Suddenly your digicam doesn't recognize your SmartMedia card and, worse, your PC can't format it. After half an hour, you're ready to dig a hole and bury your beloved SmartMedia (in its protective case) forever. You're about to begin grieving when a frumpy fellow in a wrinkled overcoat walks up to you."Excuse me for interrupting, folks. Lieutenant Columbo, L.A. police."
"Columbo!" you shriek, recognizing the implications. "But you're Homicide. What makes you think there's been a murder?"
"Well, that's what we're going to find out," he mumbles through his unlit cigar. "There's been a lot of these lately. Malibu, Hollywood, Glendale. I wonder if you'd mind answering a few questions? It won't take long."
"Certainly, Lieutenant," your natural cooperation kicks in. "But you don't think we had anything to do with it, do you?" you ask in alarm.
"Folks, don't take this the wrong way," he smiles, "but I don't see you in Hollywood."
Uh, excuse us for interrupting, Columbo, but as the technical consultant on this show we have a little information you might find interesting.
A lot of folks are having trouble, terminal trouble, with SmartMedia cards. But we've found you can almost always restore a dead card -- one way or another.
"That would make my job a lot easier, sir," Columbo raises an eyebrow.
CompactFlash, it appears, doesn't succumb quite as readily as SmartMedia. The cards are physically stiffer (those wavy lines on SmartMedia cards are intended to reinforce them) with recessed electrical contacts. And they also include a built-in controller (accounting for performance variations). But much of the following applies to CompactFlash cards, too.
PRUDENT USE
Theoretically you should be able to pop your cards in and out of any card device you like (camera, reader, adapter) to copy, move or delete them in either your camera or computer.
In practice this isn't always prudent.
We recommend using one setup solely for copying (the computer via adapter, the computer via a reader, or the camera tethered by a cable) and another solely for deleting (the camera). That way, you're less likely to delete images you have not already copied. It also happens to avoid sudden death syndrome in SmartMedia cards.
We wouldn't quite call it a recommendation but we do leave our cards in the camera as much as possible. If we put them in a reader, they never touch the ground between camera and reader. And to store them, we put them in a stiff plastic case. We treat them like any other fragile storage medium, in short.
FORMATTING I
Cards actually need two kinds of formatting: a physical format and a logical format. Physical formatting lets a number of devices recognize the card. Logical formatting actually permits it to be used as a storage device.
When you format a card in your camera or on your computer, you are performing a logical format. Which initializes the directory and file allocation table and marks out bad blocks.
Cards use an MS-DOS logical format on top of their physical format, either Microsoft's FAT16 or FAT32 structure (depending on their capacity). The universe of formats, however, is rather a bit more extensive than you might imagine (you can format a 3.5 double density floppy in about half a dozen ways for MS-DOS).
So it's wise to let the camera pick the format it understands. Your computer will no doubt be able to read the format your camera has used. But left to its own, your computer may not write the logical format your camera can understand.
"I think I follow that," Columbo winks.
That's also a good reason to let your camera do the file management (deleting, we mean). And while there is no obvious reason card reader drivers or generic PCMCIA adapter drivers can't keep track of the disk space on a card formatted in your camera, we've found it safest never to delete card files in the computer.
"You mean if you never use the computer to delete files, the card will never die?" Columbo checks.
That's right. That's all there is to it, Lieutenant.
"Imagine that. I wonder why that is, sir?"
There are lots of suspicious characters. The Recycle Bin, the duplicate (backup) FAT, dangling allocation lists in the FAT, a mismatch between file sizes and file lengths on the card, unmarked bad blocks. But we have to confess we really we have no idea.
In addition to writing the preferred logical format, cameras may also write a file or directory/folder to the card after formatting them logically. Your computer won't bother, although your camera may be smart enough to add them to blank (newly formatted) media.
How often should you format? While you never actually need to format, it's never a bad idea. Once in a long while, we delete old images by doing a card format in the camera.
You might visit PCMCIA at http://www.pc-card.com/ for more on card format specifications (say, on your next vacation). While this site discusses PCMCIA specifications, the Card Information Structure specs are the basis for the SmartMedia logical format.
