iMac Card Reader Corrupts SD Card

[brianhoorn]

Ok, I've had a pleasant experience with my imac so far, and it read my SD card fine at first. For some reason I put my SD in the SD card reader and copied the pictures from it. I take it out and put it back in my camera.

"The SD card cannot be formatted. It may be defective."

Really? I put it back in my iMac. It doesn't mount. I check Finder and Disk Utility. Ya, it's nowhere. I put my other SD card in my iMac. Same issue. Now my camera won't read that one either. I put them in my sister's $300 netbook running Windows 7 Starter. Funny! It reads them! However, my camera still doesn't and my imac still doesn't. I try formatting them. No go. I've tried every format I can. They are just dead. Useless. My sister's computer can read them, and even format them, but something in that stupid iMac made my SD cards defective. I can buy new ones, but should I have to? I can't even see if they'll work through the camera while connected via USB because the camera won't even read them. I bought a Mac to avoid ridiculous problems like this. Was I wrong? Is it just a ticking time bomb like every other computer on the market? Should I immediately go buy a backup drive? If it's doing crazy stuff like this out of the blue, how can I trust it not to randomly crash? I think I overestimated Apple's competence. This should never happen. It actually made my SD cards defective. I'm hysterical! I am completely dumbfounded! Everything else works fine. Should I run a virus scan?

PLEASE HELP!!!

 

[John T]

After you had copied the pics from your card, did you dismount it? If not, this could have corrupted it.

 

[Tumbleweed666]

Should I immediately go buy a backup drive?

You should always have a backup. If you don't have a backup, either you are an idiot, or you don't care about your data, because any one of 100 things could screw your data up, its ridiculous to imagine there is a special type of computer, Mac, Windows whatever that you can never lose your data on. Suppose its stolen or there is a fire or flood?

Back to your SD card - v strange if you can read the card in another machine but not the camera. Can you write from Win 7 to the card?

Have you rebooted the Mac? I've had a couple glitches fixed by that. In this case, I'd shut it down, then switch it off at the power for for maybe 30 seconds. Then try again.

An off the wall suggestion, looking on the card under windows, you'll likely find a couple of files on the card beginning with a dot (ds_store and perhaps trashes. Delete those. What happens when you put the card back in the camera? Any luck?

BTW, what make is the camera?

 

[brianhoorn]

John T: Yes of course I did. Does it have to do with my camera? I noticed Apple is very supportive of Canon on their website, but not Nikon.

Tumbleweed666: I'm not retarded. I'm just not made of money (yes, $70 is a lot to me). It's a back up drive or food at the moment. If there was a fire, my backup drive would be gone too. Same for floods, but I'm not in a flood zone. I just thought I could wait a little bit since Macs are apparently more reliable.

Yes Windows 7 has full control of the card.

Yes. I've rebooted it quite a few times.

I've done that (I deleted all the pictures along with them) and it didn't change anything. I'm just backing up everything on my sister's computer for now and transferring pictures via flash drive. I just don't find this productive or necessary.

My camera is a Nikon D5000. I'm planning on selling this one and buying a Canon T2i. If I don't have the same problem, I'll assume it was the camera. I'll be very mad if that's the case. I'm tired of compatibility issues with my Mac. Any nice DSLR should be compatible with Macs. Most photographers I know use Macs.



Thank you both for trying to help.

 

[Tumbleweed666]

If there was a fire, my backup drive would be gone too. Same for floods, but I'm not in a flood zone.

There are on line, FREE, backup services. I haven't used it but a friend uses "mozy" and know thats well regarded.
I use Amazons S3, costs less than $10 a month to back all my music, documents and pictures. Once a week any changed files get uploaded automatically overnight.

I just thought I could wait a little bit since Macs are apparently more reliable.

The software is, but Macs also contain physical things like disk drives which will break just like the exact same disk drive in a Windows PC.

Then there is user trouble, someone here posting just a few days ago did, in the words of Old Blue Eyes "something stupid", now he is looking at paying big bucks to a data recovery service.

Wait a few weeks longer for the T2i and buy a backup disk instead, whats the point of having lots of nice photos if one day they all get nuked ?

You'll see plenty of people here saying "wish I'd taken that backup last week, "I was going to get around taking that backup" etc. Don't be one of them.
There is no excuse not to take backups.

 

[brianhoorn]

Oh, I didn't know about that. Thanks. I'll look into mozy. The only ones I could find are like what you use. I know it's only $10 but I seriously have no money. I start work soon though, so we'll see.

Of course things can go wrong, but like I said, I just wanted to wait until I had the extra money. It was difficult for me to even get this computer, but I needed it.

Well I was going to use the money I got from selling my D5000 and it's accessories to buy the T2i, but I probably should wait I guess.

I was actually mostly being sarcastic when I made the back up drive comment, because I was referring to the software being faulty. But I actually don't have one, so I guess I got some good information out of this conversation lol.

Thanks again.

 

[radellaf]

My sister's computer can read them, and even format them, but something in that stupid iMac made my SD cards defective.

I've just had this problem with a Patriot LX 32GB cl.10 card. It took both formatting the card in Windows 7, and then _also_ running SD Formatter 4.0 ( https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/ ) under Windows. The mac version won't work, even if the card will mount.

Now that the card is working again with the mac, the mac version of SD Formatter can format it. Haven't tried a camera.