Railfan Technology > There's a problem with this drive..

What happens with SD cards and MicroSd cards which means I often get the warning "There's a problem with this card, scan it to fix it" when I insert it in the computer? I use windows desktop computer. Nearly every card eventually comes up with this warning. There doesn't seem to be a certain manufactures issue either. I used Canon DSLR, Nikon bridge camera and a drone, but it always comes up. Yet the cards continue to function ok. When I have scanned them in the desktop, the warning goes away for a while. Any ideas out there? Chris UK.

"In theory", SD cards, like CF cards, are all recorded using the same FAT or FAT32 directory structure and therefore compatible with all devices that can read them.  The reality is that there seems to be minor variations by the card manufacturers as well as the camera makers that are not fully compatible 'across the board'. 

Using a card in different camera brands or even models, will sometimes end up being incompatible.  This has been documented reasonably well at various online photography-oriented forums over the past 10 years or so.  The solution is to always format each memory card in camera and using it only in that camera.  Low-level formatting, if offered, is not necessary.  Alternatively, unconditionally format every card in camera whenever it is inserted..  The weakness of the format every time the card is inserted in a camera is when there isn't time to do so, such as running out of space unexpectedly in the middle of an important sequence.  I have 3 cameras, and the memory cards are never 'mixed' between them.  I usually format each of them in camera at home before any planned event.  That way, whenever I have to switch cards, I know they're empty and ready to go. 

There's also the potential for knockoff memory cards to fail considerably more often than 'real deal' brand name memory cards.  Even though it may say 'Sandisk' or whatever, if not purchased from a reputable source, it may be a cheap knockoff.    

 

55002 Wrote:
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> Nearly every card eventually comes up
> with this warning. There doesn't seem to be a
> certain manufactures issue either.

BRAtinkson's informative technical comment about varying quality of SD cards is moot, unless you tell the operating system (Windows, Mac OS X, whatever) to tell it to "safely remove" the device before you physically take it out of the PC. If you don't do that, you are potentially corrupting the data on the SD card, since you are removing it before the PC can finish writing all the buffered data.  I know I might be stating the obvious but just wanted to check that first.

The "safely remove" option is not required in Windows 7 and later.  Microsoft has an option that is checked by default for Quick Removal which disables write caching.  More info can be easily found by searching online.  

BN6339 Wrote:
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> The "safely remove" option is not required in
> Windows 7 and later.  Microsoft has an option
> that is checked by default for Quick Removal which
> disables write caching.  More info can be easily
> found by searching online.  

While that option is there and configurable, making an assumption that write-caching is disabled by default makes a ASS out of U and ME.

When dealing with things that we consider important such as pictures we have taken, it is always better to NOT assume and double check.

jst3751 Wrote:
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> BN6339 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > The "safely remove" option is not required in
> > Windows 7 and later.  Microsoft has an option
> > that is checked by default for Quick Removal
> which
> > disables write caching.  More info can be
> easily
> > found by searching online.  
>
> While that option is there and configurable,
> making an assumption that write-caching is
> disabled by default makes a ASS out of U and ME.
>
> When dealing with things that we consider
> important such as pictures we have taken, it is
> always better to NOT assume and double check.

Calling me an ass on here is not getting anyone anywhere.  I typed up a big long argument back but there is not point in arguing with anyone on a forum.  I was simply trying to HELP and point out that it likely not an issue with the eject option.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/18 13:14 by BN6339.

BN6339 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Calling me an ass on here is not getting anyone
> anywhere.  I typed up a big long argument back
> but there is not point in arguing with anyone on a
> forum.  I was simply trying to HELP and point out
> that it likely not an issue with the eject option.

"Not likely an issue" is no way to treat pictures some one just took on a 1000 mile rail fan journey.

THAT is the point.

One point I forgot to mention is there's a number of 'recovery' software programs available that can oftentimes recover corrupted memory cards, USB memory sticks, and even hard drives.  Perhaps trying one will 'recover' the bad SD card.  Even though you may be prompted to format the card with a message like 'this drive must be formated first' or something like that, DO NOT FORMAT the card if you want to recover the data/pictures.

I tried a couple of the 'freebies' I found online and discovered they were limited to only some number of K of data.  Not megs.  Not Gbs.  One had to buy the full version - usually under $40 for individuals - to get it to fully recover all the files, etc.  Over the years, I've recovered  CF cards, USB drives, and even hard drives, and even CDs and DVDs for friends.  I recovered a couple DVDs a few months ago and earlier today, spent a couple hours on a trashed laptop hard drive that too much had been overwritten to recover anything but temporary files (Windows/applications/internet).  I never found any documents folders...over 30,000 files found, but notihing in documents folders...strange.

The best program I bought was 'Recuva' as it asks 'which drive/path' up front rather than first spending more than an hour or so scanning 2 terabytes of drives on my computer THEN asking 'which drive/folders/files'.  For DVDs, I found the WinXDVD Ripper handled all those I dealt with.   It even extracted a Chinese movie that my friend bought on ebay that his DVD players and mine, too, refused to play and displayed a message 'not authorized in your country'.  Even though the ebay listing and the box for the new movie indicated NTSC (eg, USA) format and English subtitles, they only appeared in portions of the movie.  Now all he has to do is learn Mandrin to understand all the dialog.     


   

Many thanks guys for your answers. I've learnt a bit about the handling of these cards - much appreciated. Sorry, like most TO threads, it degenerates into a slanging match!! Chris uk.

> What happens with SD cards and MicroSd cards which means I often get the warning "There's a problem with this card, scan it to fix it"

Typical Wincrap message, tells you a problem exists but offers no clue as to what it might be. As other have pointed out, you have to "safely remove" SD cards, thumb drives, etc. because this marks the file system as being "clean" (after flushing all cache to the drive). And if a removable card/drive with an unclean file system is inserted, the OS (operating system: Windoze, Linux, MAC, etc.) won't read it, or it might read it but won't write to it. This applies to all common file systems: FA16, FAT32, HPFS, NTFS, JFS, etc. However, there is one file system which appears to be an exception: exFAT, which is an M$ modification of FAT32, essentially a stripped down version of NTFS, designed for memory cards to allow files greater than 4GB in size, such as the video files made by the newer type of digital cameras.