Wednesday, March 19, 2003
Don't Blame the Memory Card...Yet
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 11:30 AM
Last year I bought a Sandisk Cruzer with a 256 MB SD card included (prices sure have dropped!) and I used the 256 MB SD card in my XDA. When I needed to copy over large amounts of data, I used the eMagic 6 in 1 memory card reader. I had been really pleased with the eMagic reader, and had no problems at all with any of my cards, until I got the 256 MB Sandisk card.
When copying large files, I'd get "bad CRC" errors. I hadn't seen a bad CRC error in a decade! 8O I did a sector scan of the SD card, and it came up clean - yet no matter how many times I tried, I'd keep getting the same error when trying to copy over a large Pharos GPS map. I contacted Sandisk, sent back the card, and received a replacement. The entire process took over a month, which is quite ridiculous when you think about how vital a memory card is - I wish Sandisk would do cross-shipping. But I digress...
I received the new card, and it had the same problem! I was quite displeased with Sandisk shipping me what I thought was another bad memory card, and nearly did a rant about my experience here, but I held off and contacted their tech support again. They asked me to try the memory card reader on a different computer. I thought this was a silly suggestion, but I grudgingly complied. I received the same errors when the eMagic reader was plugged into my laptop. I was starting to suspect the reader, so, playing a hunch, I put the SD card into a Pretec SD to CF adaptor, then put that into a CF to PCMCIA adaptor (boy did that look strange!). And, much to my delight, I was able to copy many large files, and even one singular file that was 130 MB in size!
So the lesson of this story is that the next time you have a problem with a memory card, try using it in a different memory card reader - you may not have a bad card after all. Now off to get one of those new Sandisk USB 2.0 All-in-One card readers. [Affiliate]
When copying large files, I'd get "bad CRC" errors. I hadn't seen a bad CRC error in a decade! 8O I did a sector scan of the SD card, and it came up clean - yet no matter how many times I tried, I'd keep getting the same error when trying to copy over a large Pharos GPS map. I contacted Sandisk, sent back the card, and received a replacement. The entire process took over a month, which is quite ridiculous when you think about how vital a memory card is - I wish Sandisk would do cross-shipping. But I digress...
I received the new card, and it had the same problem! I was quite displeased with Sandisk shipping me what I thought was another bad memory card, and nearly did a rant about my experience here, but I held off and contacted their tech support again. They asked me to try the memory card reader on a different computer. I thought this was a silly suggestion, but I grudgingly complied. I received the same errors when the eMagic reader was plugged into my laptop. I was starting to suspect the reader, so, playing a hunch, I put the SD card into a Pretec SD to CF adaptor, then put that into a CF to PCMCIA adaptor (boy did that look strange!). And, much to my delight, I was able to copy many large files, and even one singular file that was 130 MB in size!
So the lesson of this story is that the next time you have a problem with a memory card, try using it in a different memory card reader - you may not have a bad card after all. Now off to get one of those new Sandisk USB 2.0 All-in-One card readers. [Affiliate]
