DSLR Photography Forum

My xd card won't format. and there is a picture on it and won't erase either.

Hey usajet... how are you trying to format it? Is it write protected by any chance (that little tab on the card)?

the card has a notch on the side of it.

But does it have a little sliding switch?
This will lock it, causing what you describe.

The xD cards that I have can't be locked out this way -- if it won't format in the camera, then I suspect it's a bad card.

It Was The Media Reader

I used to have an Olympus compact digicam that took xD cards and had a similar problem. The camera refused to format the card. I think from memory (this is going back about 3 years) it would format on a PC, but the camera just wouldn't recognise or reformat the card.

I ended up taking the xD card into a local camera shop and reformatting it on a non-olympus camera that took xD cards (was it a pentax perhaps?). Anyway, this immediately fixed the problem and I could format and use it on my olympus again.

I've also seen Media Card Readers that have a write-protect tab on them, rather than it being on the memory card itself. In fact I also have a Micro-SD card where the adaptor (to standard SD card-size) has a write-protect tab on it.

Hope you get it sorted.