CF Card Errors

[Paul Spatafora]

Hi Nigel,

No jpegs in my cameras. I only shoot RAW.

thanks,
bob

Yes, I would concur. I shoot only RAW and I have this problem. I think I will be reinstalling 5.4.6 for the upcoming wedding season unless Kodak resolves this problem when they release the new firmware.

Regards,

Paul

 

[Paul Spatafora]

I have 6 Sandisk CF cards and very rarely did I have a problem with
FW 5.4.6. Does anyone have a copy of this version they can send me.
I deleted it after installing 5.4.9

I have noticed that start up is much faster than in previous
version. Also, I haven't lost any files. The ones the camera didn't
capture were they only ones I lost. Not that great, but can be
worse!!

Thanks in advance.

Paul

After 24 days, has anyone switched back to 5.4.6 from 5.4.9 I'm considering going back to 5.4.6 because of the Scandisk issue.

Anyone have any luck with resolving this issue with the 2GB cards? 1 GB work fine for me. I really like the noise improvements at ISO400-800 and I don't want to give it up.

Any ideas are welcome. Starting to shoot regularly again.

Thanks in advance.

Paul

 

[John W.]

Paul Spatafora wrote:
After 24 days, has anyone switched back to 5.4.6 from 5.4.9 I'm
considering going back to 5.4.6 because of the Scandisk issue.

Anyone have any luck with resolving this issue with the 2GB cards?
1 GB work fine for me. I really like the noise improvements at
ISO400-800 and I don't want to give it up.

Any ideas are welcome. Starting to shoot regularly again.

Thanks in advance.

Paul

I'm still happy with 5.4.9 but recently got a new 2GB Sandisk Ultra II and I could not perform a secure erase. The camera would stop about half way and say the card could not be formatted. This was with battery power. I tried again with the AC adapter and it formatted first time without any problems.
Have you tried with the AC adapter ?
--
John W
The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well....!!!

 

[Paul Spatafora]

Paul Spatafora wrote:
After 24 days, has anyone switched back to 5.4.6 from 5.4.9 I'm
considering going back to 5.4.6 because of the Scandisk issue.

Anyone have any luck with resolving this issue with the 2GB cards?
1 GB work fine for me. I really like the noise improvements at
ISO400-800 and I don't want to give it up.

Any ideas are welcome. Starting to shoot regularly again.

Thanks in advance.

Paul

I'm still happy with 5.4.9 but recently got a new 2GB Sandisk Ultra
II and I could not perform a secure erase. The camera would stop
about half way and say the card could not be formatted. This was
with battery power. I tried again with the AC adapter and it
formatted first time without any problems.
Have you tried with the AC adapter ?
--
John W
The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well....!!!

I just completed formating a 2 GB Scandisk Ultra without a hitch. I'm thinking it might be the one card. I tested the other two and I couldn't duplicate the error. I fired 18 shot continuously without a problem.

Will test some more and verify the one card. I think it must have been the battery too. The one I did try may have been tired when the error ocurred. The fresh one formated the card very quickly.

The mystery continues.

Paul

 

[Paul Spatafora]

Not to pine on the 5.4.9 Scandisk Ultra II card issue, but I had all kinds of disk and write errors on my shoot yesterday. This problem in not predicable. I tested and tested the night before to see if it was repeatable and nothing. 30 shoots into the wedding, boom, errors after errors. It can give you lots of white hair. As good as the firmware is compared to 5.4.6, I'm going to reinstall 5.4.6. I never had a write read error with any of my Scandisks until I used the new FW. I might buy a Lexar just to see if it's the cards and not the camera.

I hope this helps others.

Paul

 

[1goodeye]

Not to pine on the 5.4.9 Scandisk Ultra II card issue, but I had
all kinds of disk and write errors on my shoot yesterday. This
problem in not predicable. I tested and tested the night before to
see if it was repeatable and nothing. 30 shoots into the wedding,
boom, errors after errors. It can give you lots of white hair. As
good as the firmware is compared to 5.4.6, I'm going to reinstall
5.4.6. I never had a write read error with any of my Scandisks
until I used the new FW. I might buy a Lexar just to see if it's
the cards and not the camera.

