frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

Pencil erasers used to be recommended, and used to clean card contacts, for years. I did it for thirty years before retiring in 2005, with no problems.

duck72 Loc: Laurel Ridge, PA

Thank you. My point (perhaps feebly made) is that removing/inserting a cable to one's camera is akin to removing/inserting a memory card, or any other interface between computers. Your camera is a computer. Cables are little different from memory cards. All sytems must be "Go" before attempting transfer. And, yes- pencil erasers are bad for card contacts, as you concur. Happy shooting.

Modbuilder

Wow! Just signed up with UHH this morning when I stumbled across it, and the first digest I got had this thread with useful info about an immediate issue for me.

I've been running a Sony A7 mirrorless that has only a single SD card slot for real estate photography. Got home from a job with a first-time client over the weekend, took the card out of the camera, inserted it into the laptop, and DANG, it froze up my laptop. Got that really bad sinking feeling in my stomach, but it ended up OK this time.

I found that the card would read properly on my desktop machine, but consistently froze up my laptop despite restarting the laptop several times. So I successfully got the photos retrieved, edited and delivered, but decided that fate had given me a heavy lesson that I need to take some actions sooner rather than later to avoid the inevitable. I needed a backup camera anyway, so an obvious early step was getting a camera with dual card slots. Have a Sony A7iii on the way with dual card slots.

The rest of the story -- I was packing up the laptop yesterday to take to my local PC repair hospital to check out the SD card slot for malfunction, when I tried the 'faulty' card again, and Double DANG, now it's working perfectly in the laptop! So now I don't know what the root cause of the problem really was, but this thread has given me lots to think about, from running into a low battery warning, popping the card out too quickly, a card going bad, or the card reader. Regardless, I'm taking actions that should help minimize future risk of losing a capture.

Good forum/thread. Thanks ............. Bob R.

frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

It may have been you had too much running on the laptop.... If it happens again, try shutting down all programs your not currently using and clearing the buffer. This had happened to me, and this is how I solved the problem. Not enough free memory.

Modbuilder

Good idea, but I think something else was going on in this case. I closed everything and restarted the laptop multiple times with the same result until two days later when I was about to put it in the shop. Am sure I'll never know the root cause, but I've already got steps to improve the situation based on this thread, including taking my time removing the card from the camera after turning the camera off, and not running it into a low battery warning. The new camera rig will have a 5-hour battery where the one I was running this weekend had a 2-hr battery. I'd got a low batt warning but had to take a couple more shots before I could swap in a fresh one. I'd have thought the Sony A7 would have avoided a hard stop on the SD card, but I don't really know. I'll avoid the situation in the future as well as start treating my memory cards with more respect. First time I've had this kind of problem, but am discovering that memory card problems are not unusual. Taking a little comfort in having dual cards in the future.

carl hervol Loc: jacksonville florida

Try down loading direct from the camera I have 3 card readers and they all give me problems that why I go direct from camera

Modbuilder

I haven't tried that and will do so. Thanks........... R

RWR Loc: La Mesa, CA

Why is a USB cable included with the camera if it is not a safe method?

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

One issue I did not find in the thread is the importance of disconnecting any USB device before you physically remove from a computer or connected card reader. I have seen cheapo USB sticks and SD cards ruined because they were removed from the computer while in use by some application.

That is why in Lightroom, after import from memory card, you see the Eject Card message.