Memory Card Error, Check Memory Card

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kassu

Member
I had a „MEMORY CARD ERROR PLEASE CHECK THE CARD” error while filming 720p with GH1 (firmware 1.1) and with Transcend 16GB SDHC Class 6 card.
I left the camera running, It had stopped itself (PAL model, so I assume after 30mins of recording) and went to power saving mode. I switched the camera back on again and started a new recording. Few minute to the new footage, the error occurred.
Now the card does not work anymore in the Camera or in a PC. Windows or Linux just cannot recognize the card and do not make a drive available for it.
Lost few stills and 30-40 mins of footage.
Contacted Transcend tech support. They suggested to do a deep scan with Recuva www.recuva.com or SD Formatter from www.sdcard.org
Both did not work, could not access the card.
Any other suggestions for trying to recover the data? It is not so important that I would pay for professional recovery service, but would be willing to spent few more evenings trying with SW or reasonably priced card reader HW if anything available. Currently just using the SD card slot in my laptop.

Anybody else with similar problems?
Transcend is less than half the price of Panasonic SD Cards, but I would of course like to avoid this problem in future. I’m considering if it is worth to pay the extra?
 
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I had similar problem with a Patriot 16gb class 6 card, but only because I had not formatted the card in the camera first. If you don't mind loosing your footage can you format the card in the camera and then continue to use it? My card has no problems now.
 
Thinking about it, this problem is likely to be related to the test I did last night. Unlike with tape, where if the battery runs out, you have what you recorded up to that point, it seems that if the GH1 battery runs out, the file from when you first started recording (the last one) will not be able to be finalised and recorded to the card.

This is only from one test, but it makes sense, and should be a warning to users. Perhaps the firmware should detect that battery level is dangerously low, stop the recording and finalise the file before shutting down?
 
The card was formatted in the camera.
I am not able to format the card again in the camera as it does not allow access to the camera menues while the card is in and it is showing the error screen.
I am also not able to format the card again in the PC, Windows does not recognize the card anymore and does not make a drive available for the card.

During my take the camera did not run out of power, the battery was full. I was not paying close attention due to complexity of my setup (just let the camera run), but I assume that the camera automatically stopped after 30 mins of recording and then after 5 mins went to power saving mode. When I noticed that the LCD was black (camera in power saving), I clicked the power switch off and on again and started the next recording. After couple on minutes it came up with the error screen.
 
right, got you, I should really learn to read. Ah well, I should dip out of this conversation then, as I have no idea about that. But the stuff about the loss of power = loss of data is still worth me mentioning.

All I can suggest is, if your pc can 'see' the hcsd card in bios, you could try something like Active Boot Disk. This alows you to boot pc from cd or usb flash card, then it has some data recovery tools you can try on the card form the camera. I know Active Boot Disk works, I've used it sucessfully a few times, but whether it can find anything on your card is another question.
 
I had a similar problem with a Panasonic 16GB class 6 SDHC card that I had received from the promotion when I got the camera. I moved the protection switch on the side of the card both directions and made sure it was all the way over. Then it worked fine, and is working fine now.

Jack

P.S. I don't have a GH1, but I do have a Panasonic HMC150 camcorder.
 
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So, I tried a half a dozen different data recovery / partition management SW tools available in the interweb, but unfortunately nothing helped on this particular card. Typically these tools were very capable of recovering data from my other functioning sd cards, but just reported bad sectors or not being able to talk at all to this broken one. Got a new similar Transcend 16GB Class 6 card and tried to reproduce the problem, but it did not occur again. The only way I was able to corrupt files was to remove the battery when the camera was writing to the card, which is clearly abusing it and asking for trouble, but still it did not kill the memory card completely. So, finally I concluded that I just got unlucky with a bad card that broke down on me, shipped it back to the dealer and I’m now waiting for a replacement.
Thanks for all the feedback. No, it was not the write protect switch on the side of the card either. I did find the Active @ undelete particularly nice, especially with its hex edit tools and other partition mgmt utilities.
But in the end, I was not able to recover my data and now I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that this does not happen to me again.
 
