I had heard that SanDisk SD cards were bad to suddenly lose data. I thought that people who saw that error were just not handling the Axim right. And I laughed.
But, last night, after transfering some data from my work computer to my Axim to work on at home, the beast bit me. Imagine my supprise when I turned on the Axim & was asked if I wanted to re-format my 128M card, that had about 60M of data on it. Of course I said no. And I laughed (quieter).
Then my Axim got smart. The memory software said I had 2 SD cards in the Axim (couldn't figure out where the other one was) and neither was valid. And I stopped laughing.
I did wind up re-formatting the card. It wouldn't work any other way. I lost all that data.
I'll file this in with the "Turn-on-the-Axim-before-placing-it-in-the-dock-if-you-like-your-installed-programs" lesson that I learned.
ya that sucks. I had a sandisk that i eventualy got an rma for and then sent to my mom. Now i have a simpletech 256 works great!! no problems. I never turn my ax on before I put it in the cradle. not anymore. sandisk cards are really faulty.
Originally posted by Howard2k The main culprit was the 128MB card..
EJB> Are you saying that you were having problems before under 2002 and are not under 2003 with the same Axim and same card?
Wow, that really bites. I have a 128MB Sandisk SD card that I've used for four months now without a problem. That's not to say that this cannot happen to me. I am curious to know how long you used your card before it started giving you problems.
I used mine in my camera for a week or two and then it caused problems. So I threw it in the Axim and started doing some heavy reads/writes and was able to make it fail within 2 hours.. replaced it with another scamdisk and for general use it was fine for about 2 days. Then started giving the odd problem. So more heavy reads/writes and it also failed. Replaced it for ANOTHER scamdisk and started straight into the reads/writes. Within 3-4 hours it was toast. Replaced it with a Lexar and ran the same tests for a good 6-7 hours. No problems. Been fine since.
Is your Scamdisk made in Japan or Taiwan?
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Mine were all Taiwan from memory. Might have been China. I know it wasn't Japan. Apparantly some of the newer Scamdisk cards from Japan are better..
To give you an example of the problems I would copy files up there and they would not show up in the directory listing, they'd just take up space... Or folders would dissapear etc. I could be playing an MP3 and it would all of a sudden crash out with errors. I'd go take a look and the file would be gone..
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Sandisk does not make SD memory in Japan. It does all manufacturing in Taiwan or China. the new "NS" series of cards is better, but i have no idea how common they are. they are still made in Taiwan or China.
one japanese SD card was reported but never confirmed. even if it's real it's about as relevant to us as the Loch Ness Monster.
I can't guarantee what I'll say here is true...just my observations re: SD card problems.
I think the issue with some cards is that when you "delete" a file the card isn't releasing the space back properly. When you delete a file it doesn't clear the data, it just drops the files association within the cards file stucture.
When I've deleted a file I've run an "Analyze" from the Defrag screen of StorageTools. It finds that file space as "fragmented" and requires a defrag.
The free version of StorageTools doesn't let you defrag unless you register it, so I haven't yet run the defrag to see for sure if it cleans it up properly, but I assume it does so.
The only time I've had a problem with my SD cards is if their nearly full, then some files are deleted, then I try to write to it.