I've tried formatting a new san disk 4gb card and still reads "unable to use card" what do i do?
You haven't told us what kind of camera it is, but I can guess at the problem. There are two possibilities.
1. Your camera will only read SD cards, not SDHC cards. You've just bought a new memory card, not noticing that it was SDHC. The new cards don't work in your camera, not because they or the camera are broken, but because they're not compatible.
Cards up to 2Gb are generally SD. Cards over 8Gb have to be SDHC. 4Gb cards can be either SD or SDHC, but are almost always SDHC because they're cheaper. (I would avoid the rare, expensive, and problematic 4Gb SD cards.)
Your solution is to go find a 2Gb card, and be extra sure that it doesn't say "SDHC" on it. (If it does, it probably means that they made a 4Gb card, but there were some error locations and so they disabled half of it and packaged it as a cheap-brand 2Gb.)
2. You formatted the card NTFS, whereas the camera needs FAT32. You
can format the card using Windows, but there is a complication:
Windows defaults to "NTFS" when formatting, but memory cards normally
use FAT32. Before you attempted this, you should have connect the card, and checked the
'properties' on the drive that appears. It probably said "FAT32".
In this case, you could have gone ahead and formatted the card, but be sure that
you chose "FAT32" from the drop-down list. If you format it NTFS, your camera won't be able to read it!
In this case your solution would be to format the card again, but using the FAT32 format.
You might find it useful to check your camera on dpreview (dot) com, and see if the memory card type is shown as just SD or SD/SDHC.
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