8 gig camera memory card+ Thinkpad

I have an 8 gig camera memory card and an adapter that lets me plug it into a USB port. My 2 1/2 year old Thinkpad won't recognize it. A Lenovo person said the 8 gigs should not be a problem and that it might be a problem with the adapter, but a camera store person thought that the computer was just not able to recognize fast cards of that size (and had apparently seen this before). Newer computers probably would not have this problem, she thought. Who do people agree with? I lean to the camera store person. The adapter is just that, a piece of metal designed to let me plug in the card.

Thanks.

 

If it's an SD type flash memory card, your computer should recognize it as a removable storage device. Hell, even my old Sony PCG-GRS700 from 2003 can recognize those. Maybe your SD card reader is the problem. Have you tried it on another PC?

 

I did. I tried it on my desk top at work, also a few years old. That did not work either. The card, though, is new and big at 8 gigs....

 

If it's 8GB, it should be an SD-HC (high-capacity) card, which is a newer format than the old SD cards. SD cards range from around 128MB to a max of 4GB, whereas SD-HC cards go from 4GB to 32GB.

I would think a newer ThinkPad should recognize the SD-HC format, but it is true that some card readers recognize SD, but not SD-HC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sd_card

 

If it's a model 60 or earlier the odds are good that SDHC is NOT supported. The multi-format card reader for my desktop reads SD cards up to 2GB without issue, but it won't recognize my 8GB SDHC card at all. I know the newer ThinkPads (x200, T400, et. al.) supports SDHC, but many of the older models do NOT.

You can try and locate a newer driver for your card reader and see if that allows you to recognize the SDHC card (this worked for an HP laptop I used for a time). However, you are probably SOL.

My recommendation would be to get a USB SDHC reader ( like this $3 one from DealExtreme). This isn't ideal as it's something else to carry around, but it will work fine on any computer.

 

Agreed. I read "1/2 year old" mistakenly, as opposed to "2 1/2 year old" in his post.

2 1/2 years old is probably too old.

 

He has an USB adaptor. He's not using a built in memory reader. The USB Memory Reader he has doesn't support SD-HC.

 

You're right, I misread the original post. I stand by my earlier recommendation to buy a new USB SDHC reader ( this one is good and cheap, but may take a while to ship [airmail from Hong Kong]).

 

Thanks for the feedback! It looks like the camera store person was right (and it seems like the phone person at Lenovo should have known this). I'll look in to getting the card reader.

 

It turns out I can also make it work by leaving the card in the camera and hooking the camera to the computer (camera, in effect, acts like a USB SDHC reader)

 

Highly recommend a card reader even though you can directly hook up the camera. Just kind of on general principle I guess; that way the camera sits safely in its case instead of tethered to the computer where it could get knocked off the table. Not sure about today, but historically card readers have tended to be faster than the in-camera interface as well.

BTW, I'm confused -- the quoted part sounds opposite from your initial description. Sounds like the computer is fine and the card reader is the issue; which is what the Lenovo person said and opposite the camera store person? Just curious as to what I'm misunderstanding.