I had a Transcend 8GB card go totally dead like that when I took it out of a recording device (not the GH1) and inserted it in my PC. As far as I was aware it was working when removed and not working when inserted. Maybe some kind of static strike, maybe sheer bad luck. The supplier replaced it with another Transcend 8GB, and that has been fine.

With audio recording I always run two devices to provide media backup. With video, that's simply not practical (heh, unless HGMI out on the GH1 happens so you could record internally and externally at the same time). So, every now and then the magic of memory card data aquisition will fail you, and there's nowt to be done but pray.
 
kassu said:
I had a „MEMORY CARD ERROR PLEASE CHECK THE CARD” error while filming 720p with GH1 (firmware 1.1) and with Transcend 16GB SDHC Class 6 card.
I left the camera running, It had stopped itself (PAL model, so I assume after 30mins of recording) and went to power saving mode. I switched the camera back on again and started a new recording. Few minute to the new footage, the error occurred.
Now the card does not work anymore in the Camera or in a PC. Windows or Linux just cannot recognize the card and do not make a drive available for it.
Lost few stills and 30-40 mins of footage.
Contacted Transcend tech support. They suggested to do a deep scan with Recuva www.recuva.com or SD Formatter from www.sdcard.org
Both did not work, could not access the card.
Any other suggestions for trying to recover the data? It is not so important that I would pay for professional recovery service, but would be willing to spent few more evenings trying with SW or reasonably priced card reader HW if anything available. Currently just using the SD card slot in my laptop.

Anybody else with similar problems?
Transcend is less than half the price of Panasonic SD Cards, but I would of course like to avoid this problem in future. I’m considering if it is worth to pay the extra?
Click to expand...
WoW, the exact same thing happened to me. I also have a 16GB Transcend SDHC Class 6 card.
 
Just for your information;

This exact same thing seems to be the case with a VERY expensive SanDisk Extreme 30MB/s SDHC 16 GB card. On my GH1 I can't do a thing with it, and my notebook doesn't see the card either. Not even through the use of a Knoppix live CD could I make the card visible or recover any file from it. I had saved over 40 images on it, and an hour of video.

From the looks of it, using Google, this happens much too often to SDHC. I don't get why that is, I mean, I've been using floppy-disks all my life and never experienced this once, these SDHC things are supposedly higher quality storage media I would reckon. Obviously the opposite is the case.

I'm really terribly annoyed by the loss of data this time. It's a once in a lifetime event that I had photographed and filmed using the GH1, and then this happens! You might as well use 2 cameras at the same time, or some kind of RAID technology while storing your photographs, because honestly, this NEVER happened to me with any older medium in my 44 years on this planet.
This is just crappy produced hardware, either Panasonic messed up here (would'nt surprise me one bit, to be honest) or SanDisk, but the testing on these things before they sell those SDHC to the general public seems to be close to none. I'm disgusted by the downfall of storage quality in this day and age.

Anyone that did have luck with any software to restore visibility of such broken card?
 
Kassu, was this a new card or one that had some use? Just wondering if a bum card will show itself quickly or after you've had it a while and least expect it.

Benedict, I wouldn't be as quick to blame the camera. Recently my son came to me with a dead 8gig Patriot class 4 card. He had been using it in his Flip cam. Same situation as Kassu's card, nothing on PC or Mac will recognize or re-format it, including the camera. Granted, he only lost a bunch of little movies of his Lego figures, but it was important to him.
 
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Wow, that sucks... were these new cards? Or did they break after a bunch of shoots where they worked flawlessly?
 
pianoboy said:
Wow, that sucks... were these new cards?
Click to expand...

Yeaah, big time.

They were new when I bought them, about 1 1/2 years ago. Not very reassuring to see that there other brands involved.

Mine was in the camera for a while. I was shooting a music video with Canon 1d4 when a lens fell on the ground and wasn't of too much use, I decided to use the GH1 that was in a case as a back up kit. Then I noticed the issue. Luckily, I had another 16 G card on hand (brand "First Champion" class 6) and all was fine.

As closing note, using the GH1 again was a breeze, a great pleasure after the cumbersome interface of Canon. That flip screen makes a HUGE difference. I still don't know why I decided to start the production with it anyway...
 
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