Corrupted Sandisk CF Card

[hcubell]

Just a heads up so others can perhaps avoid a misfortune that I suffered. Two weeks ago, I had a corrupted Sandisk Extreme IV 8gb CF card that would not mount on my desktop. I had to use a special software program, PhotoRescue, to pull the files off the card(at least most of them-100 out of 130). In speaking with Tech Support at Sandisk, I was told that the principal cause of a corrupted CF card is the camera battery losing power during a read/write operation. In fact, during the evening that I was using the card that became corrupted, the battery on my H3D completely gave out and I had to replace it before I could continue to shoot. I never worried about this before and often ignore the low battery warnings from the camera if I am in the middle of good light. No more.

[hcubell]

hcubell,

Makes complete sense. Thank you for posting this update. Sounds like it's ok to continue using that CF card.

I've been shooting until the body says "Replace Battery" - at which point I pull one from my pocket. Oddly, you can't turn off the camera when it displays this message on the grip. Is your H completely turning off when the battery runs out?

Kind regards,
Derek

Derek, it turns off completely. I then disconnect the battery and attach a new one. It's entirely possible that the camera is in the middle of read/writing to the CF card when it turns off. I also had weird things happen to my H3D last Spring when I let the battery completely discharge when a GIL was mounted. The camera went sort of haywire and stopped working even with a fresh battery. By chance, I brought the camera home and hooked it up to my computer. Soon thereafter, it came back to life.
Thanks, Howard