So I'd been playing Final Fantasy IX for the past couple of months. During the Christmas holidays, I'd gotten all the way to Disc 3 pretty quickly. Once Christmas came, and I got Galaxy among other games, it went by the wayside, but I made sure to pack it all up when I returned to school in January. Once my new games were done, I decided to break out FFIX again and finish it. Only I couldn't find my memory card. It baffled me to be sure because I had made the trip with it between home and school constantly over nearly four years with no problem whatsoever. But after turning my room upside down and even going home to check there, I finally had to conclude that my memory card was MIA permanently, which made me really sad because I'd had it for six years or so, and it had end of game files for nearly every Final Fantasy game.
So of course my problem lay in finding a replacement. Video game stores don't carry PlayStation memory cards anymore, not even used, so I had to go to eBay. I quickly won a brand-new Sony brand memory card, receiving it only a few days after winning the auction. That weekend, I celebrated by having the longest FFIX marathon I've ever had before. In one day, I nearly made it through the entire first disc. An odd thing happened, though. The first time I tried to save, it said my card was unformatted and asked me if I wanted to format it. Not having had a new memory card in over half a decade, this prompt was unfamiliar to me, but I said yes. After waiting a few seconds, it told me the formatting failed, but it let my save my game anyway. I took a break and came back later that night, only when I tried to retrieve my data, it claimed there was no FFIX data! I was about to have a fit, but after a few tries, it suddenly retrieved my data no problem, and I continued on.
The next day, however, the same thing happened, only I never could get my data to come back. I assumed the lack of formatting thing is the culprit and have tried repeatedly to get the damn thing formatted. I have tried three different PS2s, but it always fails. I've gotten in touch with the seller to try and get it replaced, but I am curious, especially if it happens again in the future: has anybody else had something like this happen? Is anybody more familiar with the PlayStation memory card system who can tell me what exactly this is all about and why it even needs to be formatted in the first place? I'd really appreciate it if somebody could give me some kind of answer or even speculation. It may help heal my wounds after having lost eight hours of saved game data.
Sorry that was so long (and my post at the PlayStation boards wasn't like this at all), but since you all know me here, I figured you could put up with my story. ^_^