious reason not to do this, it should go smoothly...
I have posted the same (appearently?) issue on this forum two months
ago, but I had no answers:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1031&message=29067117

That happened randomly, but now this is the first time I could
reproduce it in a step-by-step manner. This at least makes me think
that there is a problem with the software, but I can also suspect
some hardware latchup (more or less reproduceable). I would like to
see the schematics...

--
Slowly learning to use the 450D and and the Canon G6.
Public pictures at http://debra.zenfolio.com/ .

 

[costa76]

I also tried a couple of times not to format it, but after
reinserting cards and having no luck, I tried to format it. There
would be no obvious reason not to do this, it should go smoothly...

The camera 'might' be wrong when saying "the card is not formatted". I was also considering the fact that somehow some memory locations from the card could get trashed somehow (e.g. the boot record) so the camera displays correctly that the card is not formatted. But, in any case, a format should be possible, if the card is not damaged. It is not really the case, though, I inserted the cards in a reader or other cameras and they didn't have any problem.

 

[nokem]

It restored a 8GB SDHC card that would not format in camera or card reader.
http://www.sdcard.org/consumers/formatter/

--
Shoot.

 

[lizard123]

This happens to 40D as well. 40D takes CF card. I think this is software/firmware problem. Currently I own Nikon D90. I remove the SD/SDHC card when the camera is till "on" all the time. I have not encounter any software problem yet.

A side note. My first 40D actually started to act weird and had pictures recorded or cut in half. And finally, CF card won't recover from "not formatted" to normal. Luckily I bought it at Costco. My second 40D showed "not formatted", but once i turn it off and on again, it works fine. I didn't check the firmware of both 40Ds.

I guess I was too careless to turn of the camera.

Hi all,

I've been having a random problem with my camera reading my SD cards
(2 x 4GB). Now I've just found that I can reproduce the behavior.

0. Camera on
1. Erase the pictures
2. Take out the card
3. Turn off the camera
4. Take out the battery
5. Put back the battery
6. Turn on camera (wait until complete boot)
7. Insert card and close the lid
8. Now the "Card not formatted..." is displayed
(9) Cannot format card...
(10) The other card is also not recognized.
(11) After some switches and using a 16 MB card it works again.

Could someone try this on his(her) 450D? I was driven nuts by this
thing!

Thanks a lot!
Costa

 

[leroyvanhee]

I attended a 3 hr presentation by a Canon rep. He said he never erases his card in camera. Instead he always formats it. That's what I've been doing and it seems to work fine.

 

[costa76]

It restored a 8GB SDHC card that would not format in camera or card
reader.
http://www.sdcard.org/consumers/formatter/

--
Shoot.

--

Thanks, good to know this. But the cards have no issues, the camera is wrong in this case.

 

[costa76]

Hope it'll be alright.

 

[costa76]

So, I was quite surprised that they repaired it so soon (seems to be ok). I couldn't get much from the guy who handled it to me, he said that they replaced the whole reader module, and I should not insert the card backwards because some pins might get broken (which I obviously did not ) )

The software version is the same (1.09) so now I will (hopefully?) not find out what exactly the problem was. Maybe it was just bad luck and I got the one in a million that escaped from their QC. Time will tell more...
Thanks for your inputs!