istD and Microdrives

Hi All

I have a Hitachi 4GB microdrive that my istD won't read, it's been formated in FAT32, the PC card reader finds it OK and I can copy, cut and paste to it no problem.
Anybody got any ideas.

Have you formatted the microdrive in the camera?

Tried to do that, all I get is a message "memory card error". The camera just will not see the microdrive.

Don't think the *istD can handle FAT32, only FAT (a.k.a. FAT16).
Try reformatting as FAT/FAT16 on the PC and check the *istD again.

However, if that's the case, FAT16 has a 2Gb limit.

Matt

Just a thought?

Where did you get the microdrive from? There are a lot of Hitachi microdrives that were removed from the Creative MP3 player but only the earlier versions work as Hitachi did not like this cheap back-channel to market and rendered the interface that the cameras depend on inoperative (still work fine on laptops and card-readers though).

Stuart
(A man stupid enough to have bought one cheap on ebay that had a serial number post the Hitachi change!!)

Thanks For all the replies folks.

Matt: The *istD handles both FAT16 and FAT32 without any problems, all my CF cards have been formated at one time or another on my PC in FAT32 and I have absolutely no problems.

It is possible to format 4GB in FAT16 on WinXP PC, works fine between the card reader and PC, but still can't get it to work in the camera even as a 2GB partition.

My webspace is down so I can't upload the format image, will do it later.

Kyber (Stuart ?): Yes I got it off eBay (£98 ), when did Hitachi make the change? my MD has warrenty till August 2005 so it was probably manufactured June/July this year. I also spoke with Pentax UK support today, they are not aware of any problems with any Hitachi MD, they say that all have been tested and should work with the *istD with firmware 1.11. They have suggested that I send my camera to them so they can investigate the problem. I may just do that as I think I have a couple of other issues, namely RAW files look slightly out of focus (not soft) and have very poor (dull) colour rendition from all my lenses (all Pentax glass). The shutter also fails to fire periodically with the focus confirmation lit.