SD card is having trouble - is there a way to block out bad sectors

  • Thread starter Thread starter Joshua Beall
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J

Joshua Beall

Aaugh, forgot to set the followup-to. Please followup-to comp.hardware.
Sorry about that!
 
Hi All,

I don't know much about engineering of flash memory, but I have an SD card
that always seems to go on the fritz when it fills up to a certain point.
It's when I get around 15megs of data on it, then it goes nuts. If it's in
my Pentax Optio 550, the whole camera freezes and I have to pull the battery
out to get the camera to respond. If it's in my Canon Optura 20, it spends
forever trying to write data to the card, and then gives a "card write
error." If it's in my Sharp Zaurus, it takes forever, then gives me a "card
I/O error" message.

I am wondering, is there any way to format a SD card, similar to the way you
format a regular disk, and block off the bad sectors, so that the rest of
the disc is still usable? Or anything like this? The "format" commands in
my camera and camcorder did not do seem to help.

Thanks for any help!
-Josh
 
Joshua Beall said:
Hi All,

I don't know much about engineering of flash memory, but I have an SD card
that always seems to go on the fritz when it fills up to a certain point.
It's when I get around 15megs of data on it, then it goes nuts. If it's in
my Pentax Optio 550, the whole camera freezes and I have to pull the battery
out to get the camera to respond. If it's in my Canon Optura 20, it spends
forever trying to write data to the card, and then gives a "card write
error." If it's in my Sharp Zaurus, it takes forever, then gives me a "card
I/O error" message.

I am wondering, is there any way to format a SD card, similar to the way you
format a regular disk, and block off the bad sectors, so that the rest of
the disc is still usable? Or anything like this? The "format" commands in
my camera and camcorder did not do seem to help.

Thanks for any help!
-Josh
Click to expand...
So far as I know a computer treats a piece of compatible flash memory just
as it does a removable disk drive -- format and all the other functions work
on it (at least the Addonics flash reader and Mitsumi reader/floppy I've
used on my more modern systems have). I just got done formatting a 128mB CF
flash card in the Mitsumi within the hour. Does your camera have a format
function built in? My Canon G1 has such a function and I suspect that it
might be capable of detecting and locking bad sectors -- certainly nothing
to lose in trying. Of course, if it doesn't work flash memory prices are at
an all-time low right now and I just bought a 512mB CF card at a local store
for <$80 this afternoon so you might want to consider a replacement.
 
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