Card reader compatibility

In pursuing some deleted pictures on a 256MB SD card I noticed a possibly
important piece of information.

The formatting for these card is dependant on the operating system used.
When I formatted my SD card with a Lexar JumpDrive (USB i/f) it created
sectors of 4096 bytes each.
When I formatted the same SD card in any of my cameras or PDA they created
sectors 16,384bytes each.

The formats appear to be compatible and readable back and forth but when I
exceeded the 128MB of usage on the card formatted by the Jumpdrive/desktop
it bombed in my camera and I had to reformat it.

I have not repeated these tests to prove this theory but it is just possible
these miniature devices cannot handle that quantity of sectors. The 32K
sectors may be a problem for many devices.

I have notice a few complaints regarding cards crashing in this newsgroup
when switching them around devices.

Moral: If you are going to take pictures with your memory card, format it in
that camera first. The same goes for your PDA and USB card reader/writer.
Format in the device you will write to the card with.

I am not sure if reading in a foreign device " will be a problem but at
least it will only be a read error and you should not lose all your
data/pics.