Asus G1S Memory Stick Incompatibility

Hello, everyone. I am having a rather peculiar problem with my G1S, or rather its card reader. I have a Memory Stick Micro (or M2) card for my cellphone, which I wanted to use with the notebook, in order to transfer music, pictures etc. However, the card reader is built to accept Memory Stick Duo cards (the longest one), so I bought an adapter. However, everytime I insert the card (with adapter, of course), although it is immediately recognised, the data is almost always corrupt: Can't copy files, let alone open the folders, and sometimes I receive messages saying either the disk is unformatted or that there is a cyclic redundancy error (or something similar). Now...the M2 card works just fine, having been tested on cellphones and various other PCs. This problem comes up even with different M2 cards. Now, I've tested the adapter as well on other card readers...no problem whatsoever! I should note, that I can format the card in the G1S AND even copy files on it (and successfully play/view them in the G1S), but as soon as the card is read from another card reader, as soon as I stick it back to the notebook, I get the same error. The SD cards work flawlessly, there is no dust in the slot, I've tried 3 different driver versions under both XP and Vista without any success. So I was wondering if anyone had an idea, or at least can anyone tell me that they have successfully used an M2 card?

 

It seems like you've covered most of the bases there, so the only explanation I see left open is that there is something wrong with the card reader itself, that makes it unable to properly initialize and read your M2 cards after they've been accessed by another device. You have the same problem with different cards, so it can't be the specific card's problem. You've tried the adapter in different readers, so it can't be the adapters fault. You've tried reading and writing to the same card without moving it to any other device and it works, so it can't be just the read/write features of the card reader. You've installed multiple drivers in two different operatings systems, so it really wouldn't seem like an OS or driver problem.

That means it has to be the card reader itself is unable to read those cards properly once they've been moved elsewhere, or it might be a combination of the adapter and the laptop not playing nice after the adapter has been in another device. One thing I considered was that it might have something to do with the DRM, but both the Duo and M2 have MagicGate on them, and since the reader is designed to read the Duo by default it should support the MagicGate protection. If you unplug the card and adaptor, and don't plug them into anything else, then plug them back in do they still work? Does the adaptor have any kind of switching on it for different file transfer protocols? Because it all points towards something being wrong with the card reader alone or the card reader being incompatible with the adapter.

 

Thanks for your reply, and yes, that's exactly what I feared at first, but:

If I format the card (within the adapter) in the laptop (either quick format or not, FAT32 or FAT),
copy anything on it,
then take the card out, but NOT plug it anywhere else,
and then plug it back in the notebook,

everything works fine. The card reader shows no problems, any files previously copied can be read/copied without any problems, and even if I stick the card anywhere else, the data on it are perfectly fine, read/copied without errors, exactly what should happen. But as soon as I stick the card back to the notebook, then...corrupt data. If it is a card-reader problem, it is definitely highly illogical... The only thing I still haven't tried is a different adapter, but since this one has passed the test on 2 different card readers... I don't know.

Then again, there is only one module within the card reader for all three types (SD, MMC, MS), and two of them work...


PS: Only difference between XP and Vista is, that under Vista the problem is sometimes "selective": Even if not inserted anywhere else there can be corruption. This never happens under XP, there is never corruption (again if not inserted anywhere else). Also, under Vista, sometimes it takes up to ~1 minute to show the error, as if it struggles to read the data (by the way, the folder structure is always intact!).

That's why I wanted to know if anyone has successfully tried using an M2 card with a MS Pro Adapter. Perhaps incompatibility with such adapters? But why ?

 

Ok, a minor update (for anyone interested). It seems the problem was with the adapter, as I tried a new one and all was good. Kinda surprised though, since the old one worked just fine anywhere else...Definitely relieved now.