Dead XD card with Fuji FinePix F10?

[stevage]

Hi all,
After performing perfectly for nearly 18 months my F10 suddenly seems to have a bunch of strange, apparently unrelated problems. The worst one is now it refuses to take photos on, or read photos off my 1 gig XD card. On reading it just says "Read error", sometimes after pausing for a long time. I've tried taking a couple of photos since this started happening, and am now getting "Write error". Anyone have any ideas?

I'd like to try reading the pictures another way, but a dodgy card reader I bought never worked, and the camera's USB connection has gotten pretty dodgy in the last month or so, very rarely allowing photos to be downloaded.

I'm a bit bummed - was going to be a DSLR anyway, but wanted 2 cameras, not 1 :(

Steve

[stevage]

Update: managed to download some photos off it, but half of them are corrupted. This is the second time: previously it's produced images containing elements of 3 different photos, very similar to an analog camera that isn't winding on properly. Pretty bizzarre really. Strangest of all, one of the photos this time contains bits of photo from a previous batch of photos, despite me wiping the card in the meantime.

So the question: any chance this is just the card (1 gig "Olympus" XD card from SanDisk) failing, or is it the camera?

Steve

[sjseto]

Do you have another card that you can test the camera with? I think the F10 came with a 16 MB xD card in the box. That way you can determine whether or not there's a problem with the camera.

You can also try taking the card to a photo finishing place with card-reading equipment, and ask if they can retrieve the photos off of your card. Mind you, that won't necessarily tell you with certainty that it's the card or the camera that's faulty. Because if they can read the photos off of the card, it tells you that there's nothing wrong with the card, and there's a problem with your camera. But if they can't, it could be either the camera or the card.

Good luck.

Stephanie