Thats no fun ; (

Im using 5.49 on two SLRs with no problems, using only 1gb & 2 gb lexars.

Ive never had an issue with lexar & kodak with any firmware, except after a year of not "secure erase"ing. Now that I secure erase about once a month everythings OK.

Hope it helps,
William

--
williamwgood dot com

 

[Richard Boyd]

Hey Paul-

Might you be having motherboard issues? If it gradually gets worse, that could be the issue. Try a Lexar card, see if it improves the situation as well.

Richard

 

[Paul Spatafora]

Hey Paul-

Might you be having motherboard issues? If it gradually gets worse,
that could be the issue. Try a Lexar card, see if it improves the
situation as well.

Richard

Hi Richard,

After I switched over to my 1 GB Sandisks, both ultra and non ultra, the only message I got was Card Full. I tested the cards again last night and could only get the card to cause the error once or twice and that was with a blister on my finger. What helped was that I pulled the battery out and back in and it worked better. I can place the card in the camera and I get a Defective Card message and then put the card back in and it could read it okay. Not one problem with the 1 GB cards. I think I'm going to switch over to 5.4.6 and see if that helps. I really don't need another 2gb card, but I might buy a Lexar anyways. Just to note, I never got one error message with 5.4.6 using the 2gb Sandisks.

Regards,

Paul

 

[PaulLandscape244043]

I've had a 2Gb Sandisk ExtremeIII Compact Flash for I reckon at least a year and never had problems with it under the FW 4.6.1. regime. Recently I bought the D200 and another 2Gb card. I have experienced this problem twice while on the job with the old FW. Having said this, the image was acutally present on the card.

I upgraded the FW to the 5.9.# last week in the hope that this would solve the problem, but looking at the discussion, I'm thinking the cards are at fault. A mate of mine has always had problems with his 2GB card.

I haven't had a chance to work with the new FW yet but I think the secure format would be sensible, but remember I have only just bought the new card that has had the errors, so I don't think it is happening because of some build up of faulty sectors or something like that.

Anyway, keen to hear from anyone who has taken the card back and nailed sandisk for the problem???

Regards

Paul

 

[Paul Spatafora]

Well, I contacted Kodak this week to see if they had any insight into this matter, and they sent me the Beta FW 5.4.9. I reset the camera and reinstalled the FW and still could get the error. I emailed them my findings regarding the Sandisk 2 gb cards and they have said that they have not received any complaints regarding this matter.

So, if you are having an issue with FW 5.4.9 with the Sandisk 2gb Ultra cards, please email your concerns to the following email address.

[email protected]

Here's an excerpt from an email.

"Hello Paul,

Did you attempt a Secure Erase before starting to use the card? Again,
we are were not given card compatibility information with this update.
As for the consensus, those that are having difficulty should write in
because no one is telling us about their Sandisk issues otherwise we'd
hear more about this and we have not. Unless we start hearing from
other users Kodak will not make changes if just 1 or 2 users have card
issues.

The last thing is it may be a problem with the camera itself but if
other cards work and not your Sandisk it seems more like a compatibility
issue. "

It still seems that Kodak is still pulling for this dinosaur. Got to love them.

Paul

 

[the signatory]

Well, I contacted Kodak this week to see if they had any insight
into this matter, and they sent me the Beta FW 5.4.9. I reset the
camera and reinstalled the FW and still could get the error. I
emailed them my findings regarding the Sandisk 2 gb cards and they
have said that they have not received any complaints regarding this
matter.

So, if you are having an issue with FW 5.4.9 with the Sandisk 2gb
Ultra cards, please email your concerns to the following email
address.

[email protected]

Here's an excerpt from an email.

[snipped]

Thanks for doing all this testing etc. I wish I could be of more help here, but as I shoot so little relatively speaking, I just don't see the errors come up so often, although I do get them occasionally. However, it's something I can live with so am not so inclined to making the gargantuan effort required these days to complain about it.

