SD Cards Failure rates and experiences

[ozziworld]

I personally have never had an SD Card failure but I always have to deal with the anxiety that it will happen sooner than later.

Was wondering what others' experience with this is? What are the preferred brands and why?

How do you generally maintain them? Storage? Formatting? etc.

I have been wanting to buy the 8GB SD Cards that are now reasonably priced but feel that it would be a lot of data / photos to lose if it should fail when full of data.

I currently use 1gb and 2gb SD cards alternately.

Any input on this matter will be highly appreciated.

 

[divengolf]

I've had a couple SD cards fail over the past two years, but never lost photos. First the cards that failed were "off-brands", not the major players. Not sure if that's meaningful or just a coincidence. Many times the major brands don't make their own cards.

The approach that I've always taken is to carry multiple small cards, 1-2GB each and swap them out frequently. For instance on a liveaboard, I'll change cards every 2-3 dives and immediately backup the files to a stick. If I get photos that I especially like, I'll back them up immediately after the dive. I guess that I'm paranoid about doing BUs. I carry two 8 GB USB sticks and have never come close to filling them unless I shoot a lot of video. I shoot with a Nikon P5100, so I'm in jpeg, not raw. Smaller files.

I erase everything on them before a trip and reformat them. I've been told that reformating them helps maintain their "integrity", whatever than means.

just my 2psi.

 

[Nemrod]

Question, if you had one of those SD cards with the e-link built in and a small eight or nine inch screen "internet" PC such as at Wall Mart for under 300 dollars couldn't you download the photos without removing the card to the PC and store them on the hard drive?

Eye-Fi How it works

N

 

[hammerhead man]

I've had one card fail after I took too many pics that the card could hold. Now I buy 4GB cards and when I get to within 100 megs of filling it, I change it out. However, 4GB holds hundreds of pics and I don't need more than 2 or 3 of them for a week of diving. There are small hard drives that you can take and download pics at the end of each day. I've thought of getting one of those. The problem with a notebook pc is that it takes up space and space is at a premium on the airlines these days.

Regards,

Bill

 

[siikik]

Out of all the cards (of differing formats) I have used, the only one to fail on me has been a CF type. Interestingly enough, I've had the same brand in SD and haven't had any trouble out of it. Even though I've only had one failure in many many years, I tend to stick with Kingston, (even their economy line,) simply because they have a lifetime warranty... not that a warranty will do any good when you're frantically trying to retrieve your pictures.

If it's for camera use, I gladly spend a few minutes running the card through the wringer, filling it up, erasing it, performing DOD wipes, etc. to make sure it won't fail immediately. Sometimes I use them as memory sticks for a while before committing them to photography. As a general rule, I erase the card after a session... yes, it might mean that some parts of the matrix gets used more than others (leaning to possible failure of the often used portions) but so far it's served me well. If you're worried about it, rotate the cards out every so often... technology has changed so much recently I still have 2gb cards still in the package that I never got the chance to rotate. I'm currently using two MicroSDHC cards (with the adapter) for both camera applications and as a memory stick.

Contrary to what I just said, I only have one 8gb CF card for my Canon and it has served me well for nearly two years.... rarely have I used the others cards.

Final thoughts, don't worry so much about speed. The one and only card I had fail was supposedly a high-speed card. Even as a techically minded person, I'd have a hard time identifying a memory card as the bottleneck when comparing a "high speed" and "normal speed" cards. To me, transfer speed is far more evident if you're reading the card directly outside of the camera, so I don't even bother looking at the transfer rates any more... besides, if I were worried about transfer rates of a card, I would have a much better camera than my XTi.


Hope this helps...


Ken

 

[alcina]

+1 for not worrying too much about it.

I haven't had any of my SD cards fail and I have pretty much the whole range from the totally el cheapos to the SanDisk Ultra IIIs. I have 512 to 4GB and I'd get an 8GB in a heartbeat if I used those cameras that way. In camera there isn't much of a difference in speed that I've noticed.

Backups, no matter what media you are talking about, are essential if you have something you don't want to lose.

 

[Katamuki]

I bought my last two Sandisk cards, one 2 and one 4, two years ago. Since then I have shot around 20,000 photos and both cards are going strong.

 

[bleeb]

I've had one card fail after I took too many pics that the card could hold. Now I buy 4GB cards and when I get to within 100 megs of filling it, I change it out.

Would you mind describing any more details about how it failed? On the surface, this sounds more likely to be a software bug rather than a physical problem with the card, either in the camera or in the PC if you were using one for downloads. This might conceivably have been fixed with an upgrade of the camera's firmware. If it hasn't, practically speaking I don't suppose it matters whether it's hardware or software since as you observed, it's not hard to get another card.

 

[AussieByron]

I am running 16gb cards which give me 725 shots in my D90 with fine large JPG and RAW. The cost of cards these days (16gb less than $50) why wouldn't you use them.

As for failures. The only cards I had that failed were the ones I bought off ebay some years ago. Just fake cards which didnt work.

I format my cards everytime before I dive and transfer them onto my laptop as soon as I can. I am not keen on shooting a whole days worth of shots to have something go wrong on the last dive to wipe the rest of the days work.

Regards Mark

 

[Mariozi]

I have used SDs for 7 years now.
No fails, most of my cards were Sandisk.
Now I bought a CF camera... D300 still using same brand.