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Hlep! message; "SD card locked!" error message?


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I had the same problem and the real reason was that the card was faulty. It seemed to work in another camera and in the card reader first but it had bad sectors and the M8 was more sensitive.

 

If it looks like you card is damaged, do not waste your time and change it. Fortunately, SD card are cheap now.

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I had the same problem about a week ago. Take the battery and the card out of the camera.

 

Put a fresh battery in, turn the camera on with the card OUT (the usual message will appear) then turn it off and put the card in - mine read the card properly.

This happened me after the camera took an inordinately long time to write the image to the card.

 

Leica... you have to sort things like this out for it means you simply cannot trust the camera to take the next shot :confused::mad: ....

 

You should NOT be able to call into question the reliability of a £3K Leica camera body - full stop.

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Strange development;

The SD card when I slide the lock 'ON" to the "Lock " position the card functions. when the lock is slid "OFF" to what is marked the "San Disk" position it does not function. The indication says "SD locked". and the view finder shows full.

 

Rafael

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...when I turn on the camera I get the message,"the SD card is locked!". The counter shows "O" pictures to take. When I press the shutter, in the viewfinder it says "full"

 

Rafael

 

 

 

I have run across this issue numerous times, which started to show up since the latest firmware update.

 

I do not believe it is memory card, card reader, battery or dirty contacts related. In most cases it has occurred upon inserting a fresh, previously reformatted, memory card into the camera and, or changing the battery. It should be noted that the issue does not migrate when the memory card and battery are moved to another M8.

 

As mentioned, removing and then reinserting the card and, or battery usually rectifies the situation. Sometimes I have needed to go another step and use a different memory card and, or battery to clear up the problem. A longer term solution seems to be resetting the camera itself, through the LCD menu.

 

However, the pattern of symptoms I have repeatedly experience and tested for, across over a dozen memory cards, seven batteries and two M8s, seems to point to a firmware related issue rather than bad memory cards, batteries or dirty contacts.

 

 

Geoff

MySpace.com - g e o f f - 101 - Männlich - PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA - www.myspace.com/geoffotos

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You have probably knocked the lock tab on the card to the "Locked" position.

 

Take out the card and check the little tab on the side of the card.

 

I know you have looked at the "Lock" caption and its little indicating triangle but please indulge me and look again - the word and the triangle are not logically placed to a quick look, on some of mine.

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In most cases it has occurred upon inserting a fresh, previously reformatted, memory card into the camera and, or changing the battery. [/url]

 

Geoff

 

How are you reformatting the card - in camera or by computer and are you using the same reader for all cards? I've seen many suggestions to the effect that formatting on a computer (especially a mac) can lead to problems and I have a CF card which won't work on some cameras following a computer formatting, although it seems to work fine on others - I've checked it on various cameras and on some it operate, on others it won't - and if checked by a computer it ticks all the boxes. You may also be interested to view this page:

 

http://www.lexar.com/2gbsd/index.html

 

as although it refers to Lexar cards and is anything but extensive, it does indicate that there are compatilbility issues. I have found readers to be a real source of problems and out of 3 readers I have, only one works consistently.

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PGK,

 

I always reformat my memory cards in the camera prior to each shoot.

 

The symptom originally reported in this post, and for which I have experienced, is not related to card readers, dirty contacts, bad or low charge batteries, or physically locked, improperly formatted or incompatible memory cards and has been documented to occur with various memory cards including those on Leica’s “Compatible SD Cards for the Leica M8” list.

 

The link you provided is a bit dated and limited in scope regarding actual memory card compatibility issues, specifically those surrounding the various specification versions of Secure Digital and SDHC. I have posted extensively on these issues as I am very familiar with them and various big name manufacturer’s bastardizations. Additionally, I have conducted extensive beta product memory card testing in the past.

 

 

Geoff

MySpace.com - g e o f f - 101 - Männlich - PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA - www.myspace.com/geoffotos

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  • 1 month later...

One of my cameras kept dying over and over and I ended up having this problem with the 3 memory cards I had been trying to use on it. Eventually I realized that somehow the switch was backwards now. If it was set to "lock" then it was fine, but if it's set to "unlocked" then it doesn't work and it errors as locked. I have no idea how this happened, but they seem to be working fine in the "lock" position. Go figure.

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This has happened to me perhaps four or five times over the past year. What works every time for me is this: 1. Pull the card from the camera and actually lock the card. 2. Reinsert and turn the camera back on, it will now say that the card is locked (which it is). 3. Shut down and pull the card again. 4. Unlock the card, reinsert and power up. 5. Problem solved. The camera now reads the card as correctly unlocked. It's annoying when it happens but takes less than a minute to fix.

