Couple questions about digital cameras and memory cards

[Muse]

Over Thanksgiving I took some shots of family, not a ton. I was occasionally having a look at them on the camera's LCD, the camera a P&S Canon 100HS ELPH. All of a sudden after a few days, when I went to look at the shots I'd just taken I got an error for each of the shots I'd taken over the last few days saying Unidentified Image. Folders (the camera creates a new folder for each day of shooting) from weeks/months before appeared unaffected, I could still see those, it was just the recent ones with this problem. When I removed the card (64GB SDXC) to a PC the problem folders appeared empty. People suggested I run photo retrieval software and I downloaded and installed a couple of freebies which took many hours to run but I couldn't see anything retrieved. I still have the card, haven't done anything with it.

Now, my habit was to remove the card to a USB card reader and insert in a PC and copy pictures or folders to a PC or my NAS and then reinsert in the camera.

Someone said this is not regarded as good practice and I should reformat the card after doing these maneuvers.

Well, this is doable, but I'm not sure it's all I should do here or if I should really be adopting this practice.

I don't trust that 64GB SDXC card now, would you? Yes, I can test it somehow, I suppose, but for the time being I've put a 16GB SDHC card in the camera, took it from my Pentax K-x DSLR. I bought another card for that DSLR, just unpacked it, it's the largest card the camera supports, a 32GB SDHC.

1. Should I reformat that 32GB SDHC card in the Pentax DSLR before using it?

2. Should I make a practice from here on out of connecting the cameras to a PC in my network by a cable and copying folders/pictures instead of removing the card to a card reader, either USB or in the case of one of my PC's, in the machine's integrated card reader?

Comments/suggestions/advice/wisdom appreciated!

 

[CuriousMike]

Now, my habit was to remove the card to a USB card reader and insert in a PC and copy pictures or folders to a PC or my NAS and then reinsert in the camera.

Perfectly fine. That's what I do - your camera probably has USB 2. I put my cards in a USB 3 card reader and triple the copy speed.

Someone said this is not regarded as good practice and I should reformat the card after doing these maneuvers.

I run Windows - I typically highlight all the photos on the card, Control+X to cut them, and paste them on the PC folder. Then re-insert the card in the camera. I rarely ( if ever ) actually format the card.

I don't trust that 64GB SDXC card now, would you?

No. It could be an issue with the camera, the card, or a sun death ray. Doesn't matter.
Unless you're impoverished, memory cards are cheap. Buy a new Sandisk in whatever capacity you can afford and remove a variable while upgrading the arguably the highest quality cards.

I own a small sample of memory cards and posted some benchmarks of those earlier this year.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2440213&highlight=

 

[Paladin3]

I misplaced my wireless SD card halfway through shooting Santa photos this season. That meant I had to pull the card from camera after each kid and manually transfer the photos to my editing computer. I probably did it 30-50 times per day without issues, only formatting the card in camera at the end of the day.

The only time it bit me was when I got in a rush and I accidentally got to editing photos on the card rather than the copies I'd just transferred to my computer. I'm guessing maybe you did the same and whatever editing/viewing software saved those image on the card in a way the camera doesn't like? I show photos to my clients with Windows Image Viewer, and a few times I accidentally rotated the vertical shots while they were still on the card, then the camera couldn't read them later when I reinserted the card.

Standard practice for me after a day of shooting is to use a card reader to copy my images from the SD card to at least two different storage media. Usually I copy to two different hard drives and then upload to a website for sales. Then I format the card in the camera so it's ready to go again.

I'd suggest you salvage what you need to off that card, format it and keep on shooting. Just don't rely on an SD card in a camera for long term storage. And assume that any images stored fewer than two places are as good as lost.

 

[Muse]

I'm guessing maybe you did the same and whatever editing/viewing software saved those image on the card in a way the camera doesn't like?

All I'd done was to hit the < button and then the << button, which puts you in photo viewing mode and then goes to successively earlier photos. Hitting the < again puts you back in ready mode to take another picture. I never do any photo editing in the camera itself. Occasionally I'll delete some photos but I didn't this time.

I never took the camera out of Auto mode the whole time.

The card itself is Samsung Electronics 64GB Class 10 EVO Micro SDXC

I'd suggest you salvage what you need to off that card, format it and keep on shooting. Just don't rely on an SD card in a camera for long term storage. And assume that any images stored fewer than two places are as good as lost.

Yes, I have that philosophy, I figure I'm less than 5 minutes away from losing my data if it exists in only one place.

The reason I had a 64GB card in that P&S was that I like to take videos with it sometimes, and of course they are storage eaters. I guess I'll reformat the card in the camera and keep a close watch on it. If it screws up again, out it goes.

Yes, could have been a cosmic ray. You never know. Maybe it won't happen again, or maybe the fault is with the camera and it will screw up again with a different card, I'll just have to see. Meantime, I've done next to nothing with the camera, but I will. I really like that little camera, especially the super slow motion video, which I have used to analyze my golf swing (one reason I got it)!