--
Kind regards,
Nigel
--

Kodak DSLR Firmware v. 5.4.9 and Custom Looks requests: Please send an email to my profile address, with just the word 'FIRMWARE' in the subject line - no body text is necessary. You will then receive an auto-generated email response containing download links to obtain the software. If you use a spam filtering service, then please ensure you add my email address to your 'Approved' list. Many thanks.

 

[Paul Spatafora]

Hi Nigel,

Well, I don't want to sound like a broken whining record. I'm going to just live with it or just go back to 5.4.6. I have 4 2 gb Sandisk Ultra cards so I wanted to find out why this was happening. I might get a Lexar and see if it works better. I'm convinced that 5.4.9 has better noise in the high ISO's. Hey, maybe I'm dreaming!!

Case closed.

Paul

 

[mudhouse]

I'm having the same problems with 2GB Sandisk Ultra II cards. No issues with Lexar. I'm also using 5.4.9, but i bought the cards after it was installed.

Let us know if switching back to 5.4.6 works for you. If so, I'll give it a shot too.

Dave in Pecos

 

[Paul Spatafora]

I'm having the same problems with 2GB Sandisk Ultra II cards. No
issues with Lexar. I'm also using 5.4.9, but i bought the cards
after it was installed.

Let us know if switching back to 5.4.6 works for you. If so, I'll
give it a shot too.

Dave in Pecos

Hi Dave,

Just to let you know, I just finished shooting with 2 Sandisk Ultra II 2 GB cards with FW 5.4.6 and all is back to normal. The only message i got was Card is Full.

Hope this helps.

Paul

 

[neil poulsen]

I'm glad to see others are having the same problems with SanDisk. I got a SanDisk 1GByte card when I first purchased my camera in about August of 2005. I've never had a problem with that card.

But, I've had problems with recent SanDisk 1GByte cards that I've gotten. Every once and a while, I get a write error. I've been ignoring it and taking another shot. But as someone pointed out, it's not reassuring.

I may try the Lexar, although based on the old Rob Galbreath site, I thought the SanDisk cards were superior. Are there other brands worth trying?

 

[Paul Spatafora]

Just to follow up, I got an email from Kodak Tech support today telling me that they don't plan on correcting the Sandisk Ultra II 2 GB card issue. I'm not sure if it was a canned reply or the straight facts. I emailed them back asking that they reconsider there decision and fix the issues so that it behaves like 5.4.6. With 5.4.6, I have had no issues with these cards.

I have not heard back from them.

Paul

 

[ehc428007]

Paul:

I was the person who saw the posts and called up Kodak and sent the post URL so they could respond (not knowing what the answer would be). I just received my user access, so I couldn't do this earlier--hence I called Kodak as I had just purchased 2gb Sandisk Ultra 2 CF and SD cards so I also had a vested interest in the outcome.

Kodak also told me that Lexar used to do DCS memory card testing for Kodak until a while ago (as all DCS pro cameras are discontinued). The hint was that I might (emphasize might) have better luck using Lexar cards. So I bought several new 133x CF (4gb) and SD cards (2gb), have secure erased them in the camera (14nx) and will test. (Just received the camera and upgraded the firmware before secure erasing the cards to 5.4.9.) The 133x cards have a claimed write speed of 20MB/sec based upon 133x150KB/sec = 19.6 MB/sec.

Regards

 

[Paul Spatafora]

I have been in contact with Kodak also. The key is for everyone to contact Kodak. They seem to believe in critical mass. They told me that there weren't enough complaints for further investigation. I wrote them back essentially pleading them to revisit the code so that 5.4.9 can behave like 5.4.6 with the Sandisk Ultra II 2 gb cards. The last email I got was that they have forwarded my email to the developers.

Let's see what happens. I'm hoping that they do review it and come out with a fix. From my testing they have managed to control the noise better with the latest FW. In case there are others, here's the email address:

[email protected]

I'm sure the more the merrier.

Paul