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Is my Memory Card faulty?

M-5

M-5

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 4, 2008
1,100
93
I bought a PNY Optima SDHC 8 GB card from Best Buy on sale about 3 months ago. This past month, there has been about 1 or 2 corrupted images when I transfer the photos to iPhoto, and they won't transfer. And when I look into the memory card folder on my desktop, the corrupted photo will appear with part of it grayed out or it will be combined with part of an image I had took and deleted a few weeks ago. My camera is a D5000 and about the same age as my memory card, and the card nor the camera appear to be broken where the memory card goes into the camera.

Is there something I could do to fix this, or do I have to purchase another memory card? Thank you for the help.
 
nickXedge

nickXedge

macrumors 6502
Feb 13, 2008
393
0
Long Island
Try formatting the card from the camera's menu. If that doesn't help, try another card. If that doesn't work, try the card in a different camera. Trial and error until you find a constant part of the equation involved in the faulty photos.
 
arogge

arogge

macrumors 65816
Feb 15, 2002
1,065
33
Tatooine
What type of file corruption is it? Is the RAW file very small, or is it the expected size but unreadable?

Are you formatting the card in the camera, formatting the card on the Mac, or deleting the files with the camera or the Mac without reformatting?

I would not even question this for one of my memory cards. I would replace the card if it happened more than once. That's because the data that I put on these memory cards is worth more than the price of a new card.
 
nickXedge

nickXedge

macrumors 6502
Feb 13, 2008
393
0
Long Island
arogge said:
<snip>

I would not even question this for one of my memory cards. I would replace the card if it happened more than once. That's because the data that I put on these memory cards is worth more than the price of a new card.
Click to expand...

I agree 100%. But I would want to make sure it's the card first, and not the camera causing some sort of error while writing to the card. More likely it is the card, but you never know with these things. They don't have to make sense, so they don't.
 
M-5

M-5

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 4, 2008
1,100
93
I'll try formatting the card. I don't remember doing that. And once I import, I'll choose the 'remove photos on card' choice on iPhoto. Sometimes I delete them from the folder itself though, and I'll also empty the trash can before I remove the card, because I'm pretty sure that they stay on the card if I don't. And I'm not sure about if the size is smaller, but I don't usually shoot in RAW; I have before, but the corrupted files are usually just jpegs. I'll test it out.
 
arogge

arogge

macrumors 65816
Feb 15, 2002
1,065
33
Tatooine
M-5 said:
And once I import, I'll choose the 'remove photos on card' choice on iPhoto.
Click to expand...

No, don't let iPhoto touch the files on the memory card. I actually recommend against using iPhoto to import image files. The files should be transfered directly to the hard drive using the least-complicated method, and that means using no software that is doing anything except using the cp command.

Don't delete files from the memory card with Finder and then empty the Trash. I do it for some cards because there's a lot of cards and not a lot of time, but I still reformat them occasionally. The best method of making a memory card ready for reuse is to reformat it in the same camera that will be writing to it.
 
M-5

M-5

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 4, 2008
1,100
93
I reformatted my card, and I won't be using iPhoto for the imports anymore. Thank you all for the suggestions.
 
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