SanDisk "Card Locked" (but it's not)

Hello everyone,

This problem came out of no where. I turned on my camera to take some pictures and it reads "memory card error" on the top. And if I go to view my pictures on the camera it says the same on the top and on the bottom it says "card locked". So I take the card on and discover there is a little slider on the side of the card with the word lock to it (didn't know this before) so I fix that, dont know how it got switched, put it back in, same message!

It's not my camera. I have a PowerShot A710. The card that is giving me problems is a 2 gig sandisk card, but I also have a 16 mg SD card that came with the camera. Tried that, and it works. Like I said, it's not the camera. Also, I was just using my camera the day before, no problems, and the night before I took some pictures off of it, no problem. I really dont know how it could've just went BOOM and died? See I am studying abroad in Paris right now and have quite a few pictures on this card that I would hate to lose!

When I put the card into my computer it comes up, I click it, and the bar that shows how much memory is left is completely red, and it says there is 0 space for memory (which isn't true) I think I could probably format the card and it would work? But, those pictures would be lost. Any ideas guys?

Thanks!

Formatting is what I was going to suggest, you will loose the photos on the card though. Sandisk has a recovery program that usually comes with its cards, you should have received one when you purchased your card. I have never used this software, but I would give that try before formatting.

You can't download the pics?

The switch got something in it, you should copy all the stuff of the the memory card before you try to clean the switch on the card. It may end up that you will have to replace the memory card, as having it locked it's read only.

Thanks everyone for the quick replies.

First, i bought this off of ebay long long long time ago, Never gave me any problems and it didn't come with this backup disc.

I can't see the images.

Like I said, the card doesn't think there is anything on it. I insert it into the computer and double click on it, and then it says please insert something into drive G.

There are a lot of fake sandisks being sold on ebay.
Hope you can find a way to save those shots.

Do you have a computer with an SD card reader (or access to one)? If so just put the card in the reader and the computer should see it as an external disk. Then just copy the files to the computer. After copying do check out the copies to make sure they made it ok. If not give the copy another go.

Once the files are copied you will be free to format or further experiment wih the card. I think, considering the low price of a 2GB SanDisk, the images may be more important than the card itself. :thumbsup: