Originally posted by Belushi As you can read in my post here
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/120-general-technical-troubleshooting/253...not-found.html
it was exactly vice versa for my K-500!
Card used: Older 1GB Transcend
Formatting the SD-card in the cam: Update not recognized (as if not there)
Formatting the SD-card with my cardreader under WinXP ("FAT", no quick-format, volume label "K-500"): Worked like a charm!
Yes, strange, I know. But Ricoh did not reply to my support request and so I just gave it a try.
Maybe there was a firmware bug in V1.0 (K-500) that did not allow updating the firmware?? Don't know.
But NOT formatting the card in the cam was the solution for me!
Since you decided to quote me, I didn't say it wouldn't work I said it was not recommended. Use of the OS format eventually may cause problems using your card with your camera. SD Formatter is specifically designed to do either quick or low level formats on SD cards to clean up the sectors and mark any bad ones without harm. Using SD Formatter and the cameras formatter, unlike the OS format, does not destroy the partition that is initially created and read by the camera. The camera creates that partition to keep initial files it needs unloading and reloading within one area of the card and not be scattered throughout the card. Once that partition is destroyed those files are allowed to scatter all over the card as the camera's processor does not read and put everything back on the card in a nice neat order. What eventually happens is over a period of time ones camera will start reading the card slower looking for files it needs, or not be able to read them and one gets the dreaded card read error or format card error. BTW continued use of delete over a period of time can cause the same errors due to build up of portions of data that it does not remove from sectors within the card and which the cameras formatting doesn't remove either. This can be corrected once it happens by doing a low level format on the SD card. So I suggest keeping that 1GB card to do your updates but I recommend not using the OS formatting for your cards you use for your photos.
If you would like to use the SD formatter in the future here is the link;
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/
Last edited by Oldbayrunner; 03-15-2014 at 08:45 AM.