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05 Sep 12 - 02:41 AM (#3400324) Subject: Tech: SD card not initialised From: Bonzo3legs I have a Fuji Finepix HS10 camera which uses SD cards. When connecting the card via a reader to my laptop running Vista, it sometimes fails to read the photo files. When the SD card is returned to the camera a "card not initialised" message appears and it has to be formated in the laptop before the camera allows it to be used. I suspect the USB processing in the laptop (7 years old) but wondered if anyone has expeience of this problem. |
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05 Sep 12 - 04:38 AM (#3400335) Subject: RE: Tech: SD card not initialised From: JohnInKansas I don't know if it's still the case, but ca. a year or two ago the computer magazines were worried about the need to have SD or other internal camera cards formated only by the camera, in the camera and there were warnings that formatting by the laptop might corrupt the memory on the card, and doesn't provide features that the camera needs in order to know how to talk to the card. I never found a real explanation of what's different about the way the cameras format a card as compared to how the computer formats them. Most digital cameras have a "format" entry somewhere on the menu, and if you can tolerate wiping the card, you might look for it and try formatting the card in the camera, using the camera menu. Once formatted by my cameras, I've never needed to reformat for the computer to read them, or when I put the card back in the camera. I've only had a couple of cheap cameras, but never had to format a new SD card to get one to work in both camera and reader, although I have done an in-camera format since the user manuals say you should; but Vista did cease recognizing my latest camera (about 5 years old when it happened), and neither method of formatting recovered the ability to make the computer recognize the memory so I could download the photos via a USB cable, so I just use a reasonably decent reader, or plug the card into the SD slot on my new computer or on one of the printers. USB needs to find a "device identity" on a device in order to mount it when you plug it in, and my guess is that OS version updates and patches probably omitted the "name" for my camera from the PNP libraries that came with the later OS versions. That may be a rational guess (SWAG) or just a hallucination, but I never found a cure for it. An alternate "explanation" posited by one correspondent was that formatting in the computer may wipe out the PNP device identity code, making it unrecognizable and thus unmountable. On better (>$$$$) cameras you may be able to download utilities to recover a corrupted camera menu, which might possibly be an unlikely part of your problem; but they don't provide anything of that sort for my cheap junkers. John |
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05 Sep 12 - 06:05 AM (#3400347) Subject: RE: Tech: SD card not initialised From: Ole Juul Is it possible that the device needs to be unmounted before being disconnected? Not doing that can cause corruption in some situations. |
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05 Sep 12 - 11:07 AM (#3400382) Subject: RE: Tech: SD card not initialised From: JohnInKansas When my camera was able to use the USB cable connection and download directly from the camera, the "Safely Remove" in Windows never showed the camera in the list of devices that could be disconnected and dismounting wasn't needed. A card in a reader usually will need to be dismounted before disconnecting, since the card/reader is just like a flash drive or external hard drive to the USB. Failing to dismount can cause corruption of the USB controller in your computer. The recommended solution, according to Microsoft, is to disconnect all USB devices, and then get into Device Manager and DELETE all the USB port connections. The removal of the ports isn't "recorded" until you shut down and restart the computer. After you restart, plug the devices back in one at a time, allowing each device to be recognized before going to the next device. The OS PNP will create a new port for each device as you plug them back in. The problem with this recommendation is that the ports to be deleted are shown in Device Manager only as "Port #" and it's difficult to tell what device goes with which port - and the number/device association seems to change sometimes when you reboot, posssibly depending on the order in which the OS PNP recognizes and remounts the devices during the boot(?). If you delete the port for both keyboard and mouse, it's really puzzling how you're expected to manage to delete the rest of them and properly shut down the computer for the reboot. Microsoft doesn't have a recommendation for this little glitch. (Even if you use a "wireless" mouse and/or keyboard, they're still mounted as USB devices in the USB controller.) John |
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05 Sep 12 - 03:46 PM (#3400466) Subject: RE: Tech: SD card not initialised From: Bonzo3legs Thanks for the answers, having lost 300 photos now (none really important) having formatted the SD card on my camera, I'll keep them on the SD card until I get home and use another reader to load on to my Win 7 PC. |
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05 Sep 12 - 04:30 PM (#3400487) Subject: RE: Tech: SD card not initialised From: Joe Offer Fuji cameras seem to be a little fussy about how they handle memory cards. For quite a while, Fuji and Olympus used their own xD cards, which looked very much like SD cards. I think that newer Fuji and Olympus cameras all use SD cards now, but they seem to like cards that have been formatted in the camera. And sometimes, Windows computers don't like Fuji camera formatting, and you're better using the camera's USB cable to transfer photos. I have a Canon PowerShot camera. I take the SD card out of my camera and plug it directly into my computer to download photos, and it's much faster than the USB cable for transferring large numbers of photos. When I put the SD card back in the camera, I use the camera to format the card instead of simply deleting the photos. Seems to work very reliably for me that way. -Joe- |
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05 Sep 12 - 04:35 PM (#3400493) Subject: RE: Tech: SD card not initialised From: Bernard I use a card reader with built-in hard drive - it copies all the photos on to the hard drive without affecting the contents of the card. When I'm done, I format the card on the camera... a Fuji Finepics S9500. |
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05 Sep 12 - 05:07 PM (#3400506) Subject: RE: Tech: SD card not initialised From: Newport Boy Most digital cameras recommend that you format the card only on the camera - my current Pentax X90 included. If you use a cable to download photos, you can generally pull the plug when the process is finished. If you remove the card from the camera and connect it directly, it's much safer (and often essential) to use 'Safely remove'. Re the xD cards used in some Olympus/Fuji cameras - this was a format jointly developed by Olympus & Fuji and they both made cards. They are considerably smaller than SD cards. My Olympus camera had a couple of features (panoramic stitching was one) that worked if I used an Olympus-branded card, but not with a Fuji-branded card. Phil |
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06 Sep 12 - 10:36 AM (#3400824) Subject: RE: Tech: SD card not initialised From: Bonzo3legs Thanks for more answers. I'm resisting the temptation to look at photos taken on our laptop until we get home. I've managed to retake many of the lost photos again. I'll have to search out the USB lead for the camera - needless to say it's a proprietory Fuji design!! |
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06 Sep 12 - 03:06 PM (#3400943) Subject: RE: Tech: SD card not initialised From: MikeL2 hi bonzo My wife had a similar problem with her Panasonic camera. Luckily she had lost only a couple of pictures. At the time we were near an photographic shop and they told us that we should always only format an SD Card ( or other USB media) on the camera. Since then we have only deleted pictures on the camera itself and only formatted cards there. We have had no problems since. I have had other cameras Canon, Nikon etc where I always deleted and formatted cards on the computer - XP at that time- without any problems. But now we always copy our pics to a backup file so that if we have any such problems we still have the pictures. Cheers Mike |
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09 Sep 12 - 01:27 PM (#3402072) Subject: RE: Tech: SD card not initialised From: Bonzo3legs Now back home and very gingerly copying 9Gb worth of photos in RAW format with a few short videos direct from the SD card in my camera via USB, which actually seems to be very slow indeed. Then I will try a separate copy via the SD card reader to see if the same problem arises with the SD card. |
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09 Sep 12 - 05:25 PM (#3402164) Subject: RE: Tech: SD card not initialised From: Bonzo3legs That all worked OK. I found a programme called CardRecovery http://www.cardrecovery.com/ this recovers jpg and RAW format pictures very well! |