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Error: UNABLE TO USE CARD. FORMAT? or a flashing --E- is displayed on the LCD screen.
sorry guys if i post it in the wrong thread. ive experience this yesterday when i was checking out my cousin's Sony Alpha100. i checked out the memory card to see whats his using. btw, he's using a Sony memory stick pro duo with a sony CF card adapter. then when i put it back to the camera it now shows this error "UNABLE TO USE CARD. FORMAT? or a flashing --E- is displayed on the LCD screen." when i tried to format the card it just wont. hope you guys can help me out on how to fix this error. thank you also guys in advance!
I had a similar problem with a Sandisk Extreme III CF 1gb card. After using up half the capacity of the card and backing it up to a Jobo Giga One portable hard drive my A100 refused to recognise the card and produced an identical message. The card could be read in a computer and the images displayed perfectly but the card could not be formatted in the camera or a PC. The camera recognised other CF cards without any problems. The images on the CF could be copied and to protect them I copied them to a CD.
On taking the camera and CF to a Sony main dealer they were unable to say what the problem was or correct it. Possible causes suggested were. A pin in the card slot of the camera had become bent and the card therefore not fitting in correctly, a visual inspection of the camera showed that everything was in order, one or more pin holes in the card had become blocked or the CF card had become corrupted. It turned out to be a corrupted CF card. The replacement has performed faultlessly.
If your camera will recognise another CF card then I suspect it is either the Sony CF adapter or the Memory stick that has the fault.
You might try taking the camera and card to a camera store and let them have a look at it. With a little luck they may be persuaded to have a look at it and even have a spare CF card or memory stick to try in it.
thank you also guys in advance!