Last year we made heavy use of an Internet Cafe in Winnenden, to check email, and post to our web sites. We also use the computers there to copy pictures from our camera memory cards to a portable hard drive I had brought with me. When we returned home and went to copy pictures from our memory cards to our computers the anti-virus software immediately objected to the cards, saying there were viruses there.
I was able to clean my memory cards and have them return to normal function without any difficulties. Sibylle’s memory card however, refused to be read via her USB cable and reader. It worked fine in the camera, but not independently. When we arrived in Germany, we discovered that one of the things we forgot to pack was the camera to USB cable for her camera. She had the memory card reader and its cable, but plugging the card in only gave us a “memory card empty” message.
We went to a camera store on Marktplatz in Winnenden to see if we could buy a new camera to computer cable for her camera. The man there said he didn’t have a cable, but he did have some software that would let him recover all the pictures on the memory card, and reformat it so that it would work again. All for just 10 Euros. We said yes.
An hour later, when we returned to the store, he handed us a CD with some 280 pictures on it, and a newly formated memory card. I am happy to say that her card reader once again works the way it should. The last vestiges of the virus from last year were gone.
That is until I filled up my first 256 MB memory card and switched to the second. As it happened, I took just two pictures before trying to upload through my card reader, whereupon I got the same “memory card empty” message. With only two pictures on the card I didn’t hesitate to reformat it. The first reformat I used the suggested 16 kilobyte file allocation unit size, which I later determined was a mistake. After taking a picture, it took the camera a very long time to save the image to the card. This morning I reformated the card a second time, using a 1024 byte (i.e., 1 MB) allocation unit size. And FAT32 instead of the suggested FAT format. When I put the card in the camera, it objected to the card, but offered to format it for me. Once the camera was done with the format (a surprisingly quick 5 seconds) the card worked like it was brand new.
Finally, after a year, the viruses we got last year in the Internet Cafe, were gone.
