Trouble with new SanDisk Ultra 16gb cards

[meino]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I'm just wandering if someone else has encountered the same issues I had with 2 new Sandisk Ultra 16Gb cards that I bought this summer.

 

When I got my M9 in nov 2009, I bought by amazon.de 6 Sandisk Ultra 16Gb cards, these have until now performed flawless. For a long trip, I decided this summer to get some additional cards, so I ordered agin with amazon.de 2 Sandisk Ultra 16Gb cards. When received these new cards had a different label then the 6 older ones, but all specs where the same. I have attached a picture of the cards, the left one is the older one (from 2009) and the right one is from the 2 of this summer.

 

During the trip, I had two occasions when the cards "failed". The first one happened when I had deleted some images, and continued taking pictures, suddenly the M9 froze whiule the red card activity led kept blinking. I had to solve it by removing the battery. Sometime later I discovered that it had lost a number of images, and the deleted images where back again. So I suspected a corrupt card, I locked and stopped using it. The plan was to try to use some recovery programs at home. (At home, this was not really necessary, becaus I could read the card on the computer). I continued using the other cards, until a few weeks later I started using the second card of the new lot. And again strange things happened, again a non responsive M9 with a continues blinking led and a "corrupt card. (again at home on the computer everything was on the card. However in both situation I had on the previous evening been busy with editing, so I had these cards removed from the M9 and later reinserted. So I was not sure if maybe the fact that the cards were removed while the camera is in sleep mode, was the culprit.

 

At home after getting the images from these 2 cards I ran again h2testw.exe (a flashcard test and verification program), but that gave no errors.

 

So I thought OK, user error and forgot it. However, this week I had again very strange problems. I had taken some 20 pictures during a meeting, but when I took the next day another picture and replayed it, the M9 had suddenly lost all the other 20 pictures and had restarted with picture 1. Luckely it happened at home, so on the computer all picture showed up. Ok then I tried to do a quick format, after 30 minutes I had to shutdown the M9 with the battery. After a reformat on the computer, I could reuse the card again.

 

This could be a faulty card, however both cards that I bought this summer have given the same problems in the M9, while on the computer I still could read the contents.

Although the specs are the same, I began to get the feeling that these 2 cards are realy different the the older 6, Why because I had the feeling that they were slower. Which turned uo to be true. I ran some performance tests using h2testw.exe and I timed the writing of a 36Mb dng on the M9 with the following results:

 

Sandisk 16Gb Ultra (2009) backside print: BL0919714079G MADE IN CHINA

write speed 9.3 Mbyte/s

read speed 16 Mbyte/s

Time to write a 36Mb dng on the M9 (firmware 1.138), 5s

 

Sandisk 16Gb Ultra (2010) backside print: BL1018216014G MADE IN CHINA

write speed 3.95Mbyte/s

read speed 13.2Mbyte/s

Time to write a 36Mb dng, 10s

 

Out of curiosity I did also the same test on a Sandisk 4Gb ExtremeIII card, that gave the following results

write speed 13.2Mbyte/s

read speed 16.7Mbyte/s

Time to write a 36MB dng, 3-4s

 

My feeling is, that Sandisk has replaced the original Ultra by a new one which is different and slower, but also that the M9 has a compatibility issue with this specific version of the Ultra 16Gb card.

I have seen lately some reports here on the LUF about users having trouble with Sandisk cards and I was wondering if this is with the same version where I had these problems with.

 

regards

Meino de Graaf

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[gjames9142]

I think you have answered your own question. I never go above 8 G -- supersticious about having all my eggs in one basket, so to speak. Why the new cards are slower is something you may not be able to figure out, but I would tend to stick with what works. Geoffrey James

[jaapv]

I have three and never noticed anything amiss.

[BillCB]

I strongly suspect you have counterfeit Sandisk cards. I would go to Sandisk's website and check the numbers against their charts.

 

There are also several sites on the Web that will tell you the tiny differences between the real cards and false ones. You will need a magnifying glass!

 

I had bought a couple from a dealer in NY - via eBay - and they were frauds. The dealer refunded my money when I confronted him with the much lower speeds of the imitations.

 

Bill

[AlanJW]

If you bought directly from Amazon they are pretty good about returns and you have nothing to lose by asking. If it was a merchant going through Amazon, Amazon will also help. It sounds to me like defective, or more likely, counterfeit. I had some business dealings with Sandisk a few years ago and they were extremely concerned about the volume of counterfeits they face.

