E-PL5 Rejecting Sandisk 2.GB Memory Cards. Howcum?

[Ryan B.]

I keep a few low-memory disks as back-up for my E-PL5: 2 x Sandisk 2.0 GB, and decided today, for the first time, to see how many pics each would hold.
While both of these fit snugly into my camera, they each elicit a "Card Error" message on my screen and a "Card cannot be formatted" message from the Menu.
The SanDisk 2.0 disks are listed by Olympus and a couple other sites as being compatible with the E-PL5, but, alas, no joy.
Anyone have clues or insight?
(Ignore the GigaWare cards.)

 

[KevinG58]

How old, or more importantly, how many prior uses? Does it work in any other device and do other cards work in the camera.
The card might be done. They don't take infinite numbers of writes.

 

[Ryan B.]

Thanks for the response. Not too many prior uses. 30-40 dives.Other cards work in the camera, but I don't have other cameras or tools that use these cards so am unable to test them in that manner. I didn't know cards could be "done".

 

[fmerkel]

More succinctly, flash memory, any memory actually. can fail.
There looks to be a protection tab on it to prevent erasing. Check that.
Either find someone with a card reader, or get one (get a decent one, not cheap crap), and see if you can read the card. Some laptops and desktops have card readers. If not > chuck it.

If you can read it, format it and try again in the camera. If it now works, re-format IN the camera.
Be aware that one of the early signs of flash going bad is appearing to work, then becoming corrupted. Cards are really cheap. Not sensible economy to try to salvage a suspect small card.

Really cheap cards are often that....cheap. They can also be faked/counterfeit. You don't want to go there. Do a search on counterfeit SD cards and programs to test them.

 

[Ryan B.]

Thank you, gentlemen.