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Has happened several times to me with 4GB Trancsend cards. Each time I removed the card, flicked the lock switch a few times back to unlock, and it worked fine. I think if the switch is moved a hair it can cause this to occur. There may be other causes, but this is my history. best...Peter

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I had exactly the same problem this morning with a 2G card. Switched on and off tried it on both my M8 bodies and my DLUX3, nothing doing.

 

My advice is to throw the card away! Even if you get it to work / unlock do you want to take a chance that the card's faulty and you end up losing all your pics?

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I had this happen to 3 cards in the same day, all probably due to the one camera shutting off and on over and over. Do you really think those cards are all now fubar? Sure the switch is "flipped" for me, but I formatted them and have been using one of them for a bit now and they seem fine. I agree as a rule that any time a card messes up you should toss it to avoid ever losing pictures, but in this instance it seems to be more of a freak occurrence than anything actually broken. Or am I just rationalizing? :eek:

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  • 7 months later...
I have run across this issue numerous times, which started to show up since the latest firmware update.

 

I do not believe it is memory card, card reader, battery or dirty contacts related. In most cases it has occurred upon inserting a fresh, previously reformatted, memory card into the camera and, or changing the battery. It should be noted that the issue does not migrate when the memory card and battery are moved to another M8.

 

As mentioned, removing and then reinserting the card and, or battery usually rectifies the situation. Sometimes I have needed to go another step and use a different memory card and, or battery to clear up the problem. A longer term solution seems to be resetting the camera itself, through the LCD menu.

 

However, the pattern of symptoms I have repeatedly experience and tested for, across over a dozen memory cards, seven batteries and two M8s, seems to point to a firmware related issue rather than bad memory cards, batteries or dirty contacts.

 

 

Geoff

MySpace.com - g e o f f - 101 - Männlich - PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA - www.myspace.com/geoffotos

 

Geoff,

 

I agree with you that these problems seem to be related to the camera and/or its firmware and not to SD Cards.

 

Today I lost more pictures while using my M8. The shutter fired normally as I was photographing and I only noticed that pictures had stopped recording when I looked at the remaining-picture LCD display and noticed that the number remained unchanged after taking several photographs. I was shooting DNG&JPG Fine and neither were recorded in the final sequence of around ten photographs. It happened shortly or immediately after I change ISO from 320 to 160. I was taking many pictures in succession in single picture mode.

 

This is not the first time this has happened to me. I've lost pictures using a variety of cards, bought from reputable sources in original packaging, in the past year and a half.

 

Some days ago after updating the firmware to 2.002 I experienced the 'SD card locked' problem, too, and now both my Lexar Professional 2GB cards cannot be written to by the operating system (Mac OS X 10.5.5), though the camera formats them fine and I can transfer pictures from card to computer without problem.

 

I always format cards in-camera before each shoot, and do not believe they are faulty, though I will get some new ones, again.

 

Additionally, I've noticed that when taking pictures in succession in low light at ISO 1250 and 2500 horizontal lines sometimes appear in a picture late in the sequence. This is a camera I've delivered for repair in Solms once already (for the thin vertical line across the middle of the frame problem, for which they replaced the sensor one year ago).

 

I like the M8, but I do not feel it is a reliable tool. I am hoping for more firmware bug fixes from Leica (if this is indeed the problem) and a more affordable and more reliable digital rangefinder from wherever it may come in 2009!

 

Simon

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The contacts on either the card or the camera are dirty. Spray Radio Shack contact cleaner on a cloth and clean the card contacts. Insert the card into the camera and work back and forth several times. I have had this happen several times and this always fixes it.

Cheers, Dan

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I used a card reader to remove some images, and somehow when I returned the SD card to the M8. (It is a San Disk Extreme III, a recommended SD type, 2gig from the Leica site), when I turn on the camera I get the message,"the SD card is locked!". The counter shows "O" pictures to take. When I press the shutter, in the viewfinder it says "full"

 

How can I unlock the SD card?

 

thanking anyone, in advance for any help

 

Rafael

Something similar happened to me. When I formatted the card in the camera and the camera told me that the card was locked and full. I took the card out and checked to see if it was locked. It was not. I put it back in, formatted it again and got the same message. I went through the whole routine again and this time everything was fine.

 

I am using 4GB cards. (I use Lexar and SanDisk. I can't remember which card locked up.) I have not upgraded the firmware. I am using the latest Mac OS on an iMac.

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The contacts on either the card or the camera are dirty. Spray Radio Shack contact cleaner on a cloth and clean the card contacts. Insert the card into the camera and work back and forth several times. I have had this happen several times and this always fixes it.

Cheers, Dan

 

Dan,

 

I will try what you suggest, thanks.

 

Simon

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