Corrupt CF Card Mysteries Explained

G Series User (the Newsletter for Canon Powershot G Series digital camera owners) has conducted a survey into common problems for digital camera owners. The survey found that the most common problems are caused by corrupt CF cards.

September 1, 2003 -- The most common reason for CF cards to become corrupt, is if the camera is turned off (or the battery cuts out) whilst still writing the data - the user then ends up with an unfinished file, which is unreadable and viewed as corrupt. However occasionally CF cards appear to be unreadable for no reason, which frustrates the user.

Viruses on CF Cards?

It was discovered in the course of our survey that a number of readers have corrupt or unreadable cards for no known reason. One card on investigation had managed to get a virus script stored on the card. They had been on holiday, taken the card into a camera shop to get their pictures burnt onto CD. Instead of just copying the images, the shop copied them into a folder, and then copied them back onto the CF card, carrying with it the data for a basic virus that was on the camera shops computer. The virus infected HTML files, so it was still possible to take and store pictures -- however it rendered the card as unreadable by most CF readers -- as these are designed to view JPEG or RAW data files.

The other common reason for CF cards to become corrupt is constant writes and re-writes to the card. It is always good practice to reformat your card after each download, not just to erase the images. A corrupt CF card is the modern equivalent to opening your camera while there is still film in the back.

Users also found that using the continuous mode on the camera when the CF card is nearly full can also cause courted images

G Series User Newsletter, conducted the survey to discover the most common problems for G Series users, and has produced a trouble shooting guide. Available for free from their website. www.gseriesuser.com