memory card comparison

[dwhiteneck]

I recently purchased a Konica Minolta DiMage Z3 and bought a PNY sd 256 mb card and a SanDisk 5 in 1 reader to go with it. I took some rodeo pictures last night and tried to download them to my pc and it kept giving a searching window and then nothing would happen. The lcd light on the reader was green changing to orange as if it was in process of reading, downloading, or whatever, so I waited for the media card companion application to pop up. It never did. I took out the card and put it back in my camera to make sure the pics were still there and readable and they were. I repeated the process again with the reader and the window "media companion is running, connect or insert card to launch application. I hit the ok button and recheck that the card is in ok and the reader just keeps blinking at me and does nothing. I put the card back in my camera and it sent a message "system error" when I tried to look at the pics and shut down my camera. I have the original card that came with the camera, panasonic SD 16mb, and can easily download my pictures thru the reader. What am I doing wrong with the other card or is it the reader. Oh yes, at one point last night my pc popped up a window saying the PNY card was corrupt and could not retrieve the pictures. I don't understand why or how this happened unless it is because I removed the card from the reader while the lcd was flashing. Is this what caused the foul up? Why wouldn't it read it in the first place as easlily as it did the other card? I wouldn't have pulled it out if it had done what the other card did. HELP!! This 256 card was $40 and I only used it twice. The first time was difficult to get it to download too, but I did get the pictures finally, but not last night.

[Photo-John]

Sorry to hear about the corrupted card. If it makes you feel any better, welcome to the club. I think it has to happen to everyone at least once.

Did you format the PNY card before you used it the first time? You really shouldn't have problems with a ny memory card, and PNY is a good brand. But sometimes the electronic demons take their toll. You can try to recover what's on the card with data recovery software. Once you recover it or decide to scrap the data, try reformatting it and do some rigorous testing to detemince where the problem is. Don't assume that it's the card. I have built-in card readers on my laptop and discovered that they were corrupting cards. However, that was the last thing I thought of. And I lost a lot of stuff before I figured out it was the reader and not the cards I was using.

[bashby]

Have you loaded the software driver for the ScanDisk 5 in 1 reader ( SDDR99)

Bobby