SD Card Failure

[dennersten]

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For the first time ever i got a memory card failure. I have had digital cameras 15 years and of course it happened on the worst possible day. It will cost me 200 kilometers and next saturday. To do all pictures again.

 

So my questions are:

 

* How common is this?

* Could it be a camera problem?

* How do you guys deal with it?

* How could i prevent it in the future?

 

the card have been used 6 months. Taken out and in from the camera approx twice a week.

 

With the M8 i used the same card for three years without any problems.

The card is a Lexar 8 GB, Bad quality?

[segedi]

I've never had a card failure from my lexar CF cards. No experience with the SD cards though.

 

But... i still always carry two cards with me to ensure I get the photos!

 

Think of your misfortune as a possible opportunity. The next set you take might be even better; better light, better focus etc.

 

Best,

Kevin

[Double Negative]

Knock on wood... But I haven't had a single failure of a MicroDrive, CF cards or SD cards since I've started using them ten years ago - numbering about a twenty, total. They're all SanDisk or Lexar (aside from the 1GB IBM MicroDrive).

[dennersten]

Judging of the silence in this thread i guess i am alone in misfortune?

 

And thanks I will do better pictures next weekend

[Mark_L]

Hi,

 

had a Sandisk SD card failure, all pictures are gone from my holiday, I took my laptop with me to take back ups in the evening so I only lost those of the last day. I do not know the reason, it works fine now, with it being unintentional empty I formatted the card in the camera to be sure. No reason I can think of, except that during the back ups read failures came up, but I considered it to be because of windows:mad: never have this on the apple.

[Baptiste]

I got a sd card failure 10 days ago, with a new card, Ultra II 16 Go Sandisk (I have been using another one for ~6 months, with no issue until now). It happened on a sequence of shots, so that I immediately saw that I had an issue. It happened as well with compressed RAW. The ~6 pics taken were like stripped with black lines.

 

I stopped using the card, came to the other one. Back home, I transfered the pics on my laptop (and they were still stripped - I had hoped that the preview only was failing). Then, I formatted the card in the M9, which took me several minutes (I fairly considered shutting down the camera, believing that the format was itself failing... But it finally came to an end). Until then, I have no error. I even made a stress test, trying to trick the camera: taking several frames with preview, jumping from 1 mode to the other, shutting down the camera while writing and then plugging it on again, trying to make frames (actually when shutting down and plugging on again during save process, the camera remains frozen until end of save). Got no trouble...

 

I must mention as well that the first time formatting this card, I got an early failure (I think that the first frame as well jumed or so), but as I went quickly through it, I just forgot about this event. At the end, I'm currently using the card with caution, being not so confident in it. I regularly check and I will be more than cautious with it during the coming holydays at la Réunion.

 

I still find the camera much more sensitive than the CaNikon & so. I don't get why the soft seems so "faulty"...

[jaapv]

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Hi,

 

had a Sandisk SD card failure, all pictures are gone from my holiday, I took my laptop with me to take back ups in the evening so I only lost those of the last day. I do not know the reason, it works fine now, with it being unintentional empty I formatted the card in the camera to be sure. No reason I can think of, except that during the back ups read failures came up, but I considered it to be because of windows:mad: never have this on the apple.

Even a formatted card has a chance of being recovered using rescue pro.

[Jamie Roberts]

Jaap is right--you can usually recover images from a card.

 

Since the latest firmware update I've had no card problems whatsoever.

 

In the past, I've had CF failures from Canon pro series cameras (1d2 and 1ds2), the 5d, and from from my Nikon D3. The D3 also insists on giving a random write error with the Nikkor 85 1.4 attached and the latest firmware. I have to pull the battery and the camera starts renumbering files, which is not good at a wedding, let me tell you

 

Before the M9 firmware update, I had some card write problems with Hoodman cards. Panasonic class 10 SDHC and Extreme 3 Sandisk cards have always been fine.

 

But I've had card failures with all kinds of cameras and CF and SD cards.

 

However, I've also always been able to recover images, even from a scrambled card. You just need the right software and you need to isolate the card problem if you can.

 

So don't do a low-level format if you have a problem. Only format in-camera, not on a computer. Get some rescue software, it's pretty cheap (or free with Sandisk cards). I use something called "Card Recovery" and it was $20 or less... it works well enough.

 

Don't use mega-huge cards, because you risk losing all your shots at once (I cap myself at 4GB with the M9, to tell you the truth). Yes, shooting multiple cards is a pain, but it gives me some peace of mind knowing they won't all fail, and SD cards are small, so I also carry enough to switch to a different card the first indication of a problem... Any lock or write issue and I use a different card. I'll figure out whether the card is shot or not later.

[Double Negative]

J...Don't use mega-huge cards, because you risk losing all your shots at once (I cap myself at 4GB with the M9, to tell you the truth)....

 

I do the same thing. Something about "putting all your eggs in one basket."

 

With the M8 I used 4GB cards. For the M9, I just picked up a gaggle of 8GB cards. I thought about 16GB to shoot uncompressed DNGs, but to heck with it. Having a card that holds more shots than you can squeeze out of a single battery is kind of a waste too, IMO. Might as well change both together and spread your images across multiple cards for safety.

[esquire53]

I wonder with all these problems with the cards ....

 

I guess you check the pictures you took on the camera, once in a while ?

 

If there are no problems with a review before you take the card out of the M, it could be the serial port of the computer or user static.

 

I'm not a fan of the serial cable, but maybe it's better to download via the cable, if in doubt.

 

Static discharge should also be considered, as well as some anti static bags for temorary storage, but be careful, metallised film can cause problems as well, so a good isolation card protection and inside a anti static bag should be used.

[mgreernz]

Having been around digital since about '96 and, touch wood, I've only experienced two card failures - both CF. I thoroughly agree with Jaap - almost always, good recovery software will be able to rebuild the directory sufficient to redeem all or at least some of the files. In the meantime, don't attempt reformatting of the card. Put it to one side until you have the opportunity to use the software on it

 

But what really impressed me, was the last failure I had. We had just completed 10 days across Arizona and a 16GB Lexar Pro card 80% full suddenly called it quits. It turned out that Lexar unconditionally guarantee their pro series cards. I sent it off to Lexar in the US and within a week, free of charge, I received a CD with all the photo files fully recovered plus a new replacement Lexar Pro card. I was very impressed.

[Jamie Roberts]

{snipped} I sent it off to Lexar in the US and within a week, free of charge, I received a CD with all the photo files fully recovered plus a new replacement Lexar Pro card. I was very impressed.

 

Yeah--Lexar learned their lessons a few years ago when they produced CF card that was incompatible with Canon's 1 series pro cameras I remember getting a full rebate for my cards, which was impressive.

[jan_brittenson]

Knock on wood... But I haven't had a single failure of a MicroDrive, CF cards or SD cards since I've started using them ten years ago - numbering about a twenty, total. They're all SanDisk or Lexar (aside from the 1GB IBM MicroDrive).

I've never had a card fail, but I've had corruption on microdrives due to their power requirements during spin up. Especially the 340MB ones, the 1GB (second gen) worked much better.

 

Very early versions of the Canon 1D also suffered from sporadic image corruption, but I don't remember if it mattered what card was used.

[al-fresco]

I take about 6000 images a year. I've always used the cheapest SD or CF cards I could find - mainly but not exclusively lower end SanDisk. I keep a spare of each type in my camera bag, habitually format cards after use and never had a failure.