Bad memory card

[Patrice]

A 4GB SanDisk Extreme III failed today. I've only had it for about 30 days. At about the 40 shot mark at Boo's Xmas dance class recital the D200 displayed the CHR error (bad card). Dropped in a spare 1gb card and carried on. I can't recover any data using SanDisk's recovery utility. The card will not reformat either on the PC, the Mac or the Camera. How often do these things fail? These cards are not the least expensive of their kind!

 

[fmw]

I don't know. I have never filled up a 1 GB card in a day's shooting so I don't even buy them that large. I would think failures are rare. I remember when I had a Fuji S1 that used some little flexible cards, they would fail fairly often but jump back to life after formatting. Beyond that I've never had a card failure. Perhaps the answer is to buy a greater number of lower capacity cards. It doesn't take very long to change one and they sure don't take up much space in the camera bag.

 

[darich]

i've had digital cameras for a few years now starting with a Nikon Coolpix 800 and now a Canon 5D with Canon P&S A85. In all that time I've had one card fail - a 256mb - but luckily i didn't lose any shots.
I did have to send a Lexar 1gb 80x card back to Lexar in a known issue recall - again luckily no shots lost.
I now have 4 x 1gb cards all of which are SanDisk - 2x ultra II and 2x Extreme III. I recently purchased a Wolverine FlashPac (80gb) so i could download my shots so i wouldn't need to buy larger cards. I'd agree with fmw about more smaller cards than fewer larger ones and that's why i got my flashpac.

With no moving parts in them failures are rare - if it's going to fail it would normally fail very quickly after manufacture. If you've tried recovering and are satisfied you can't do anything more I'd be inclined to return the card to the shop as faulty and buy a 2 or 3 1gb cards for the same amount.