How do I fix a corrupted SmartMedia card?

Question

I have an old Olympus C-4040 digital camera that uses SM cards. Great camera but the SM cards get corrupted at the drop of a hat, especially when put into a card reader other than the camera. If I attempt to even view files on an SM card using a card reader, the card will become useless with the camera. I keep getting an error message with the camera telling me to format the card, which it tries but CANT do. Formatting the cards from a computer doesnt work either. I've seen websites offering to fix SM cards for a fee but I'm not desperate enough to try.

Is there any way to fix the cards myself? Would a local digital photography shop be able to do it for me?

SmarMedia isn't made(or at least not sold) in north america anymore. I'm sure stuff like this is the reason why. I'm not the first person to complain about bad SM cards. It seems to be a fairly common problem with the type. Perhaps toshiba didn't think that people would use card readers and would just plug in their cameras.

Answer 1

First of all, I don;t understand why you are having so many problems with corrupt cards. I use SD cards in my Pentax ist* DS and the only corrupt card I have had was one that came such new from the supplier. It seems to me that there may be something wrong with the camera if it won't format cards and won't read those that have been in a reader. I don't think cards can be formatted as opposed to cleared on the computer as that does not know what camera the card is to be formatted for. There are free programmes available which enable you to recover data from corrupt cards - a search will find you one. I don't see that it would be worth paying a shop to 'repair' the cards. Even if they could do so, the cost would far outweigh the costs of buying a new card (here in the UK 1 gb SD cards can be had for under £20)

Answer 2

Not sure but can you do a 'scan disk' on these? Then try reformatting.