Why you should keep that digicam-to-USB cable

[John B.]

I have an original Canon Digital Elph S100 that is my briefcase/eBay/CraigsList camera. I shot a couple of pictures for a CraigsList posting which spanned from one file directory to another (118canon to 119canon). As is my standard practice, I popped out the CompactFlash card and plugged it into my USB media reader. My Mac Mini (10.6.4) saw the 118canon directory, but saw 119canon as a file. Since the card is formatted in FAT16, I tried it in a Windows XP machine, different USB card reader. The XP machine saw 119canon as a folder, but couldn't open it. Tried to run XP's built-in repair utilities, they couldn't start on the card.

Popped the card back into the camera and the camera could open the pictures in the phantom directory. Had an 'aha' moment and went digging through my milk crate of random computer cables, to come up with the Canon's original USB cable, still in its plastic envelope. Plugged the Canon into the Mac, and voila, iPhoto could see the pictures.

I downloaded everything off of the card and am going to reformat to hopefully get rid of the gremlin, but it's a good reminder that sometimes you need that 10-year-old cable.

[Lew Zealand]

This has you covered:

[John B.]

Wow...what the heck is that thing?

[Rick-o]

John B. wrote:
Wow...what the heck is that thing?

:agree:

[modelamac]

I keep all cables and connectors, regardless if I still have the original equipment. It has paid dividends.

[deckeda]

Doesn't it (or most cameras) just use a typical A to B cable? http://www.google.com/products/catalog?client=safari&rls=en&q=usb+a+to+usb+b&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=15330804377396050265&ei=UbPUTMHXCsaAlAeDteiCCQ&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=image&resnum=4&ved=0CDYQ8gIwAw#

[Jimmypoo]

Just make sure you let the CAMERA format the drive -- don't do it in winduds. You could make it
invisible to the camera in FAT32, and/or worse yet, invisible to the camera and the Mac.

I've had it happen on flash drives, and just the other day I got a USB reader from Meritline, and it made
all the deleted photos reappear, just by plugging it in.

When I told iPhoto to go ahead and remove them, the microSD card would not show up on the phone.
After about 20 insertion/removal actions - it finally showed, and the deleted files were now visible
on the phone. I let the phone reformat the card to its preferences.

Had a similar instance with a Nikon 800 about 5 years ago. Definitely irksome when it happens and
you have to waste a lot of time with something just to get it back to "blank."

[Jimmypoo]

Lew Zealand wrote:
This has you covered:

If I'm not mistaken, that is a state of the art hard drive!

I'm not sure the date of the artwork, but I'm guessing it is sometime not long after the Queen Victoria era.