Memory card error? Does 30D have problem dealing with near full memory card?

brambo76

Hello everyone,

I have near horror story.. I thought I was immune to this kind of things, but happened to me.
I use Canon 30D and have been using my Kingston Elite 2GB card for sometime without any problem. I don't shoot a lot of pictures before unloading them on my computer, but this weekend it was little differerent.

I never got a chance to empty my card and kept on shooting until the card was almost full - ~40 shots left.. I deleted a lot of bad ones as I took them as well.

I was taking last couple of shots and then wanted to check out the picture so I pressed playback button... to my horror, it read "No Image" with black background. Felt sick to my stomach. Maybe this was some kind of joke? Did someone press erase all by mistake?

Top LCD was reading Card Error.. Then I remembered reading something about problems with near full memory cards.

Fortunately my other card(Lexar Professional) comes with file recovery software.. I've lost some files, but I got most of them back..

do you know which is to blame? faulty memory card? camera? me?

ziggy53

brambo76 wrote:

Hello everyone,

I have near horror story.. I thought I was immune to this kind of things, but happened to me.
I use Canon 30D and have been using my Kingston Elite 2GB card for sometime without any problem. I don't shoot a lot of pictures before unloading them on my computer, but this weekend it was little differerent.

I never got a chance to empty my card and kept on shooting until the card was almost full - ~40 shots left.. I deleted a lot of bad ones as I took them as well.

I was taking last couple of shots and then wanted to check out the picture so I pressed playback button... to my horror, it read "No Image" with black background. Felt sick to my stomach. Maybe this was some kind of joke? Did someone press erase all by mistake?

Top LCD was reading Card Error.. Then I remembered reading something about problems with near full memory cards.

Fortunately my other card(Lexar Professional) comes with file recovery software.. I've lost some files, but I got most of them back..

do you know which is to blame? faulty memory card? camera? me?

There is anecdotal evidence that two of the things you were doing, deleting files during a shoot, and shooting to full capacity, do cause many instances of card problems.

Part of the problem appears that as you delete files during a shoot, you create fragmentation on the card. The card controller sometimes has a problem accurately reporting remaining usable space and the camera reports that you have more shooting space than it actually has.

As long as you:

Always format the card in the host camera (not in a computer or with a dissimilar camera, and don't just delete all images)
Don't delete images in-camera
Leave around 5 percent of the card capacity available

... you can probably eliminate a recurrence.

There is another software called "Zero Assumption Recovery" that may be able to recover a few more files, but they may be fragments.

http://www.z-a-recovery.com/