SD card corruption confusion

[Outandup100]

I recently bought a new drone with integral camera, (Drone model: Hubsan 501S, if of any interest) which takes a mini SD card. The recommended card for the drone camera is a Class 10 (16GB min) UHS 3. This recommendation did not come from the manual (which is in pretty good English but hardly mentions a required card, but is what I picked up, recently, from Youtube.

Before I had viewed the Youtube clips, I bought a Sandisc Ultra 16GB mini card (not sure, whether or not it had UHS 3), put it in the drone, took the drone for a spin, and took some video footage.*

Now, here comes the confusion: For many years, my job entailed taking 20 + photos a day, and downloading them to laptop. I simply plugged my Canon camera into USB slot on the laptop and downloaded. Every once in a while, I would delete the data on the full size camera SD card. This routine became so ingrained, that I never took the camera SD card out of the camera, and, as for the SD card slot on the laptop, I never used it, and even forgot that it was there.

*Onwards. After taking the drone video footage, I removed the mini SD card, put card into standard card adaptor and placed it into my Canon camera (old habits die hard, see above), and plugged camera into USB slot on laptop. Result: No footage. No footage on Canon camera by itself either, (there is no facility on the drone or it's transmitter for testing video footage).

I immediately assumed: a faulty SD card or faulty drone camera. I bought another mini SD card (same Class 10, 16GB), put it in the drone, took drone for a spin and took some video. THIS time, I put the card into a new Android phone, Voila!, I got some footage. So, thinking problem solved (the fault must have been the first card), as per my custom, I transferred the new card to the Canon camera and thence to the laptop. Result: No footage

I then put the same card back into the Android phone: Result: No footage and the phone now says the card must be formatted, but won't let formatting go beyond 20%. If I try to format the same card directly in the Canon camera or the laptop, I get "error" and "card cannot be formatted" respectively.

The Canon camera and the laptop are both at least 10 years old. The drone and the phone are both new. A Youtube clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBXP8EpItSg says the Canon camera will only accept a 2GB card. The laptop, I am not sure about.

Anyway, thanks for reading this far. The card is obviously corrupted (by what? the Canon camera?). I will obviously try a new card, as recommended in the first paragraph, but what is best to transfer data then, from the drone to the laptop (assuming the laptop is not the corrupter), a card reader?

[swill453]

Possibly corrupted by the camera I suppose. While all the devices (drone/camera/phone/laptop) respect the file system format on the SD card, the drone and the camera, being specialist consumer devices, will only be expecting to find files on it that they have created themselves. They may handle others but that would be more by luck than design.

Putting the card containing files from the drone into a camera would be the last thing I would do.

Also, as you say, the camera probably doesn't even handle such a modern SD card.

The phone and the laptop, being effectively general purpose computers, will be able to handle any layout of files on the card, so you need to connect it directly. Either with an adapter, or a card reader. Simple SD to USB readers can be had on eBay for a quid or so.

Scott.

[Urbandreamer]

Not all devices or computers totally follow the SD card spec.

As long as you do not delete any files on another device this is not a problem. However if you do then their view (implimentation) of the file system can become currupt.

Fortunatly there is a sollution (especially as you have more than one card).

Copy your data off the cards then use the SD formatting utility from the people who wrote the spec.
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

[Outandup100]

Possibly corrupted by the camera I suppose.

... so you need to connect it directly.

Thanks swill 453, That's what I figured.


Copy your data off the cards then use the SD formatting utility from the people who wrote the spec.
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

Thanks also, Urbandreamer, I'll give this a go.

[Infrasonic]

Have a read of this, it's quite a minefield...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital

UHS 11 and 111 cards actually have more physical metal contact pins than the previous card standards.

[servodude]

it's actually a couple of minefields stacked on top of each other
- there's (default) file system formats on top of the physical & protocol differences
- and a bit of backwards compatibility that can further confuse things

Anyway it's very likely that a reader (be it in the camera or PC) from 10years ago will not be able to recognise a card with more than 2GB storage (SDHC was only announced in 2006 and the manufacturers took a bit of time to respond)
- it might however be able to to "format" the card to fit it's old fashioned way of thinking
- given your Android phone could read the card I reckon it was the camera that broke it (by assuming it was able to write to it and messing it up in the process)

cheap USB readers can be found that will allow you to see these cards on an older PC
- more expensive readers can also be found which might be worth it if you did a lot with these things (e.g I use a Sandisk ImageMate)
- I reckon you could also the android phone as a reader (given you have it to hand)

once you have a suitable reader you should be able to "format" the card for use in the drone
- how it needs to be set up will likely be in the drone instructions
- but at least you'll only have one minefield left to traverse at that point

have fun
- sd

[Infrasonic]

The corrupted card may be rescuable if you secure erase it first and then try and re-format it.

There are loads of free apps that will do it, CCleaner has 'drive wipe', so if you bought a decent USB card reader (Sandisk/Lexar) and plugged it into your laptop you could do the erase from there.

In terms of disk format you need to check what the drone natively supports, probably FAT and/or ExFAT. From a quick Google of the drone model number it seems people are using ExFAT.
ExFAT has the advantage or being able to write files bigger than 4GB, (which is obviously handy for UHD 1080p+4K photo/video footage.)

FAT has the advantage of being able to be read natively by more devices with various operating systems, so far more flexibility.

With third party apps you can pretty much read any file format on any device.
Android phones can read FAT, ExFAT, NTFS (Windows) et al with third party support, (some without root.)