David Naylor: Blog

Problem and solution: 16GB Compact Flash in EOS 30D

Today I got the 16GB Compact Flash card that I ordered a few days ago. I just wrote about the crazy weather but this is almost even more insane: 16GB now cost me less than half of what my two 2GB cards cost me two years ago. And back then I had a serious discount since I bought them at the shop I worked at, Allradio. That means that the price per GB is now less than a tenth of what it was two years ago!

Eager to try it out (why? don't know) I put my 16GB card in my camera, formatted it and ... Oh! It now only had 8GB of space.

It turns out, the Canon EOS 30D doesn't cope with (formatting) cards larger than 8GB. And when the card had been formatted down to 8GB it couldn't be reformatted to 16GB. Not in the camera, not in Windows.

After hunting around for a while, giving up, and then hunting around some more, I found a solution: A small program called USB_Format. Just unzip it and run it, and it should let you reformat your memory card in your card reader to it's proper size.

Now I just have to remember not to format the card in the camera. But that shouldn't be so hard. I don't usually format, I tend to Delete all instead.

Labels: 30D, canon, photography

Posted by David Naylor at 22:33