wrote:
I've got a SanDisk 512 SD card, and I just got a Nikon D50 DSLR camera.
I took it out about 10 days ago and took 200 pics, some of them
actually GOOD. Took the SD card out, and with a
USB-based-SD-card-reader I look at 'em and showed 'em around and so on.

I left the SD card sitting in the USB reader sticking out of the USB
port on the outside of my PC (WinXP). This may have been my mistake.

Today I went to move the pictures onto the hard drive, edit 'em and
post 'em on flickr. I can't. The Removable Drive shows up in My
Computer, but I can't open. I can't right click on it. It just goes
into deep slowdown mode and often requires me to force-quit
Explorer.exe - or else times out.

I tried using another card (in fact, a memory stick) in the same USB
reader and that works fine. It's not the reader. I put the card back in
the camera. Oh-oh. "This card cannnot be used"

I tried this on another PC and it's the same thing.

Have I trashed the card? Was it from sitting out? If Windows won't
recognize it, I can't even reformat it, let alone get the pictures off
of it?

Any ideas or experiences here?

There are a couple of things to think about here -

First of all see if you have done something really silly and you are
putting the card in the card reader upside down. (Don't laugh, I have
done this myself and then I wonder why the computer can't find the
card!)

If this is not the case, and you are putting the card in the reader
correctly run a virus scan on your computer and see if you have a virus
that is corrupting removable media. (This is not a good thing to have
happen, and not fun to deal with, but it does happen once in a while.)
If this is the case you can try and fix the problem with the anti-virus
software, or you can throw out the card and get a new card. You still
have to fix the virus problem on your computer either way.

Next you can attempt to format the card inside your camera, if the
camera finds the card.
You can also attempt to format the card in the card reader. This is
recommended against by most of the card manufactures and by the camera
manufactures, but sometimes it is the only way to save a card. (This
is on a Windows box.)

Also, if you have an external card reader, you can try plugging it into
a different usb port and see if that helps you find the card.
Sometimes one usb port will find a card when another usb port wont.
(I have no idea why?)

Also, you might find someone with a Mac or a Linux box and see if they
can read your card with a card reader on their machine. Different OS's
sometimes read the cards differently.
If a Mac or a Linux box can read the card, you might consider
reformating the card with that machine. Again this is a risky thing to
do.

You also might contact the manufacturer of the card and ask them about
the not being able to be read by anything. They may have some faulty
card floating around. (There were some faulty CF cards a while back
from one manufacture, so it is possible that there is another type of
faulty cards floating around.)

Hope this helps,

roland