I've had an HP R707 for quite some time now, and have mostly liked the features. However I've had 2 different SD cards that will work sometimes, and fail sometimes. When the fail, I have to remove the card from the camera to be able to take a few pictures.

I know that when I turn the camera if it takes a while it will fail with the "Card has wrong format" but the format usually fails.

Has anyone else experienced this? Or did I just get a flaky camera? The HP help folks just blame the card, but it works fine on my daughter's camera and everywhere else I've tried.

HP has a firmware update that can help reduce memory card corruption. You may want to download and install it. It introduces the follwing changes:

• Safety fix for battery-charging [/*]
• Improves TV display quality in slide show mode [/*]
• Fixes an issue with the camera displaying a "Bad data access address" error when transferring images to a Windows or Macintosh computer. [/*]
• Fixes a card corruption issue when saved images cannot be viewed, transferred, or copied to a computer. [/*]

If you scroll down to the firmware section on this page, you'll see it:

Software and Driver Downloads for HP R707

But, the problems with corruption may be something you're doing (like using the same cards in multiple devices without reformatting, or using a card with a corrupted FAT, or formatted with the wrong File System type).

Suggestions (and this applies to any camera):

1. Always format a memory card in the camera before every use. Use the camera's menus for format versus a PC. That insures that you always start out with a fresh FAT (File Allocation Table) just the way the camera expects it, since it's peforming the format.

2. Don't use your PC to delete images, unless you're sure to follow step one. Ditto for any other writes to a card. If you cut and paste images from your card to a PC, it's performing a delete (and that's writing to a card). Some drivers cache writes to media, and that can cause corruption if the cached writes are not flushed properly. So, I rarely delete images from a PC.

If I do write to a card with a PC, I make sure to format a card using a camera's menus for format before using it again (but, I do this prior to every use anyway, with every digital camera I've owned, since it's usually just as fast as deleting the images).

If you are unable to Format the card using the camera's menus for Format, you may want to try this utility:

http://panasonic.jp/support/global/c...formatter.html

You could also try formatting using Windows with a card reader. But, make sure to select FAT as the File System Type from the drop down menu in Windows. Otherwise, Windows will use a 32 Bit FAT by default, which is NOT compatible with your camera.

Then, I'd make sure to Format the card using the camera's menus for Format before using it again.

Thanks for the suggestions. I believe I already have the latest firmware (2.00.24), so that's not it. I have deleted pictures using the PC software, so that may be the source of this. However I don't have any SD readers on my PC and I've always started with a camera format for both cards. They seem to work for a while, then get the error message. In fact I'm fairly certain that I've taken some pictures (card was working fine), then after turning off the camera, later turning it back on, the error comes up. No PC or any other SD reader was involved.

You never really know what causes corruption. Sometimes, it can be caused by something as simple as a low battery.

It could also be a compatiblity "quirk" with the card brand you're using. Some cameras tend to prefer one card brand over another.

With Secure Digital, I try to stick with cards using the same components as Panasonic Cards (genuine Panasonic Cards, Lexar High Speed Cards, Simpletech's larger SD Cards).

But, you can have problems with any of them from time to time.