Greetings,
My Mother-In-Law had dramas with new SanDisk 2GB SD Cards she had purchased from her local BigW (like Wal-mart in the USA) - they came as a pair in the packaging. As explained to me, when she put each of them into her digital camera, "they were
taking forever" to get ready (re, camera format??). In the end, I’m guessing she either got frustrated or the camera’s
battery ran out of charge. When I visited over New Year’s, after watching her attempt to prep the card via camera (we
waited 20 minutes), even I got frustrated and pulled the battery on the camera (none of the buttons were responding).
Since then, trying to use the cards is what you’d expect - drama!
My guess on the SD Card’s state? They are now somewhere between factory-release and camera-format. After surfing the 'net
way too long and trying everything I could find to get them back to normal, these articles have been the most helpful, but not successful:
* “Article ID: 981642 - Last Review: March 12, 2010 - Revision: 1.0; A Secure Digital (SD) card may not be recognized on a Windows 7 based computer.” http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;981642&sd=rss&spid=14498
==> This implies testing with MS Vista SP2 only
* “SD Formatter 3.1 for SD/SDHC/SDXC” https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_3/
==> The tool of choice on formatting SD Cards
* “SanDisk Secure Digital Card” http://alumni.cs.ucr.edu/~amitra/sdcard/ProdManualSDCardv1.9.pdf http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=productmanualsdcardv2.2final&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCQQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flashgenie.net%2Fimg%2Fproductmanualsdcardv2.2final.pdf&ei=ECkmT7ubPIS0iQfcs5mKBg&usg=AFQjCNFiN9aKLFb2oULMtxLaP9Q4dzSwiw
==> Reference: Built-in write protection features (permanent and temporary)
==> 14 Write Protection PWP: Permanent Write Protect (CSD bit13).
==> 15 Write Protection TWP: Temporary Write Protect (CSD bit12).
==> 16 Write Protection GWP: Group Write Protect (CMD28, CMD29, CMD30).
My Mother-In-Law has given me one of the cards in frustration - thankfully, allowing me to crack this if possible. But, I
don’t have a digital camera that can read 2GB cards - I do have a laptop with a Realtek 5-in-1 Media Reader built-in.
I am hopeful that there’s some sort of factory-reset tool that could be applied to the card to reset all its gates??
Any ideas? Suggestions?
Regards, Christopher
