smartmedia cards

I have been using a 64 MB SanDisk SmartMedia card in one Olympus D-520 2 MP digital camera for about 7 months, and another 128 MB SanDisk SmartMedia card in a second Olympus D-520 for about 10 months. Both have worked just fine. Have taken probably around 2,000 photos on the 128 MB card with no problems. We read the images directly from the D-520 through USB to iPhoto on an Apple Power Mac dual G4 system, and usually erase the card contents immediately after downloading the images. Everything has worked fine and I plan to buy another 128 MB SmartMedia card shortly.

I bought two of these cards to use on a 9-week trip with my Olympus c-2000 z digital camera.

One of the cards worked beautifully. It's incredibly convenient to be able to fit over 200 images on one card!

The other card worked for a few weeks, then produced a "disk error," which meant it couldn't take any more pictures, and that the 100 or so that were on it are not readable! Very worrying.

I emailed Sandisk and they replied that they cannot help, and suggested that I get in touch with a file recovery company (which will cost me almost $100). I don't know if I'll be able to get those 100 pictures back yet.

I'm disappointed because I think Sandisk should help me more with recoving the files or at least have more resources to help me do it myself. My local camera retailer says that other manufacturers are far more helpful when these problems arise.

2 thoughts for people considering buying these cards:
1 - It's worth it to pay a little more for a card from a company that will support its products.
2 - It's better to buy 2 64 Meg disks than 1 128 to reduce the chance of having an error like this happen.

I accidently sent a SanDisk SmartMedia card (without a case) through my washing machine. Dryed it off and was amazed to see that it didn't lose any picture files. Several months later and the card is still working fine.