Storage Card Memory Loss--Fault of Card or PPC?

[maikii]

I have the T-Mobile (USA) MDA (HTC Wizard) PPC. In it I have a Sandisk 2GB miniSD card.

For the second time now, suddenly and inexplicably, most of the data on the card is missing. There was no operation I executed that could have deleted the data, it was suddenly gone, for no apparent reason. This happened once before?

Has this happened to others? Is it a bug in the MDA, that it sometimes deletes data from the storage card, for no reason? Are those miniSD cards inherently unstable, sometimes suddenly losing their data? Or might I have a defective card?

If the card is defective, I think I could call Sandisk, and get a new card under warranty. (If the MDA is defective, nothing I can do about it, no longer under warranty.) So, I'd like to have some idea--bad card or bad MDA?

Also, I have a USB card reader that can read miniSD cards, and have used that before to transfer data to the card from the computer. That seems to no longer work. I wonder if that is also an indication of a bad card. (Although it could also be the a failure of the card reader, or of my Windows XP installation.) Now I can only transfer data back to the card via ActiveSync.

Is there a utility, that either from the computer, or directly on the PPC, can check the disk surface of an SD card for errors, and fix them (similar to chkdsk)?

Any insight into this problem would be appreciated. Thank you.

[JustinGTP]

Have your cards only failed in your device? Flash media is normally non-volatile, but in occassion they will completely corrupt. You might just of had bad luck with them, but there are no card checkers that I know of. I would contact the manufacturer - they might want you to send the card to them anyhow.

[Cybrid]

Sandisk has a rep for buggy cards dating back years.

[Nurhisham Hussein]

Sandisk has a rep for buggy cards dating back years.

Oh my yes - Sandisk used to be a byword for buggy SD cards.

Is there a utility, that either from the computer, or directly on the PPC, can check the disk surface of an SD card for errors, and fix them (similar to chkdsk)? \

chkdsk :lol: If your card is readable (which you've said it's not), most drive/flash card diagnostic tools should be able to check through the file system. Otherwise, file recovery tools can usually find your missing files, and a quick reformat will get you in business again.

Just a FWIW, flash drives and cards don't have a 'surface' to check - there's no physical platter and drive head like there is in a conventional hard drive, it's just a silicon chip. General failures of flash memory occur because of two problems - the memory blocks wear out (flash memory has a limit on the number of write operations conducted before it fails), but with modern wear-levelling techniques and better quality, this is very unlikely to happen over a card's useful life.

More likely, the card's controller chips are faulty or couldn't handle the throuhput from your PDA - which typically results in the 'disappearing' files syndrome. In effect, the file system or more precisely the file allocation table which tracks the physical location of files, got corrupted. Your files are probably still there, but neither your PDA nor your PC can find them because the 'mailman' has lost the 'address'.