"Alan" wrote in message
...

[un-top-posted]

"John Stumbles" wrote in message
...
[crossposted to comp.os.linux.misc as well as *.photo.* groups because
I
know there'll be people there clued up about comp systems, and uk.d-i-y
for
folks clued up about life the universe and everything :-)]

I have a 128M CF card which has recently started playing up in my
digicam
(Nikon Coolpix 3100 fwiw). After taking a lot of pictures the camera
suddenly reports that the card is not formatted. I can recover the
pictures
from the card (using various commercial utilities, or dd-ing to an image
and
pulling out chunks starting with the jpeg header from the image file).
When
I do this usually some of the later images are corrupt: typically they
will
display OK in a thumbnail view but attempting to view at full size the
whole
image is momentarily displayed at reduced resolution but then a portion
of
the image (starting at the left side) is replaced by blank or garbage as
the
veiwer attempts to display it at full resolution. (I guess this is
related
to the format of jpeg images?)

Anyway I can reformat the card and it works OK, but the problem recurs.
Sometimes when recovering images I find I still have images from earlier
shoots 'further down' the card, suggesting that the card isn't failing
at
some particular memory location but more-or-less randomly. I have a
'reference' duff CF card :-) which the camera (and PC via card reader)
report as unformatted even after a format and this card isn't showing
that
symptom, but the repeated occurrences of the problem and the fact I
don't
get any problems on another CF card (though that is only 32Mb) suggests
that
it's the card at fault rather than the camera.

Is there any way of testing to be sure, using what I have he the
camera
itself, a usb card reader, linux and win2k systems, some loo rolls and
sticky-back plastic ... :-) ?

John,

The fact it works find with the 32MB CF card is fairly conclusive proof
I'd
say that the 128 is unwell, and not the camera.
Buy another one? 128's are pretty cheap.


Alan.



I bought it from ebuyer in February, and they'd be my first choice* if I
were to buy a new one so I'm checking that they sort this out to see if I
want to go on using them anyway. (I've a scanner and other stuff on my
wishlist.)

* I know others have had bad experiences with them but my own experience is
that when the 16M CF card that came with my camera packed up they just sent
out a 32M card with no quibble. Hoping this one goes as smoothly.