I have been trying to load some photos from my laptop onto a digital photo frame. After hours of choosing and preparing an album using Photoshop Elements 7, including tagging the photos and choosing appropriate music, I found no way to correctly save this “work of art” to the “Pictures” folder on the computer. The folder only showed the photos themselves, without any of the gimmicks or additional effects (such as music). The order of the photos was also mixed-up very erratically. When I attempted to save the photos (around 1000 files) to a 2GB SD memory card, which can be connected to the digital photo frame, a message appeared saying “Error 80070052. Unable to save” and some of the photos were not saved onto the memory card. Assuming that the memory card may have insufficient space to store all of the photos, I subsequently divided the 1000 photos into 5 sections to transfer them onto the card in stages. However, the same error always appears despite there being 1.33 GB of free space on the card. In light of this information, there are two questions which arise. First, how can I transfer the photos from the Pictures folder onto the SD memory card without the error. Second, is it possible to transfer and save to the pictures from Photoshop Elements 7 in the exact way they were prepared (e.g. music, tagging, etc)? The computer is running Windows Vista Home Premium.

We will first deal with the question concerning why you are unable to copy the photos onto the memory card and instead the error 80070052 appears. This is quite a common error message which indicates that the operating system (in this case, Windows Vista) is unable to create a file or folder on the storage device. Unfortunately the error code is not more specific about the exact reason for this error, so we will have to do some detective work to track down the problem. First, it is possible that somehow the memory card has become corrupted. In this case the best option is to attempt a reformat of the memory card. Make sure that there is no data on the memory card that you wish to keep, as the reformatting process will result in all data on the memory card being wiped. In other words, if you have photos copied onto the memory card make sure that you have the original copies of those files on your computer itself. Assuming that you have checked and all data on the memory card can be deleted, go to the “Start” menu > “Computer”. In the Computer window that appears you should see a listing of all drives connected to the computer. Locate the item representing your memory card. It would be worthwhile double-checking that this is your memory card, since accidentally reformatting the wrong drive would not be the best idea, so double-click on the item which you believe represents the memory card to double-check the contents of the drive. Assuming that this is the correct drive go back to the main Computer window listing all of the drives and then right-click on the memory card drive and select “Format”. In the Format window that appears you should be able to accept all of the default options, although make sure that “Quick Format” is disabled. As a side note, we would normally use a quick format since that is significantly faster than a normal format, however in this case there could actually be something wrong with the memory card that a quick format may not resolve, thus the need to do a normal format. When you are ready to commence click the “Start” button and the format process will commence. Once it has finished you can close those windows and then attempt to copy the photos across to the memory card.

Should the problem continue after reformatting the memory card we need to turn our attention to the file system format being used on the memory card. However, before we discuss the memory card’s file system we need to have some background knowledge. All data storage devices have a file system which dictates the rules and regulations for how data is stored and organised. You can almost think of the file system as a database of files on the computer, allowing the operating system of the computer to access and manipulate the files in an efficient manner. Microsoft Windows has three main types of file systems: FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS. FAT stands for File Allocation Table and is one of the older file system formats used by Windows, although it is still widely used for file system storage on devices such as digital cameras and photo frames. FAT16 is a very old file system used back in the DOS, Windows 3.1 and first release of Windows 95. This file system has quite a few limitations, including limiting the number of files in the root directory of a FAT16 formatted drive (usually around 512 files, although the exact number is determined when the drive is formatted) together with file name limitations. FAT32 was released in Windows 95 OSR2 and addressed quite a few of the shortcomings inherent with FAT16, although it still has some limitations including a maximum individual file size of 4 gigabytes. The file system used in all recent Windows operating systems is NTFS. The New Technology File System has many more advantages over the FAT-family of file systems, including support for access control lists and security (a more complete summary of the features of NTFS can be found on en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS).

The reason that it was important to discuss the different file systems is that we need to make sure that the memory card for your digital photo frame has been formatted into the correct file system format. However, there is one sticking point that we must consider. Not all devices support all file systems. For example, NTFS is a proprietary Microsoft file system which is generally only used in Microsoft-based operating systems. While other operating systems may offer support for reading (and perhaps even writing) NTFS volumes, such as Mac OS providing the functionality to read NTFS volumes, this requires a lot of work on the part of the developer since the internal implementation details of NTFS are not released. Therefore, it is a fair assumption that the photo frame would not support this file format. Most likely, the photo frame supports a FAT-based file system. I imagine that the memory card is currently formatted in a FAT-based file system, so we need to check whether this is FAT16 or FAT32. Go back to the “Start” menu > “Computer” then right-click on the memory card and select “Properties”. In the Properties window that appears, click the “General” tab. Near the top of the window you should see “File system” stating the file system of the drive. If this is listed as FAT16 then this would explain the problem being encountered, as you are probably hitting the limit of the number of files that can be copied onto the root directory of the memory card. In this case the only way to get around this limitation is to reformat the memory card to FAT32. Before doing so, check the manual which came with the photo frame to see whether the photo frame supports the FAT32 file system. Assuming that it does, repeat the previous procedure for formatting the memory card but in the Format window for the “File system” select “NTFS” and you can also tick “Quick Format”. Once the format has completed you should be able to copy the photos to the memory card without the error.

However, in the situation that the photo frame only supports FAT16 and not FAT32 then your only solution is to load fewer files onto the memory card or split-up the photos into sub-folders on the memory card. However, you should check whether the photo frame supports reading files out of sub-folders, since it may require all files to be in the root folder of the memory card.

However, if the memory card is formatted to FAT32 (and presumably the photo frame supports this file format) then this does not explain why you are unable to copy all of the photos to the card since FAT32 does not suffer the same file number limitation as FAT16. Therefore, the inability to copy all the photos in this situation potentially indicates a problem with the memory card itself, so we should check the memory card for errors. Go back to the “Start” menu > “Computer” and right-click on the memory card and select “Properties”. In the Properties window that appears, click the “Tools” tab. Under the “Error-checking” heading, click the “Check now” button. In the “Check Disk” window that appears, tick “Automatically fix file system errors” and “Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors” then click “Start”. This process may take a while, particularly because we are scanning for bad sectors. Once the process has completed, try copying the files across again to check whether this fixed the problem.

Should the problem persist then it is possible that the problem is not related to the memory card but rather is a Windows problem. The only way to definitively test this theory is to obtain another memory card and try the same procedure. If the exact same problem occurs, then it is likely the problem is related to Windows, in which case you will need to contact me again for further advice. Conversely, if the problem does not occur then it seems the issue is a faulty memory card (at which point there isn’t much you can do except use a different memory card).

Moving onto your second question about transferring the photos from Photoshop Elements 7, unfortunately it is likely not possible to save the photos from Photoshop Elements with the extras that you have placed onto each photo. The file format of your photos is likely to be a JPEG file which does not have the capacity to support advanced features such as music. If you were to simply edit the photo itself (e.g. doing things such as red-eye reduction) then you could save those changes since they are changes to the existing image itself, so this is no different to the photo which originally came off the digital camera, since the image data within the photo has just been modified. However, if you add additional effects through Photoshop Elements then they are likely to only be viewable through Photoshop Elements. In any case, the photo frame would also not support such advanced features so the only benefit in creating such effects will be to view the photos on the computer itself.