[Dan Keaton]

Our experts at Convergent Design have been searching for a solution to the problem with CompactFlash cards and Mac Leopard Operating System.

To recap: It appeared that CompactFlash cards were being destroyed by the "Eject" process, but only under the “Leopard” Operating System and not “Tiger”.

We determined that the cards were not electrically destroyed, as our first checks indicated.

After the "Eject" process, the cards were not readable or responsive in any way, in any device.

While we could not communicate with the cards, we found that if we ran the Mac "Applications"|"Disk Utility"|"Erase" command, we could recover the card.

It appears that the "Eject" process is severely corrupting the card (or its contents), but not electrically destroying it!

After performing the "Erase" we thoroughly tested the card and it is now fully functional with no apparent damage.


Here is our recommended way to recover the cards:

Please see our note at the end of this post if you have important clips on your card!

Please read and understand all of the steps below, prior to starting this procedure.



1. Insert a damaged card into your CompactFlash card reader.
(We expect you to use your Mac with Leopard for this process.)

2. Open Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility.

3. In the Disk Utility on the left, you should see the CompactFlash card reader drive,
such as Lexar or OEI-USB, depending on what kind of reader you have.

4. Choose this CompactFlash card reader drive.
(Do not accidentally choose your Macintosh HD drive or some other important drive!)

5. With the CompactFlash card reader drive chosen, you should now have some tabs available:

First Aid
Erase
Etc.

6. Choose the "Erase" tab. (Please read the important note below before performing this step.)

7. Click the "Erase" button.

8. When the "Erase" is complete, your card should appear as a named volume, under your CompactFlash card reader volume, on the left hand side (indented under the CF reader).

It will be "NO NAME" or the name you previously named it.

9. Select the NO NAME card volume, and erase it as well.

10. Your card should now be usable again, though it will be formatted, so that all previous files will be erased.



Important Note:

If you need the old video off of the card, it is conceivable that you could try the "First Aid" tool in Disk Utility, instead of the "Erase" tool above, but we have not experimented with this at this time.