I bought a new phone (which I now call the infernal Nokia), and it has a space for an SD card so I can store more music.
So I bought a minscule little thing that allegedly holds 2GB. It fits in the phone but also has a sleeve so you can put it in slots designed for the older larger cards. At least, that’s what I assume it’s for. I threw away all the packaging in a restaurant on the way home, cos I have this stupid belief that stuff like this should work out of the box and doesn’t need instructions.
First, put the card in the phone. Plug the phone into the USB port and navigate through the menu until you find the place that says “use as storage device” or some such. A box opens on the screen just like if you’ve plugged in a flash drive. Great!
Copy music over. Easy. Until the card is 25% full. The display says I’m using less than 500Mb of 2Gb, but now I’m greeted with the message “unable to open file or folder”.
After the police have been round to find out why some maniac is running around his house screaming, we try again.
Put the SD card in the adapter, put the adapter in the card reader I use with my old card, and plug it into the USB slot. Lights flash, the card is ‘detected’, but no little box opens up. Bugger.
So, I take the old card out of my camera. Put the new one, still in the adapter, in my camera and plug it into the USB port. Success! I can see the files on the card. But I can’t add more.
Will someone please tell me what the fuck is going on and who I have to kill?
This is insane. I hate technology.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
First the Leatherman, now this, sounds like this just isn’t your year for complicated apparatus.
I suggest you get some candles, a lighter, some string and a bent pin, and head down to the river to wait out the next 7 or so months.
By no means should you even consider anything as technically challenging as riding a bicycle or, God forbid, steering a boat…
Oh wait, you were already having problems with that last one, weren’t you…
Try a different USB port. No kidding.
Which Nokia phone? Maybe there is some limit as to the size of the card you can use.
What Rascal said.
If not, I’d try formatting the card and starting again. Does your phone have an option to format the card? If not, you said no little box comes up on your computer when you use the normal card reader. Can the computer even see that the card is attached (like in “My Computer”)?
Well, it sounds like one of two things have happened. Either the data you copied in the first place got corruped and messed with the memory card, and as such you need to re-format it like irishstu said.
Otherwise it might be a partially broken memory card, which doesn’t happen very often, but it happens.
I think you might still be able to return it as long as you have the receipt, but otherwise, I guess you’re just going to have to get a new one.
The card’s not SDHC is it?
No, SDHC is only for cards bigger than 4GB. But 2GB SD cards are not compatible with some SD card readers
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Dig … rger_cards
[quote]Many older devices will not accept the 2 or 4 GB size even though it is in the revised standard. The following statement is from the SD association specification:
“To make 2 GByte card, the Maximum Block Length (READ_BL_LEN=WRITE_BL_LEN) shall be set to 1024 bytes. However, the Block Length, set by CMD16, shall be up to 512 bytes to keep consistency with 512 bytes Maximum Block Length cards (Less than and equal 2 Gbyte cards).”[/quote]
If you’re copying into the root directory of a 2GB card formatted for FAT16 the root directory has a fixed maximum size which is quite small. In Windows press WindowsKey+E, right click on the drive and select Properties. Check the file system type. If it is FAT16 you’ll need to create a subdirectory and put the files there. Mostly cards smaller than 4GB are FAT16.
Incidentally if you format, do it on the phone. Check the capacity afterwards. If the phone is incompatible with 2GB cards it will probably say 1GB size after formatting because it didn’t calculate the size correctly. Mind you the card will then work at least.
What model is the phone? You can just Google for Nokia 2GB SD card and Google will tell you the answer. I.e. you don’t need to know about FAT16, READ_BL_LEN or SDHC vs SD is 
I looked on Nokia’s website. The ones I looked at could accept 2GB cards. But of course I didn’t know which phone to look it. We still don’t have the model number.
Do you have anyway to connect the SD to your computer, can you copy things across from there? Can you format it? (A slow format, not a quick format)
EDIT: I see you have tried plugging it into a USB port. Still try doing a slow format. That should confirm if the SD card is borked. Lucky you kept the receipt and packaging so you can take it back to the shop.
Solved.
Why the fuck can’t these people either sell card that are not formatted at all, or else pre-formatted. Stuff that half works is worse than stuff that doesn’t. Grrr!
Still I’ve now managed to copy over my entire collection of The Chiefs’ stylophone hits (box set, 8 CD’s) and still have room for The Ultimate Elevator Music Library, featuring Irishstu and The Pantywaisters. Excellent!
Cheers
[quote=“Loretta”]Solved.
Why the fuck can’t these people either sell card that are not formatted at all, or else pre-formatted. Stuff that half works is worse than stuff that doesn’t. Grrr!
Still I’ve now managed to copy over my entire collection of The Chiefs’ stylophone hits (box set, 8 CD’s) and still have room for The Ultimate Elevator Music Library, featuring Irishstu and The Pantywaisters. Excellent!
Cheers[/quote]
Yeah, but HOW did you solve it? Formatting it on the phone? On the computer? Fast format/slow format? We’re nerds. We NEED to know. Giving you all this great advice and you don’t even answer till we prompt you, and even then you don’t say how.
Pffft!
