CF Card done for?

[winnre]

I really think he meant GB

I meant MB. Got them in 2001 for a Nikon 990. Then got 128MB cards for the Nikon D70 when it came out.

[bwiese]

1. Always format cards FROM THE CAMERA ITSELF (use the menu or whatever). Do NOT format the card:
   ... directly from PC/Mac etc. using an adapter (slot in PC or USB adapter);
   ... using the camera+CF (or SD) card and treating it like a USB disk drive from the PC/Mac.
   
   You very well may get the clustersize wrong (this can tie in with flash erase block size). It can affect over-erasure too.
   
   Camera firmware generally likes to use larger clustersizes, while PCs like to format with much smaller cluster sizes.
   Larger clustersizes reduce write transaction overhead; camera FW may get 'too busy' and glitch if writing lots of little
   chunks instead of fewer larger chunks.
   
   If for some reason you want to format a card from the PC, find out what clustersize the camera formats the card as
   and specify this on your command line. Make sure you pick FAT or FAT32 appropriately too for under 4GB (IIRC).
   .
2. You can use CHKDSK to analyze a card.
   .
3. Flash cards (including CF & SD cards - but not xD cards!) have built-in wear-levelling algorithms & HW such that sectors are remapped so they have approx. equal wear over time.
   
   (Read doesn't wear, write/erase does.)
   
   There are error correction bits that help aid in repairing minor errors and there are more sectors on the disk than you can
   normally access/know about; if algorithm tracks likelihood of future nonrepairable errors, it will mark a block bad and vector
   in an unused block from a special pool to replace the bad block. This is called 'bad block revectoring'.
   .
4. People are using CF cards for Linux drives with good results, so using CF in dSLR shouldn't tax card to much.
   
   Failures may be due to dirty/worn contacts.
   .
5. SLC NAND is more reliable (but more expensive) than MLC NAND.

[ocabj]

Destroy the card. Get a new one.

The second a CF card has corrupt files, I wouldn't trust it.

And while lots of people have had luck with Transcend, I avoid them. I stick to Sandisk (from a reputable vendor; to avoid counterfeits).

CF cards are fairly inexpensive now, especially if you don't need something very fast as far as write speeds are concerned.

[bwiese]

Destroy the card. Get a new one.

The second a CF card has corrupt files, I wouldn't trust it.

And while lots of people have had luck with Transcend, I avoid them. I stick to Sandisk (from a reputable vendor; to avoid counterfeits).

CF cards are fairly inexpensive now, especially if you don't need something very fast as far as write speeds are concerned.

This corrupt file may well be due to clustersize issue (i.e, incorrectly formatted from a PC and not the camera itself.)

[bwiese]

][/U]
How do YOU low-level a card?

Use a tool. Here is just one available.

http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-...l-Format-Tool/

Ummm, NO.

We're mixing terms here. I think this vendor is using terms wrongly too (I don't have a spare HD to reformat.)

A "low level format" on a real rotating HDD means it writes new clocking track info as well wiping data. It is rare this functionality is exposed these days - usually it is done thru a factory test connector where a precision reference clock can be applied.

Many people incorrectly use the term 'low level format' to mean just writing all zeroes (or sometimes legacy $E5 bytes) to all sectors of a disk, to distinguish from 'quick format' - the latter which just writes some filesystem structural information to a relatively few sectors, and does not overwrite stale data.

There's really no such thing as a 'low level format' for SD or CF cards etc. since there's no clocking track. You can erase groups of blocks ("erase block size") that get reset to $00 (maybe $FF) but there is no special 'super erase'. [It is unclear to me how to erase the extra 'bad block reserved' sectors that don't fall into the normal pool of sectors, prob requires a special separate command - haven't looked at CF specs in ages - and there are spare sectors on an HDD too, plus bad sectors that get thrown out of the pool of usable sectors as well.]

[the86d]

I have never used "badblocks" to find bad blocks, is it better (in Linux) than a chkdsk (in Win. Env.)?

Doesn't a "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd<whatever>" do a 00 (in hex) write to the whole drive until filled (of course circumventing SMART-MARKED-BAD-SKIPPED-BLOCKS/smart relocated blocks), or am I WAY too tired today?

[Autarchist]

This has turned into a real interesting thread. bwiese's frist post alone is enough reason to bookmark this page.

Other than faulty contacts and improper formatting, are there other common reasons for CF card "failure"? It doesn't seem likely, based on the info in this thread, that someone would wear the card out from regular dSLR use.

I've re-formatted the card from the camera. I actually haven't done that for a long while. My habit was to transfer the raw files to my computer via USB using cut+paste. I'll try using again now and see what happens. Of course, for any "important" pictures, I will be relying on my SanDisk from now on. From doing some reading, it seems most folks consider SanDisk memory products to be top of the line in terms of reliability.

[ocabj]

The only time I would guess you would get corrupted image files on a CF card that wasn't due to a failing card is if you had it on the computer or in the camera doing an active read/write operation and you popped the card out. That would be resolvable in a format.

As far as how you get files off the card, doing a basic copy at file level is pretty much the best route to go. Don't use an application to 'import' from CF to hard drive. It's best to just do a copy 'operation' within your OS.

[the86d]

When I have a drive failure via bad blocks (probably your problem if you can see some files then it fails) I typically do a CUT-PASTE, so I can see what I don't have yet (the unmoved files are still there, listed). When I get to a file that won't read (even freeezes up the read/copy operation) then I know that file probably has some portion of it in said bad blocks. Move on the to next file and get what you can until you get everything you can, and break the card in half, and pitch it in eWaste so some hippie doesn't cry .

[orchard]

Strange - the usual failure mechanism is an inability to erite to the card, not reading it. But they fail either through handling if the internal connections are not too good, or from static.

Like the others say - not worth the risk as some photographs can't be duplicated.

[V8toytruck]

I say dump the transcend.

I've been using Sandisk since 2000

Sandisk UltraII to Extreme from 512MB - 32GB.

According to my shutter counts probably 750k-1.5M shutter actuations on Sandisk memory. 50-60 hours of HDSLR footage. Doing sports, PJ, product, fashion photography and recently video

0 failures

Don't mess around with low quality cards or storage for that matter. What they contain is worth too much.

A friend of mine didn't back up his laptop that contained tax docs, his child's pictures from 1 week - 5 years. It cost him $3500 to recover the data on that hard drive.

[I_Love_My_.38]

I meant MB. Got them in 2001 for a Nikon 990. Then got 128MB cards for the Nikon D70 when it came out.