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Symptoms Of A Damaged Memory Card

• Error messages like "memory card error", "card locked", "card error", or an error code on your camera screen or the card may not be be able to be seen by your computer
• You may see the card but no images are visible on your computer.
• Your computer or camera may prompt you to re-format the memory card or your camera may refuse to take additional pictures or to view taken pictures.

Tips To Avoid Memory Card Error & Damage

Most card failures are very sudden. If you experience any problems with a card such as random camera lock-ups, or random file corruption stop using the card. When a memory card begins to fail physically, total failure is not very far - backup at once.

Card Handling

• Do not remove your card whilst saving or viewing images.
• Do not remove or insert your card unless your camera is switched off.
• Do not take or view images whilst your battery is low. Do not shoot when you are almost out of battery. One of the worst things that can happen is for your camera run out of batteries as it writes to a critical card area.
• Transfer your images using a card reader rather than via your camera to avoid "low battery issues".
• If several different memory cards get damaged in one camera, you may suspect there is some issue with your digital camera.
• Do not swap cards in and out of your camera before the data has been fully written to the card. If you realise you may have swapped your cards too quickly, do not reuse the card in question before you have saved the pictures it contains. A card that has been removed before writes were completed may contain bogus directory information that could compromise the next pictures. Likewise, do not swap cards in and out of your card reader without being sure all the writes have been completed. "Eject" cards properly if your operating systems requires you to do so.

Card Usage

• There is a limited life on memory cards. A typical flash memory card unit has about 10,000 write/erase operations. Rather than risking your images, it is safer replace memory cards used frequently over many years.
• Do not fill the card to 100% capacity. Taking the last picture can lead to some corruption. There are several reasons for this: the camera may have underestimated the size of that last picture and could run out of space, some cameras have firmware bugs that causes them to wrap their file writes around and erase the beginning of the card in such circumstances. Also, the last sectors of a card might be slightly unreliable.
• "Eject" cards properly if your operating systems requires you to do so. ...ensure that you "Unplug or Eject Hardware" (Windows) or "Unmount" (MAC/Linux) your memory card or camera from your computer prior to its disconnection.
• Format your card regularly. While formatting usually  does not erase data from the card, it allows you to start each session in a clean known state and minimizes the impact of file fragmentation. Formatting in the camera or on your computer is,in theory, identical. However, if you are not a familiar with the different types of file systems, you may choose the wrong one on your computer. Accordingly it is recommend to "in-camera" format instead of "in-computer" format.
• Verify each file transfer to your computer. Copying images/videos to a computer is not always successful. Check that the files were copied correctly to the computer and are usable at full size before reusing the card. Make 100% certain that all your images are safe before shooting again on a card. Do not reuse cards before you are sure.

Firmware & Editing

• Make sure your camera firmware is up to date. Digital cameras contain their own firmware. They are, in fact, like small computers running normal computer programs. Bugs do happen, incompatibilities do arise, especially when pushing the edge of performance. Most manufacturers release firmware updates from time to time.
• Do not edit pictures on the card from your computer. Edited pictures may take a bit less or a lot more space on the card, however, they may be saved in a format that is unrecognised by the camera. Editing pictures will increase fragmentation.

Causes Of Memory Card Failure

• Obvious damage such as plugging a USB flash memory device into a laptop of desktop computer and banging it by accident causing the port of the device to become broken, bent or damaged.
• Bad workmanship issues can cause flash memory storage devices to stop working at any moment. Manufacturers are constantly using cutting edge parts combined with outdated parts. When a manufacturer can save a few cents using say one type of circuit as opposed to the next more durable circuit on a USB memory device they will. For consumers this causes devices to fail faster and more easily.
• Attack by viruses
• Cards use complex low level sector virtualization called "wear leveling algorithm" to distribute the wear evenly across the memory array and maximize the number of write cycles it can sustain. This algorithm can sometimes only partially kick in.
• Inadvertant use of fake, counterfeit or fraudulent memory cards.A large number of consumers have been deceived by inferior quality, unpopular cheap, slow rebadged memory cards. These are most often purchased on the internet, markets and Asian sources. Often, the price of these cards appears to be "too good to be true".

Common Symptoms Of Corrupt and Damaged Memory Cards

• Files become corrupted when transferred to computer.
• Users sometimes accidentally delete their files or reformat the card.
• Camera doesn't see the card.
• USB flash disk drive does not work as expected.
• Camera loses pictures.
• Card is no longer seen connected under Windows XP/Vista/Windows 2000, MAC or BIOS.
• Card doesn't show up in Device manager.
• Found new hardware wizard doesn't pop up or can't find standard USB mass storage device driver.
• After inserting faulty USB stick you could get "USB device not recognised" message in Windows.
• Windows could give an error message stating that USB device or memory card has malfunctioned and therefore cannot recognise the device. Sometimes the device itself might be seen but no partitions or volumes could be found or the partition might be present but user gets an error when trying to access this volume. File system might also be recognised as "unknown", "raw" and be 0 bytes in size.
  
• You might get "The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility" warning in Event viewer or "Do you want to format the drive? or Device not ready"

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