Acer Aspire One and an XD Card

I may have mentioned my new acer aspire one already, and I probably also mentioned the problems I had with it not reading my camera card. The camera is a Fuji Finepix, and the card is a 2GB XD card – XD is the format used by Fuji and by Olympus apparently.

Well, we went back to the shop and demonstrated the card not working. They took the card, tried it in their card reader (it worked, just like it does in my card reader and in the camera). Then they tried it in the display model of the same machine, and it persisted in not working. After a whole rigamarole of contacting the supplier, who told us to contact the retailer, who told us to go home and ring their central helpline, who told us to contact the supplier (which went on for a while) we went back to the shop again and they got a new XD card, and it worked absolutely fine. The new card is a 2GB card just like the old one.

Things I notice about this:

  • The old card doesn’t work even after formatting
  • The camera boots MUCH faster with the new card in it
  • I have no idea what could cause that

Anyway, I take it all back, XD cards do work with the linux acer aspire ones – and now I’m all set for being able to upload photos from my trip to ZendCon next week.

11 thoughts on “Acer Aspire One and an XD Card

  1. Do the cards have any markings on them showing which type they are (eg H, M, or M+)? It might be that Acer Aspire One doesn’t like particular types of xD card.

  2. Rob: Now that *is* interesting. The old card is a H and the new one an M … what’s the difference?

    Simon: Never fear, there will be photos – dumped onto my flickr account even if I don’t manage any words to go with them :)

    • I don’t know much about the differences – I just knew there were different types! I think H have a faster data rate than M, and H are meant to be better for video (or more to the point you may have issues doing video with M). I don’t know what compatibility issues there may be, but this sounds like it could be the significant difference. If you find the M is too slow it might be worth trying the M+ (I think this is the same as M, but faster).

  3. Rob: Well that is more than I expected to ever know about the differences :) I will have to see how the video works with the new card, its something I do sometimes use on this camera – for the crochet tutorials for example.

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