FORMATTING II
"A vacation? Oh boy, sir, I certainly appreciate that," Columbo smiles. "My wife, she'll go nuts. We haven't had a vacation in a long time, I can tell you that. But, excuse me for asking this, what about the body?"
Don't bury it. Even if you've tried to logically format it without success.
When you installed your card reader's drivers, the installer may also have installed a utility called smprep.exe to write both physical and logical formats to a confused card.
If your reader manufacturer didn't include smprep.exe, visit the manufacturer's site (Microtech, for example, is http://www.microtechint.com/) to download the latest drivers. It's usually bundled with them and installed with the card drivers. You can also visit SCM at http://www.scmmicro.com/corporate/support.html to download their current drivers (it's bundled with the USB-SCSI Windows 98 download, for example).
You apparently need a reader, though, to run smprep.exe. And if you plan to install an smprep.exe (and card drivers) supplied by anyone other than the manufacturer of your reader, uninstall your original drivers before installing the new software.
"Wait a minute, sir," Columbo squints. "You're saying the program, smprep.exe, actually needs, oh, a compatible set of drivers. Is that right, sir?"
Right.
The formatting that smprep.exe does will not restore the card to its original state but formats it for the reader. So your Olympus brand card will look like a Microtech card after running smprep.exe on a Microtech reader. The brand information is stored on the card. You can hack smprep.exe with a hex editor so it formats your card to look like an Olympus card, though.
Take a look at Konstantin Aleshin's very elaborate real-life adventure in using smprep.exe to fix a confused card at http://www.digit-life.com/articles/smcrestore/ (lots of screen shots, so be patient). It even includes instructions (and a program) for restoring the Panorama mode on Olympus cards.
Running smprep.exe is not something you should do as normal maintenance, though. It's for disaster recovery only.
THE MAC CATCH
"You know," Columbo flips a page in his notebook, "my wife and I don't have a Windows computer. We use this old Macintosh we really love."
Well, cards employ an MS-DOS file structure whether they are SmartMedia, CompactFlash or Memory Sticks. Fortunately, Macs have been able to mount and read DOS-formatted media for a long time and cards are no different.
But the file systems of the two operating systems are quite different. Windows relies on the three character file extension of a filename (.xls for Excel spreadsheet, .txt for a text file, .jpg for a JPEG image, etc.) to tell what kind of data the file contains and what applications can handle it. On the Macintosh, information in a file's resource fork (as opposed to the its data fork, which is what's left of the file in Windows) tells the OS what application created the file and what type of file it is.
The Macintosh OS likes to write an invisible folder on your DOS-formatted card with this information for all the files it finds when you simply insert the card using a PCMCIA adapter, for example.
The invisible files can confuse your camera.
If you use a reader or a special utility developed by the manufacturer of your camera, the card may remain invisible to the OS and these files will not get written. To tell if any files were written, you can use any MS-DOS file utility that displays invisible files to see if any have been created on the card.
"Innocent until proven guilty, I always say," Columbo nods.
EXPOSED CONTACTS
"You've been very helpful, sir," Columbo shakes our hand. "Just one more thing, if you don't mind. These things can't be dry cleaned like my overcoat, can't they?"
Why, no, Columbo. But they do get dirty. The electrical contacts on SmartMedia cards may be gold, but they are also exposed. It's easy enough to touch them when handling the cards, inhibiting their performance.
But cleaning them is simple. Swab some isopropyl alcohol over the contacts to remove any foreign substance. Pencil erasers (that are still soft) also work.
TO LEARN MORE
You can learn more about SmartMedia (a registered trademark of Toshiba) from the FAQ maintained by the Solid State Floppy Disk Card forum at http://www.ssfdc.or.jp/english/faq/doc01.htm (where you can also get the specification). Solid State Floppy Disk Card is the generic name for SmartMedia. And visit the Web site of the company that manufactured your specific card. You never know what you'll find until you investigate.
"That's certainly true, sir," Columbo winked as he turned the key in his ragtop 1960 Peugeot 403. "I really thought we had a murder here, but it turns out it was just a little confusion."