[scott kirkpatrick]

My 16 GB Ultras have never given me trouble, and I do go through them fairly fast. I buy 16 GB since that is currently the point at which the cost per GB is minimum. My cards, some purchased within the past few months, look like the examples on the left in the OP, with "SanDisk Ultra" appearing in yellow ink at the top.

 

I bought them through one of the Amazon.com sellers. There are usually several at a given time, so in tracking this down, it will be important to recall the details of which seller the suspicious cards were purchased from.

 

scott

[meino]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I have been thinking of counterfeit cards also. But I have not yet been able to verify this. All cards (the first 6 and the last 2) were bought directly with amazon.de, so not from one of it's resellers.

What puzzles me is that on the Sandisk side you can download images of real Sandisk cards, for the 16Gb ultra it shows only the image which matches the left on (the older card) However the image of the new 64 sdcx card matches with the 2 new 16Gb card I have. Further, on all the amazon sites (.com, .de, .co.uk) when you look for sandisk ultra 16Gb, the new card is shown, and I can't believe that amazon is selling deliberate counterfeits.

 

regards

Meino de

[daniel buck]

During the trip, I had two occasions when the cards "failed". The first one happened when I had deleted some images, and continued taking pictures, suddenly the M9 froze whiule the red card activity led kept blinking. I had to solve it by removing the battery.

 

I've had this happen on a regular 4gb Sandisk card (a few years old). It seems that the M9 is VERY very picky about the cards that you use. I don't know why this is, every other digital camera I've had will do just fine with any card you throw at it, even if it's been formatted by something else first. But with the M9, if you find a card that works for you, don't stray from it, haha!

 

I'm waiting on a Sandisk Extreem3 right now, since I couldn't find one locally. I rolled the dice on a 16gb Kingston "ultimate X" class 10 (about $40 or so) that I found locally in a store, just so I could stop using that old sandisk, and so far the Kingston it seems to be doing just fine. It's silly how picky the M9 is with cards and formatting. I've never had a camera that would go belly up like this with some cards and not others.

[haroldp]

I strongly suspect you have counterfeit Sandisk cards. I would go to Sandisk's website and check the numbers against their charts.

 

There are also several sites on the Web that will tell you the tiny differences between the real cards and false ones. You will need a magnifying glass!

 

I had bought a couple from a dealer in NY - via eBay - and they were frauds. The dealer refunded my money when I confronted him with the much lower speeds of the imitations.

 

Bill

 

I have successfully registered cards with sandisk that I know are counterfeit, the counterfeits are now that good. They tested however at 1/4 the write speed (on a Nikon D3) of visually identical extreme IV's that were directly sourced.

 

I have never had a counterfeit directly from amazon (or Adorama, B&H ), almost all that I have seen were from ebay vendors.

 

I have not had the myriad of card problems I see reported here, but I always initialize new cards as below:

 

- Secure erase

- Format as FAT32 on computer

 

I always format in-camera for each new cycle and never edit on the card. It is easy to scramble FAT32 directories.

 

Regards ....H

[jan_brittenson]

Go with the 16GB Transcends. They're the same speed as the Ultras but cost far less. Then add one or two Extremes for when you need speed. Transcend 16GB SDHC Card TS16GSDHC10 B&H Photo Video I have 6 of the transcends, two Ultras, which go in an 8 card case (Hakuba DMSP-SD8 SD Card Case DMSP-SD8 B&H Photo Video), and one 16GB Extreme card that I normally keep in the camera. At under $25 there's no reason not to get a pile of the Transcends for travel. (I can recommend Hakuba's CF case as well.)

[haroldp]

Go with the 16GB Transcends. They're the same speed as the Ultras but cost far less. Then add one or two Extremes for when you need speed. Transcend 16GB SDHC Card TS16GSDHC10 B&H Photo Video I have 6 of the transcends, two Ultras, which go in an 8 card case (Hakuba DMSP-SD8 SD Card Case DMSP-SD8 B&H Photo Video), and one 16GB Extreme card that I normally keep in the camera. At under $25 there's no reason not to get a pile of the Transcends for travel. (I can recommend Hakuba's CF case as well.)

 

The Transcends are the same speed on Leica's, because the Leica interface is the limiting factor. The Sandisk extremes are much faster ( than Transcend ) on cameras that can support the speed (Nikon / Canon etc. ), but offer no advantage that I have seen on an M9.

