Weird SmartMedia Card Prob.

BaLa · Post by **BaLa** » Mon Aug 18, 2003 5:02 am

not sure if this is the right forum even...

Here goes.

I have an Olympus D450 Zoom Digital Camera..
which uses SmartMedia Card
We also have an Memorex External USB SmarMedia Card Reader...

I went somewhere (exotic Animal Paradise in Springfield, MO) yesterday and took a few pics with the cam...(filled up an 8mb card)
When I try to view the pics on the cam it lets me look at them.
But when I put this same card in my SMC Reader it will not display any files..it says 7.6mb Used 300k free (or something like that) but it wont display the files...

I also took some pics on another card yesterday, which works fine in the SMC Reader...displays the files like it should
I tried putting the SMC Reader on 2 diff comps

My XP1700/KG7 and a Toshiba Laptop both with the same result..I can not look at/copy the files of off this Card Specifially..

any ideas?..

I would transfer the files through the camera and the Serial Cable it came with but somehow we lost it (cable that came with cam)

is the card getting ready to go out?
think I might have better luck with another SMC Reader?

I don't know...never seen anything like this before..

Dakota · Post by **Dakota** » Mon Aug 18, 2003 7:41 am

Bala- Zuma and I work together and we have an Olympus camera that was doing the same thing. Pretty sure it was the card as Steve bought a new card and it seems fine now. I emailed him this thread as he was able to recover pics from a card that was exhibiting these same issues.

Dakota · Post by **Dakota** » Mon Aug 18, 2003 11:34 pm

Hmmmppphhh. I see Zuma is not reading his email.

If I remember right, he stuck it in a reader and ran a scandisk on it or something and got the picture back...I'll yell at him at work in the morning to answer your ?

poptom · Post by **poptom** » Tue Aug 19, 2003 1:19 am

Did you install the driver for the Memorex reader?

BaLa · Post by **BaLa** » Tue Aug 19, 2003 5:37 am

yeah..the driver has been installed...it will read other cards (we have 3 diff ones)
it tells me there is something on the disk it says 7.6mb used 300k free..but it wont display the pics..

I'll try running scandisk on it..as you suggested...
ok it worked....well sort of...
running W2k SP4
ran scandisk with
automatically fix file system errors
and
scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors
both checked..

it found 419 object but the files are recovered file fragments..
any ideas on how to 'put them back together'

Dakota · Post by **Dakota** » Tue Aug 19, 2003 7:32 am

Mmmmm...Trying to remember. I think we renamed them to jpg and then it worked...At least on some of them. I'll talk with Zuma when I get into work this morning. I think he's working on getting a HD controller working and his computer is basically down.

Zuma · Post by **Zuma** » Tue Aug 19, 2003 10:24 am

Bala, sorry it took so long to respond, I been a bit busy. (Dakota--bite me!!)

I had the same problem with my D 460, I was able to recover the pics by running Scandisk on the media card itself.

I have also found that my camera does not like cards larger than 64 MB and it prefers the Olympus cards. I have no idea why.

Anyway I hope this helps ya out guy, let us know...

poptom · Post by **poptom** » Tue Aug 19, 2003 11:31 am

Originally posted by Zuma
I have also found that my camera does not like cards larger than 64 MB and it prefers the Olympus cards. I have no idea why.

For what it's worth, My D-600L originally came with 8MB capacity and I had it factory modified to handle 32MB. It doesn't care what brand but it cannot use a larger card.

BaLa · Post by **BaLa** » Tue Aug 19, 2003 12:57 pm

the 8mb card that's fuxored...(I guess)
is the Olympus Card that came with the cam.....

the largest the camera will support/use is 32mb..

I've tried a 64mb but it would only let me take 2 pic or so...

thanks for the help guys..

BaLa · Post by **BaLa** » Tue Aug 19, 2003 1:04 pm

I guess I wont be able to get my pics..

ouf of the 1st 24 files (there are 492files alltogether) I was able to copy 7
each file is 6kb each...

4%^%@@^&^
oh well..

BaLa · Post by **BaLa** » Wed Aug 20, 2003 5:50 am

should I trash the SM Card?

Dakota · Post by **Dakota** » Wed Aug 20, 2003 7:38 am

Format it on your computer and try it again, but more than likely it's toast.

Zuma · Post by **Zuma** » Thu Aug 21, 2003 6:53 am

Bala, do you have a card reader?

If so then you can run scandisk on each individual card that you have. Just insert the card into the reader and right click on it, goto properties and then tools.
Treat it it just ike another HD.

BaLa · Post by **BaLa** » Fri Aug 22, 2003 6:29 am

Originally posted by Zuma
Bala, do you have a card reader?

If so then you can run scandisk on each individual card that you have. Just insert the card into the reader and right click on it, goto properties and then tools.
Treat it it just ike another HD.

yeah I got a USB Smartmedia Card Reader..

why do I need to do this to the other cards, btw? they all work fine..

oh and btw; I didn't want to take a chance, the old SM Card is in the trash can...
this time it was just some stupid Zoo pics I lost...but it would REALLY suck if the pics had been important to me for whatever reasons....

Zuma · Post by **Zuma** » Fri Aug 22, 2003 9:24 am

It's not that you have to scan all your cards. It's just that I found it is a way to recover supposedly "lost" files that way.

BaLa · Post by **BaLa** » Fri Aug 22, 2003 4:24 pm

ok...

there were no files lost on the other cards....

thanks for the help guys...

esp. Zuma