Winsor Crosby wrote:
>I think it is the Xd reliability with data corruption that people
>talk about. I have no experience, but I read an Oly review recently,
>not sure where, with that complaint and having to reshoot the test
>pictures.
>
>
I read up a lot on this, since I have such a card. Lots of posts on a
couple of forums about this.
It appears that the formatting scheme Oly thought up, partly at least
to support a scheme for storing panoramic images from some of their P&S
cameras, is not compatable with simple formatting from Windoze (and
probably DOS). And, they made their cameras a little too dumb about it.
So people format the card on their computer, rather than simply erasing
the images, and then the camera doesn't recognize the card.
One common solution is to take the card to a retailer with working Fuji
cameras. The Fujis are apparently smarter and recognize that they have a
card present, so you can format it in the camera. It then works in the
Oly camera. As I said, it appears to be a software, not hardware issue.
Whether this will kill off xD or Oly, who knows. Oly is apparently not
at all proactive in assisting people with this problem, requiring them
to send the card back for 'repair'. A free, downloadable piece of
software to reformat them would be a step in the right direction. Even
better would be a driver that recognizes an xD card and formats it properly.
Another issue that comes out through too much reading is that there are
a number (large?) of cheap many/all in one USB card readers with a chip
set in them that doesn't recognize cards formatted in these cameras.
When first using my Fuji, I cheerily did the download/erase dance
several times. Then, who knows why, I formatted the card in the camera.
Suddenly, my cheap card reader simply didn't see the card, the drive was
reported as empty by XP. (Didn't matter much to me, the F10 is USB 2.0
and downloads fast.) This has also undoubtedly been the cause of many xD
card 'failures'. "It worked yesterday, but won't today, must be a broken
card." Not Oly/Fuji's fault, but their problem. Again, nothing proactive
that I've seen. Why they don't have warnings about this on their web
sites, I have no idea.
I just picked up an Oly MAUSB-300 xD card reader. Cute, inexpensive
little thing that uses an xD card to act like a 'thumb' drive. It also
works, of course, for downloading images from xD cards. And it
recognizes the xD card that XP doesn't. Cute little gadget, but guess
what? Lots of words in tiny print on two sides of the instruction sheet,
but nothing cautioning about formatting xD cards that are to be used
with Oly cameras. DUMB!
Moose
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