The subject line may seem like a very odd question, but ...
I'm making my first acquaintance with large-capacity
SDHC cards as data storage devices. Using an 8Gb
Lexar card in an Optex USB2.0 adapter, I've tried
three methods of copying data from my VAIO desktop
(WinXP Media Center Edition with SP3, up to date)
to the card: Send To, Copy and Paste, and XCOPY
in command mode. In a sense, each method is a
variation on copying and pasting. And with each
method, once I get past a couple of GBy, I start
getting errors -- corrupted files, or actual Delayed
Write Failed errors.

Does copying and pasting have limits to the amount
of data that can be reliably handled, at some number
of GBy, or should I be considering poor quality in
the SDHC card or the adapter it's communicating
through? Should I just think of high-end SDHCs
of a presently unreliable medium?

Thanks for any thoughts.

Anthony

Is the card formatted as FAT32? Maximum file size FAT32 = 4 gb.


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Anthony Buckland wrote:
> The subject line may seem like a very odd question, but ...
> I'm making my first acquaintance with large-capacity
> SDHC cards as data storage devices. Using an 8Gb
> Lexar card in an Optex USB2.0 adapter, I've tried
> three methods of copying data from my VAIO desktop
> (WinXP Media Center Edition with SP3, up to date)
> to the card: Send To, Copy and Paste, and XCOPY
> in command mode. In a sense, each method is a
> variation on copying and pasting. And with each
> method, once I get past a couple of GBy, I start
> getting errors -- corrupted files, or actual Delayed
> Write Failed errors.
>
> Does copying and pasting have limits to the amount
> of data that can be reliably handled, at some number
> of GBy, or should I be considering poor quality in
> the SDHC card or the adapter it's communicating
> through? Should I just think of high-end SDHCs
> of a presently unreliable medium?
>
> Thanks for any thoughts.

"Gerry" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:%(E-Mail Removed)...
> Anthony
>
> Is the card formatted as FAT32? Maximum file size FAT32 = 4 gb.
>
>
> --
>
>
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Gerry
> ~~~~
> FCA
> Stourport, England
> Enquire, plan and execute
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>
> Anthony Buckland wrote:
>> The subject line may seem like a very odd question, but ...
>> I'm making my first acquaintance with large-capacity
>> SDHC cards as data storage devices. Using an 8Gb
>> Lexar card in an Optex USB2.0 adapter, I've tried
>> three methods of copying data from my VAIO desktop
>> (WinXP Media Center Edition with SP3, up to date)
>> to the card: Send To, Copy and Paste, and XCOPY
>> in command mode. In a sense, each method is a
>> variation on copying and pasting. And with each
>> method, once I get past a couple of GBy, I start
>> getting errors -- corrupted files, or actual Delayed
>> Write Failed errors.
>>
>> Does copying and pasting have limits to the amount
>> of data that can be reliably handled, at some number
>> of GBy, or should I be considering poor quality in
>> the SDHC card or the adapter it's communicating
>> through? Should I just think of high-end SDHCs
>> of a presently unreliable medium?
>>
>> Thanks for any thoughts.
>
>

Yes, it's FAT32, but no individual file I tried to put on it
exceeded 1.2 GBy.

"Anthony Buckland" wrote:
> The subject line may seem like a very odd question, but ...
> I'm making my first acquaintance with large-capacity
> SDHC cards as data storage devices. Using an 8Gb
> Lexar card in an Optex USB2.0 adapter, I've tried
> three methods of copying data from my VAIO desktop
> (WinXP Media Center Edition with SP3, up to date)
> to the card: Send To, Copy and Paste, and XCOPY
> in command mode. In a sense, each method is a
> variation on copying and pasting. And with each
> method, once I get past a couple of GBy, I start
> getting errors -- corrupted files, or actual Delayed
> Write Failed errors.
>
> Does copying and pasting have limits to the amount
> of data that can be reliably handled, at some number
> of GBy, or should I be considering poor quality in
> the SDHC card or the adapter it's communicating
> through? Should I just think of high-end SDHCs
> of a presently unreliable medium?
>
> Thanks for any thoughts.

I don't think it's Windows' fault since you can copy and paste much more
that 8GB to a USB hard drive. Something could be wrong with the card reader
or its driver, the card itself, or the USB port.

I have a cheaply-made HP laptop and after about two years, the three USB
ports stopped working properly (bad physical connections) one after the
other. A port would suddenly stop working for a few seconds then would start
working again. I eventually took the laptop apart and replaced one
connector, but before I did I'd regularly get "delayed write failed errors"
after a few minutes when saving files to my external drive. You might want
to connect the reader to a different USB port to see if it helps.

"TechX" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> Sounds like you might have bad data, bad HD with bad sectors, or bad
> card. Trying buring the data to a disk then put that disk in another
> machine and see if you can move it back and forth. Check your system log
> to see if your getting and redundant cycle write read errors. good luck!
> ...

Thanks to you and the other responders. The problem has been
solved. It was a case of a bad card. My USB slots are fine, other
removable media work fine, and the SDHC card misbehaved with
two separate reader/writers from different manufacturers.

The error phenomena included corrupted file contents, corrupted
file names, ridiculous output from Properties on the card (such
as one or more hundreds of GBy on an 8 GBy card), and inability
to reformat sometimes except in Manage on My Computer.

Aside from considerable time consumed, no problem, I'm way
inside the take-back-to-the-store time bracket.