IST DS memory card help

New member here, very informative site you have!
I have an IST DS that has me pulling my hair out. On our summer vacation I used a brand new Kingston 4gb memory card, formatted in the camera before any pictures taken. I shot over 1000 pictures on the card, but when I d'l the pictures, only about 500 are viewable. The rest show up as thumbnails, but there is no picture, while a few seem to have fragments of several pics. What went wrong? The camera reported "unable to display image", at which point I changed to another card.
I have tried to recover the pics with Sandisk ResuPro but no luck.

Any ideas?

Hi Marlin, Welcome to PR and I'm very sorry to hear that it's a problem that brought you here.

Several things come to mind.
1. Was the camera fully charged when the final pictures were being taken? If not, this can prevent proper transfer to the memory card. This has happened to me, but not to the extent you are talking about. This is also true when you try to upload to your computer. Always ensure that you either have a full battery charge when transferreing, formatting and shooting to minimize write errors.

2. My first card did this to me. It was a SanDisk. Turned out to be a bad card. I lost all but a few of my youngest daughters wedding pictures. Very mad photog was I!!!! But, it happens. Most of these are warranteed, so maybe you might try returning the card and getting a new one.

3. Is the camera a recent purchase? Possibly, it could be a problem with the camera. Double check that the DS can support that size of card. Many of the older ones can't.support over 2GB.

These are a few of the things that come to mind. I hope someone can figure out how to get the rest of your photos. At least you have the thumbnails if nothing else. That's all I had of my daughters wedding and some "half" thumbs... :(

Good luck and please let us know how this turns out!!!

Ken1953, thanks for the reply. It's not a new purchase, in fact it's a few years old. I think it may have been a power problem now that you mention it. I had to buy new CR-V3's for it about half way through our vacation. I said in my original post the card was 4gb, in fact it is a 2gb, so size should not be an issue.
From now on....fresh batteries at the start of every vacation!

Have you thought about rechargeables...I think the *ist D will use standard rechargeables. Thats what I use in my *ist DL's. And I carry plenty of extras and a rapid charger when I'm travelling. CR-V3's are way too expensive for me since I tend to take way tooooo many photos. haha
Also, carry a laptop or some sort of media storage device that will allow you to frequently d/l your card. That should prevent any future loss. Just be careful to frequently format your card. I format every time I d/l my photos and I've never had a problem with any of my cards except that first one that I mentioned above. And it was just a bad card. Also, you could still have a bad card. If you continue to have problems, don't hesitate to take it back as soon as possible.

Now...let's see some of those vacation pics!!!! Some of us didn't get to go on vacation this year!!! hehe and live vicariously through others pics...hehe