About 8 months ago I bought a digital camera that uses those tiny little wafers to store pictures on (SmartMedia). When choosing a camera I looked briefly at the options: skinny wafer, slightly thicker wafer, stick, etc. Six of one half dozen of the other I thought. I chose the camera for different reasons.
The Problem
Now my 64MB Verbatim SmartMedia memory card is error ridden, causing me to lose some nice Xmas pics. Erased the card and gently cleaned the surface but it still won’t take pics properly.
My Questions are:
Any hope for reformatting or salvaging the card?
Is it likely that the card just got over-used (filled it maybe 15 times)? Do they have a life expectancy?
Next time should I choose a camera with a more reliable storage system or is this just a freak occurrance?
My experience with 2 Olympus digicams and SmartMedia cards from Olympus (the little ones that the cameras came with) and SanDisk (16, 32 and 64 MB) has been good - no failures. But I did have to learn that third party cards and card readers are programmed not to work with competing brands.
Answer 1. Clearing the card with a card reader may leave it unuseable for the camera, but reformatting it in the camera can fix this. So I think reformatting it in your camera is your best hope.
Answer 2. They are supposed to be good for thousands of rewrites. They have a life expectancy, but such a long one that it doesn’t matter.
Answer 3. Before I bought equipment I hunted around the web, for example on the Digital Camera Resource Page and on Steve’s Digicams (don’t have the page addresses handy). I never heard that any of the storage systems were unreliable. I am guessing it’s a freak occurrance, or else something unusual in what you’re doing - getting them hot or wet or leaving them in your basement synchrotron.
I would agree. One of the caveats with SmartMedia is that they have exposed electrical contacts which should not be touched, and are susceptible to failure if mishandled.
It may have been a mistake not to pay much attention to the memory format. I decided compact flash was the way to go, personally.
Me too. But either way it’s way cool to have so much static memory in a postage-stamp sized format. If you have a laptop (with card slots), the card reader is $5 and you can use it as a hard drive with no trouble and without a USB socket.
My Fujifilm Finepix 1400 came with a 4 MB Smartmeda card and I bought a 64 MB card which is what I have been using all along and never had a problem with it for a couple years now. But recently I tried to use the original 4MB card and it was dead. 100% dead. I have never lost a picture though but I am in the good habit of transferring them to the computer ASAP just in case.
I also recently bought a card reader, just because it was cheap. That way I can save some files from the computer to the card if I feel like it.
Olympus digital cameras with SmartMedia cards have a history of problems. Olympus formatting is slightly non-standard, the cameras don’t do a true low-level format, using Olympus software to erase pictures from the camera via the PC causes problems, etc. Found a lot about this on newsgroups when I just went thru this. My solution:
Got a cheap $20 dazzle SmartMedia reader and low-level formated the media. Then put in the camera and formated it there.
Only use the camera to delete pictures.
Never buy an Olympus camera or a SmartMedia based camera again.
ftg, I strongly disagree. I’ve had two Olympus cameras with SmartMedia and have had no problems with either except for one card that needed a reformat at one point.
You can find issues with all cameras, but I’ve never heard anything about a systematic problem with either SmartMedia or Olympus cameras. Do you have any cites for these problems?