Am I going crazy......?

[catatonix]

...or am I missing something very elementary here?

I'm a newcomer to PPCs (I have a 2nd hand Toshiba E-570) but am baffled by the behaviour of both of my 512mb SC cards.

Initially I filled both of them up with MP3 files, and as I trialled verious software packages I began to notice that the MP3s became corrupted in a most peculiar way... eg a completely different song (or snippet) replaced what I thought should be in the file.

Now I've begun to dabble in AVI files, and the same thing's happening; a 1h30min DVD rip which played fine on Wednesday now will totally fail to load in either Beta Player or Pocket MVP. And the 110min feature film which plays fine on my HD suddenly contains a short 1min MPEG (which was saved in the same directory on the SD card) yet still retains the 180mb filesize.

Both cards have been re-formatted via the PC, and I have re-set (soft AND hard) the Toshiba, all relevant software has been re-installed but this problem won't go away. I'm totally baffled!

Any help at all would be much appreciated (...I hope this is the right place to make this post; if not I apologise!)

[ADBrown]

Are these Sandisk branded or manufactured cards? Sandisk has a notorious reputation for data corruption.

[catatonix]

Are these Sandisk branded or manufactured cards? Sandisk has a notorious reputation for data corruption.

Er - no, they aren't. But as they were purchased on-line (okay, on Ebay grrr) and don't have any manufacturer's name on them, I'm a wee bit concerned now.

This is definately a problem on the cards then, yeah?

:|

[applejosh]

It could possibly be a problem with the Toshiba, but I'm guessing it is most likely a problem with the SD cards. I have an SD card that's 4 years old or so, and it has lots of problems (I obviously don't use it any more). They seem to "wear out" after you use them so much (only have so many write cycles). You might try using a newer card (borrowed or otherwise) to see if you have the same problem.

[ADBrown]

Try viewing the files straight from the SD card on the desktop PC. If they're corrupted there, it should confirm that the problem isn't the Toshiba.

[catatonix]

Thank you all for your help, problem solved!

Seeing as it was both CF cards that were misbehaving, I concluded that the problem stemmed from the $20 Winwiid Card reader which, although it afforded a much higher read/write rate to the cards, was actually corrupting things upon each additional use.

So now everything is swimming, having quick-formatted then re-formatted both cards, I can now squeeze in my ripped AVIs alongside my MP3s with no worries. Besides, I've had to re-install everything intio the Toshiba so it's now freshly spring-cleaned as well!

[maximus]

I really pity Sandisk as much as I pity Microsoft.

Every single problem we found on our PPC, we immediately blame sandisk.
Every single bugs on our desktop, we immediately shoot Microsoft.

There is so many things that can go wrong when writing data to a flash card, the above example showed one of the problems : the flash writer. And then there are also possibilities of error with your USB, activesync, your PPC, etc. etc. etc.

I have a whole lot ot SD cards, most of them are from Sandisk, from different sizes (32megs to 1gigs), and they are working fine.

It is always tough to be a market leader :)

[ADBrown]

I really pity Sandisk as much as I pity Microsoft.

Every single problem we found on our PPC, we immediately blame sandisk.
Every single bugs on our desktop, we immediately shoot Microsoft.


Well in fairness, it's not like they both don't have a record. 99% of the memory card defects I've ever read about are Sandisk cards, far more than Sandisk's portion of the market.

[catatonix]

As a Mac-veteran who's had to straddle both platforms for a couple of years now, it's just not within my powers to pity Microsoft for anything!

Their users, on the other hand........ :wink: