OK, I've had it! I've now fried my 3rd and final 2gb Sandisk UltraII card and I'm sick of it. N800 says "corrupt or not formatted" and my laptop SD slot won't recognize the card. From what I can tell, once they are in this condition, they are junk. I've scanned the bugzilla and tried several downloaded programs to rescue the cards, but have had no luck. I want Nokia to pay for these. This is not an isolated incident and I haven't done anything outside of the ordinary to cause this problem. I'm sick of wasting my time trying to unsuccessfully recover my files each time this has happened. I'm also really pi##ed off that I paid $400.00 for the N800 for what has amounted to nothing more than being a guinea pig for beta testing a not ready for prime time device and software. As far as I'm concerned Nokia owes me $150.00 for the 3 fried cards I have, because thier device is faulty (read P.O.S.). I'm sure there will be plenty of you that will defend the device and Nokia. That's fine. I 'm also sure there are plenty of others that feel the same way I do, and we need to make Nokia aware of it. I doubt we will ever get any satisfaction from them.

[rant]Amen to that[/rant]
On the other hand -literally- I'm keeping my N800

I doubt there are plenty of others or we would hear more. I've had my N800 since March and I've never had an SD card issue. I have followed the advice of a few people on this site a got a couple Transcend 4gb cards (150 speed). Are you formatting them in your laptop? If so, how? What "rescue" utilities have you tried? By chance, do you have a Mac and a card reader you can use? I use Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX....I find that it's often easy to bring cards back from the dead with Disk Utility on a Mac or QTParted on Linux....(I use Ubuntu). You may also have a faulty card slot....is it the same slot each time or does it happen in both? Could it be the laptop or card reader if you're using one to load data?

Not ready for prime time? Do you even get how this thing works? I couldn't get along without mine now. Here's a sample day for me....

Wake up...roll over and grab N800...check morning emails and news before I even get out of bed.

Check a few news sites while eating breakfast...shove n800 into pocket.

On the way to work, realize I forgot to restart a server yesterday...pull over to a known hotspot in neighborhood....use ssh to restart server at work.

Periodically check emails and weather.

Cell reception is bad indoors....no problem...I use Skpye with SkypeOut to make some phone calls. Listen to some tunes while working on a project.

Get an email about a printing problem....use VNC to check server and then use web browser to bring up CUPS web admin page and restart stuck printer...call person on Skype to let tem know all is fixed

Email from wife....fire up Pidgin and chat with her about daughters soccer game later in day.

Leave early....no problem as soccer game is at another school that has open wireless (guest) network. I work remotely using rdesktop and my Stowaway BT keyboard....I have Windows and Linux (LTSP) terminal servers at work.

Daughter miscommunicates time of game....I'm an hour early. No problem...I sit in my car and watch a movie I ripped from DVD a few days before (I usually have 3-5 movies on my SD card for times like this...I rip them with Handbrake)

Later at night I surf the web in bed....like I am now. Vrry cool device...this thing is.

I'm keeping mine as I "get" it...and it works fantastic!

Late night emails and blog updates from a hotel in Boston....Skype calls to home from Seville, Spain....Maemo mapper to find directions to a university for a seminar I was teaching....restarting a mail server remotely after a power outage....etc. Remember...it's a tool....not always a toy.

Tried 2 programs to recover the cards (cardrecovery.exe and Ext2IFS) both freeware found after google searches. I've had my N800 since the day it was released at CompUSA (1/24/07). There are quite a few others with card issues, as I've seen other posts about it over the past months and there are enough posts in the bugzilla to proove it. I don't have a MAC nor do I have Linux, nor do I want either. All I have ever wanted to do is just use this thing. Of all the "toys" I have ever bought, this thing is higher maintenence then all of them combined. Bugs, hacks and work arrounds are not acceptable in consumer electronics like this. I'm not a programmer and I don't want to be. It's happened to cards in both internal and external slots. I don't connect it to my laptop for anything except to update the firmware, as it won't sync with outlook. All cards have been formated with the N800 only. All files are saved as a result of downloading from the web or my email. I'm glad for you you haven't had problems yet. Mine is a P.O.S.

dtrask,

I use my N800 in much the same way as you do, but now I'm also wasting valuable time trying to rescue my SD cards. Tool, toy.... what ever. If it doesn't work right or is frying memory cards there is a problem. I've watched movies also, but now they're gone because they were on the cards that are now junk. By the way I "get it" also, which is why I bought it when it came out. How would you feel if you had to go through this once every 2 months, lost time and lost money. If that thought doesn't bother you then you "don't get it"

jeep99 - please add a comment to bug #1204 which is tracking this issue. Comment #36 in that bug gives a summary of the information Nokia will find helpful in order to resolve this issue. Venting in the forum is no doubt cathartic, but adding additional detail to the bug is the only sure fire way toward resolution.

Just an idea to try. You'll probably need an external card reader for this as you may have a Texas Instruments card reader if it's built-in to the laptop....and these can cause problems.. Download and burn the GParted Live CD. (Google it) Grab the ISO and burn it...that will get you the "live cd". Insert and boot from it. See if the GParted program will "see" your cards. If so...delete any existing partitions on them and then create a new partition and format it as FAT32. HTH YMMV

Got it....see my other post for an idea. Also have you called tech support? What'd they say?

Milhouse,

Thank you, I will add as much info as I can, but doubt it will be as detailed as most other entries.