Option S4i > 512MB SD card Possible?

No, it's a hardware issue. Your 8GB card is an SDHC card (the HC stands for High Capacity), but the card reader in your machine is clearly only compatible with the older type SD cards. SDHC devices will accept SD cards, but devices designed solely for SD cards cannot read or format SDHC cards.

There is no firmware update for this, your only fix is to buy an external reader compatible with SDHC cards for connection via a USB socket. Most new readers are fully SDHC compliant, but check the specs for shelling out your hard-earned...

Have you tried formatting the card in the camera first?

This is because the Coolpix 2100 and 31000 models cannot handle a card of that large a capacity. As it's only a 2MP camera anyway it doesn't need it.

The Coolpix 2100/3100 will usually accept up to a 512MB CF card, and 1GB Lexar CF cards up to and including the 24x WA write accelerated (although write acceleration itself offers no benefits on this camera). With Sandisk only a plain old and now obsolete SDFB allows a 1GB card to be used and the regular Sandisk Ultra (not Ultra II or later) will only work up to 512MB.

The camera was discontinued long before these much larger CF cards were released and Nikon no longer actively support the product so no firmware updates will be available. The hardware wouldn't support such cards anyway.

Compatibility chart for CF cards address below:-

http://nikoneurope-en.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/26030/c/241/r_id/127673

This is because the Coolpix 2100 and 31000 models cannot handle a card of that large a capacity. As it's only a 2MP camera anyway it doesn't need it.

The Coolpix 2100/3100 will usually accept up to a 512MB CF card, and 1GB Lexar CF cards up to and including the 24x WA write accelerated (although write acceleration itself offers no benefits on this camera). With Sandisk only a plain old and now obsolete SDFB allows a 1GB card to be used and the regular Sandisk Ultra (not Ultra II or later) will only work up to 512MB.

The camera was discontinued long before these much larger CF cards were released and Nikon no longer actively support the product so no firmware updates will be available. The hardware wouldn't support such cards anyway.

It will not work with any "sdhc"

Took it to Jessops by the process of elimination "Integral reader faulty."
What a waste of many hours !

Open your computer and read it off the card

As far as I know the reading speed is always the same. I don’t believe that some other cards will be much faster read.

They have not had a good reputation for reliability here, you might want to do a search on SanDisk. The consenses on SD cards seems to be Panasonc, SimpleTech & Lexar (32x best), in that order. Some (Pixy) have had good luck with th Ultra II, but several others have had SanDisks of all kinds fail.

> The Panasonic 256MB SD card is twice as fast as the cheap SanDisk > 256MB I bought from Costco for $65. Saving the 5-shot burst at > 4MP, the Panasonic card takes only 2-3 seconds to save, whereas the > SanDisk card takes 5-6 seconds. Although the SanDisk works just > fine in video mode - I was able to fill the card with video. The > extra speed is also very noticeable on the Panasonic SD through my > 8-in-1 SanDisk USB2 reader on WinXP copying the files to my hard > disk. > > Has anyone tried SanDisk's "ultra" or other performance versions? > Any reason why the Panasonic is so much faster? the panasonic SD is rated at 10Mb/sec. ditto for the Sandisk Ultra II. I've got both versions of the Sandisk. the regular Sandisk is only rated at 2 Mb/sec which explains the slow save speed. the Sandisk Ultra II is much faster compared to the regular Sandisk.