Smart Media Card Error - FujiFilm - Restore file structure

[Sheps]

Hi

I have read all of the posts I could find relating to SmartMedia card errors and FujiFilm cameras, and have searched tha land of Google with no success yet.

The thing is I don't want to recover any photos from my card, I just want the cardto work again. It was placed in the card reader of an XP machine and the files were copied to the hard drive and deleted from the card. I understand that this is a bad thing and means that the file structure of the card has been damaged. I understand that reformatting the card on the PC is no good as this will be FAT32 as opposed to FAT16.

So,do you knowa way please to reformatin such a way that my FujiFilm MX-1200 will read the card (using my XP PC, as my camera will notreformat)?

Any advice will be gratefully received!

Many thanks

Sheps

[DavidPlatt]

If you have access to a Windows 98 system, you can definitely use it to reformat the card with a FAT16 filesystem.

I believe that Windows XP must have an option which allows you to do this - it may be buried under an advanced-options button in the formatting dialog.

You can definitely use the DOS/VFAT-filesystem utilities in Linux to do this... the "mkdosfs" or "mkfs.dos" or "mkfs.vfat" program is the one you would want. You would probably need to include the "-F 16" option to this command, to force it to use FAT16 rather than FAT32. If you don't normally run Linux, consider downloading a "live CD" distribution such as Knoppix - you can burn this to a CD, boot from it, and run Linux briefly without having to install or alter anything on your hard drive. There are also some smaller CD-bootable Linux distributions which could do the same thing... Damn Small Linux is one, and there are probably a dozen more I haven't thought of.

Good luck!

[Sheps]

Thanks David.

I don't currently have acces to Win 98 or Linux, however it seems it would be easier to track either of those down than to work out how to get XP to achieve it!

However, if anyone else reads this and does know how to do this with XP I'd love to know.

Thanks again David for your help!

Sheps

[Sintares]

Try from a command prompt

FORMAT drive: /FS:fat

Replace drive with the drive letter of the card.

[Sheps]

Hiya,

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"Thanks, I've tried this alreadybut it does not format as FAT16 sadly.

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"I've just spent a frustrating hour or so installing drivers for an old SmartMedia card reader for a WIN98 machine sitting dusty in the corner of the office, which involved first downloading and installing ZIP software to allow me to download and unzip the zipped drivers.

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"All this only to find that the card reader does not work anywayand so I have no way of testing the WIN98/FAT16 theory!! (My XP PC has an integral card reader)

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"Tomorrow I try Damn Small Linux; for now I sleep...

[Sintares]

Strange... must be a Xp thing because it works fine in Vista..

Are you sure though ?... windows will show a fat16 formatted drive under properties as FileSystem FAT...

Eg when I used the above command line to format my thumbdrive windows shows

File System FAT

While it actually is

[JimC]

Sheps wrote:

However, if anyone else reads this and does know how to do this with XP I'd love to know.

Put the card in a card reader. Right click on it under My Computer and click on the Format menu choice. When you get to the next screen, you'll see a drop down list for file system type. Select FAT from the list before pressing OK to format.

[Sheps]

Thanks Jim

I have done this already but being XP the default is FAT32, which is incorrect for the camera.

I understand I can format to FAT16 using WIN98 but sadly I do not have a working card reader for the WIN98 PC.

Thanks again

Jen

[JimC]

Sheps wrote:

I have done this already but being XP the default is FAT32, which is incorrect for the camera.

Yes, it defaults to FAT32, unless you select FAT (*not* FAT32) from the drop down list of File System Types you'll see available (as mentioned in my last post) . Then, it will use FAT16 for most card sizes 2GB or smaller.

[smartmedia]

What I did that worked.

Mac Powerbook 17" G4

Power Mac 6400 (yes, you're reading correct.)

The problem: Fujifilm Finepix6800Z gave a card error after I had taken a picture. I had used a Dazzle card reader to transfer pictures and made the mistake of deleting using the Powerbook G4 and Dazzle. Ooops.

Card did not work correctly any more in the camera. Tried reformatting using the camera. Nada, nothing. No effect.

What worked:

Used the disk utility in Powerbook OS 10.4... to reformat the card in the Dazzle reader using MS-DOS.

(not sure if this next step was necessary, as the Get info said FAT16.. but, reformatted the icon for the Smartmedia card under the main icon for the Smartmedia card in Disk Utility , selecting FAT 16, which became available as a choice...all this is in OS X on the Powerbook G4 17")


Then, hooked a microtech card reader (just happened to have another smartmedia card reader around), up to the PowerMac 6400, OS 9. something...

Here's the key: Had a 16MB smartmedia card sitting around that worked in the camera... put the card in the microtech card reader connected to the 6400 to copy the contents of that card onto the hard drive, then put the 128MB card that was not working right and copied the from the hard drive onto the 128MB card is on the 16MB card.

And, it worked.
end of story.