I bought a N800 yesterday, but to my dissappointment, it won't accept any of my 8GB SDHC cards - not even my 4GB one. I even bought a new Sandisc for use with this and it won't read it - the tablet behaves as if there's no card in it.
On top of that, it rendered a Transcend 8GB card I used on it useless. Not even my PC couldn't fix it.
I already updated it's firmware to the latest version, but still no luck.
Is there something more I should have done, or with my great luck I just picked a defective unit?
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

PS. Something i forgot to mention is that the tablet won't shut down when a memory card is in. The blue light blinks and although the screen is black, the backlight is on. When I remove the card, it goes off without problems.

Mine has diablo and works okay with an 8GB one.
For your dead SD try http://www.sdcard.org/consumers/formatter/ if it doesn't work at first, tweak the settings.
Try formatting them in the N800, so they comply with the format.
Other than that, I'm lost, but maybe a more advanced user can help.
Good Luck, And Welcome

You could try reformatting manually. Use cfdisk to delete the current partitions, then create new partitions and format them (fat16 for sd, fat32 for sdhc). After that you use "mkdosfs" to create the file system.

Thanks for that, but the only thing that worked was formatting it in my Pentax K20D. No PC could read it (3 different PCs - 5 different card readers), not even my data tank could read it.
Anyway, the problem is not in possibly wasting a card, but in not being able to make one work in my tablet. I can't format one in my N800 because it doesn't seem to know there is one inserted.

My N800 has no issues using a Crucial Class6 SDHC 8gb card. Maybe you got a bad SDHC card? I've found that not all SDHC cards are created equal.

My N800 also has no issues with SDHC's I have an 8gb internal and a 16gb external.

Do you have a friend with an N800? Try the cards in his...

Was the N800 new or used? The issue might be with the tablet...I hope not... You didn't say if you tried a regular SD card...

Good luck!

Clearly, it seems his N800 has technical problems, possibly linked to the SD card reading circuit. Physical damage to the N800 might be the problem here.

He's tried both SD & SDHC. He tried a Sandisk - I've used those to great effect. never had one die on me. No joy for him. I presently have two 16GB SDHCs in my N800 & I don't even have the latest incarnation of our OS.

Perhaps reinstalling the OS from scratch might at least eliminate beyond reasonable doubt the possibility that the OS itself is at fault.

Methinks the N800 has physical issues. i.e. Previous ham fisted owner forcing an SD card in the wrong way around or worse still, the wrong card. There's also the chance all these SDs & SDHCs were acquired via a dubious ebay seller & are faulty.

Physically inspect BOTH slot connectiions for possible damage if you can.

Hope this helps.


Thunderstorm.

aye... All good points, Thunderstorm.

I do a lot of photography and i have 9 SDHC cards, 6 of them are 8GB, 1 is 4GB and the remaining 2 are 2GB. Of them, my N800 reads only one of the two 2GB cards and not a single one of the remaining 8 (tried both slots). It also reads the ridiculously cheap 128 MB card that came with the device. All of my cards are branded (Sandisk, Kingston and Transcend), the cheapest one must be the 2GB card it actually reads - it's a PNY that was bundled as a gift with a graphics card I bought two years ago (an Nvidia Quadro).
Although I like the device too much, in fact all my posts are written on it, I don't trust it anymore. I guess I'll be bringing back to the shop after all.
Thanks to all people who posted here trying to help me.
Take care ;-)

I have had cards fail, but few. Generally I format them rather than just delete items from them. I back up my files in case they do fail.