Corrupt digital images

exampasserexampasser Member Posts: 718 ■■■□□□□□□□
I got a Fujifilm S1500 digital camera. It takes great pictures but sometimes I get read/write errors. I'm using a 4 GB Sandisk SDHC card I got for $7 off of Amazon(though a 3rd party supplier). I'm not sure if it's the card or the Camera. Is there any software out there for testing SDHC cards, as I do have a card reader on my laptop? I'm a little suspicious of the card as it only came in a small plastic case with no retail packaging. Some of the reviews on Amazon even think that the card is counterfeit.

Comments

  • JDMurrayJDMurray Admin Posts: 13,023 Admin
    SDHC cards are usually formatted with FAT32, so you can put it into a computer with an SDHC media reader slot, run a SCANDISK, defrag, and reformat it like a hard drive. But don't use a low-level sector checkers on it, like SpinRite, as they will quickly wear out the flash memory in the card.
  • exampasserexampasser Member Posts: 718 ■■■□□□□□□□
    Thanks, I'll try that.

    Happy New Year!
  • exampasserexampasser Member Posts: 718 ■■■□□□□□□□
    I've now been taking 100s of photos to see if the read/write error would occur again, but no issues. Go figure.
  • JDMurrayJDMurray Admin Posts: 13,023 Admin
    The bad sectors on your card may be occupied by an image file. Running a CHKDSK <driveletter> /R will find the bad sectors, relocate their contents, and mark them as bad to they will not be reused. There are millions of sectors on that card, so no problem loosing a few bad ones.
  • exampasserexampasser Member Posts: 718 ■■■□□□□□□□
    I scanned the card on the computer and sure enough errors were found and corrected. I got a quick question though, if I need to reformat the card do I need to rescan the card again to mark the bad sectors? I assume I would as when you reformat ,the FAT table is wiped, assuming information about bad sectors is recorded to the FAT table.
  • JDMurrayJDMurray Admin Posts: 13,023 Admin
    If the errors were corrected by the disk scanning program you used, the data in the bad sectors was relocated to good sectors, and the bad sectors were marked as BAD so they will not be used again. You can re-run the scanning program to verify that no bad sectors remain. There is no need to reformat the card.
  • exampasserexampasser Member Posts: 718 ■■■□□□□□□□
    I meant I ever needed to reformat the card sometime in the future.
  • JDMurrayJDMurray Admin Posts: 13,023 Admin
    The information about bad sectors is recorded in a bad sector table and not in the FAT. Reformatting any card or drive will not wipe out the bad sector table.
  • exampasserexampasser Member Posts: 718 ■■■□□□□□□□
    Ok thanks for all the help:).
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