I just tried this myself using a 1GB CF card on WinXP. The default
format chosen by Windows was FAT16. That's what I would have expected.
It was showing FAT32 as an option but NTFS was not shown as a format
option for this device. That's not surprising either for a small flash
card. NTFS was specifically designed to minimize seek times on rotating
disks by placing the directory structure at the middle of the data area.
It's a B-tree system and has lots of formatting structural overhead
which is probably a bit much for a small, electronic "disk".
I then allowed XP to actually do a full format (quick format was not the
default). I didn't time it but the formatting time was quite
noticeable. The output device was a USB2 driven multi-card
reader/writer. After formatting, the directory display, as expected,
showed an empty "disk".
I then put the card into the Mynolta A1 which did nothing until I asked
to see an image. At that point it immediately reported "no images". I
then took a shot with the camera which worked fine. After removing the
card and sticking it into the computer I could see that, before actually
taking the shot, the camera had created the directory structure that
would normally be found after an in-camera format. The image could be
displayed on the computer as expected. Afterwards, I formatted the card
in the camara which proceeded much more quickly than in the computer.
That may well have indicated a quick format. Or, maybe just a "smart"
format. Maybe it doesn't go beyond the data extent indicated by the
directory. I just made that up but consider it possible.
So, in all of this testing there was only one surprise and that was
rather mild. I expected the camera to complain when I tried to take a
shot and it discovered that its expected directory structure wasn't on
the card. It just did the logical thing. Create the directory
structure before stashing the image.
If anything, my Mynolta behaves a bit better and smarter than I
expected. I can't say why Oly doesn't behave the same way. Too bad you
don't have another non-Oly camera to try it out elsewhere.
Chuck Norcutt
Wayne Harridge wrote:
>
>
>
>> Chuck Norcutt <> wrote:
>>
>> Have you tried formatting the card in the camera after getting the "card
>>
>> full" error?
>>
>
> Yes, tried that, still get "card error"
>
>> If that doesn't work go back and reformat the card making sure that you
>> do *not* use the "quick format" option.
>>
>
> I definitely didn't use "quick format" in the PC, but I did just accept the
> default which may have been inappropriate for the camera. I'll try exploring
> the format options on the PC and see whether the camera handles it
> differently.
>
>> I suspect the problem is lame Olympus firmware. Let us know what
>> happens.
>>
>
> Yes, probably. I wonder whether the camera essentially only does a "quick
> format" and not a "full format".
>
> ...Wayne
>
> Wayne Harridge
>
> http://lrh.structuregraphs.com
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