Sony Memorystick Format Help

Mike Krumlauf

Mike Krumlauf

Award Winning Filmmaker
I have a Sony MSH-128 Memorystick which I know works with the HDW-F900R but for whatever reason Its not reading the card. When I go to format it i get "Format Error" on my camera. I tried formatting on my mac to every kind of file format with no luck. Does Sony makes a Memorystick formatter for mac? How can I get the card formatted properly so the camera can read it and format it and put the cameras file folders onto it.
 
If this is the same issue the Sony XDCam cameras had it's related to card size. In the early days there were no large capacity Memorysticks so the firmware in the cameras was never designed to see cards that size and came up with a format error. With the Sony XDCams there was a firmware upgrade for the cameras that allowed cards bigger than 8MB Yes 8MB from memory. That's probably why the HDW-F900R is seeing the card because it has later firmware allowing the bigger cards to be seen. The size limit might have been 16MB? I've still got a couple of 8MB Memorysticks for my 3 CCD PDW XDcam. All the camera scene files and settings were stored on these cards. Trouble is you cannot buy new Memorysticks that small these days so it's hunt around on eBay. Just checked there are a few used and new 8MB Memorysticks listed between $6.00 - 25.00. Good luck.

Chris Young
 
Chris, you are exactly right. But I wouldn't be surprised if the limit was 4GB or even 2GB on a camera that old. It should be in the manual if someone wanted to look it up.
 
You could be right Doug the memory is fading. The PDW was sitting on the rack so I had a quick look and in my case my cards are 8GB. I seem to recall the Pana P2 cams were okay with 8GB but a quick phone call to a rental house that handled those cams should generate an answer if no manual is at hand.

Chris Young
 
I decided to look it up, and yeah, only really small cards are compatible. 32MB, 64MB, 128MB, or 2GB are the only sizes that can be used.
 
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