 

I still use the Sandisk for critical work, but this may well be only to feel better, because I have used Transcend (class 6 and 10) for several years and never had any problems of any type with them.

 

For some reason, the Transcend class 10 cards are now cheaper than the class 6.

 

regards ... H

[k-hawinkler]

I'm just wandering if someone else has encountered the same issues I had with 2 new Sandisk Ultra 16Gb cards that I bought this summer.

 

When I got my M9 in nov 2009, I bought by amazon.de 6 Sandisk Ultra 16Gb cards, these have until now performed flawless. For a long trip, I decided this summer to get some additional cards, so I ordered agin with amazon.de 2 Sandisk Ultra 16Gb cards. When received these new cards had a different label then the 6 older ones, but all specs where the same. I have attached a picture of the cards, the left one is the older one (from 2009) and the right one is from the 2 of this summer.

 

During the trip, I had two occasions when the cards "failed". The first one happened when I had deleted some images, and continued taking pictures, suddenly the M9 froze whiule the red card activity led kept blinking. I had to solve it by removing the battery. Sometime later I discovered that it had lost a number of images, and the deleted images where back again. So I suspected a corrupt card, I locked and stopped using it. The plan was to try to use some recovery programs at home. (At home, this was not really necessary, becaus I could read the card on the computer). I continued using the other cards, until a few weeks later I started using the second card of the new lot. And again strange things happened, again a non responsive M9 with a continues blinking led and a "corrupt card. (again at home on the computer everything was on the card. However in both situation I had on the previous evening been busy with editing, so I had these cards removed from the M9 and later reinserted. So I was not sure if maybe the fact that the cards were removed while the camera is in sleep mode, was the culprit.

 

At home after getting the images from these 2 cards I ran again h2testw.exe (a flashcard test and verification program), but that gave no errors.

 

So I thought OK, user error and forgot it. However, this week I had again very strange problems. I had taken some 20 pictures during a meeting, but when I took the next day another picture and replayed it, the M9 had suddenly lost all the other 20 pictures and had restarted with picture 1. Luckely it happened at home, so on the computer all picture showed up. Ok then I tried to do a quick format, after 30 minutes I had to shutdown the M9 with the battery. After a reformat on the computer, I could reuse the card again.

 

This could be a faulty card, however both cards that I bought this summer have given the same problems in the M9, while on the computer I still could read the contents.

Although the specs are the same, I began to get the feeling that these 2 cards are realy different the the older 6, Why because I had the feeling that they were slower. Which turned uo to be true. I ran some performance tests using h2testw.exe and I timed the writing of a 36Mb dng on the M9 with the following results:

 

Sandisk 16Gb Ultra (2009) backside print: BL0919714079G MADE IN CHINA

write speed 9.3 Mbyte/s

read speed 16 Mbyte/s

Time to write a 36Mb dng on the M9 (firmware 1.138), 5s

 

Sandisk 16Gb Ultra (2010) backside print: BL1018216014G MADE IN CHINA

write speed 3.95Mbyte/s

read speed 13.2Mbyte/s

Time to write a 36Mb dng, 10s

 

Out of curiosity I did also the same test on a Sandisk 4Gb ExtremeIII card, that gave the following results

write speed 13.2Mbyte/s

read speed 16.7Mbyte/s

Time to write a 36MB dng, 3-4s

 

My feeling is, that Sandisk has replaced the original Ultra by a new one which is different and slower, but also that the M9 has a compatibility issue with this specific version of the Ultra 16Gb card.

I have seen lately some reports here on the LUF about users having trouble with Sandisk cards and I was wondering if this is with the same version where I had these problems with.

 

regards

Meino de Graaf

 

 

Many thanks. Very interesting. Too bad I missed this post at the time.

 

Best, K-H.

[Studio58]

I have not read all the replies so I may be repeating info. I have 4X SanDisk Extreme 16G cards that work perfectly in both my M8 & M9.

[mjm6]

Many thanks. Very interesting. Too bad I missed this post at the time.

 

Best, K-H.

 

 

Agreed...

 

But how are we supposed to purchase SDHC cards for the cameras if the specifications change? What was once 'OK' is now no good, as you (and I) have discovered... This basically throws out the list of 'OK' cards that Leica put together, as the cards have all surely been updated over the last 1.5 years.

 

It's time that Leica speak up and provide some guidance, and ultimately a resolution to these problems.

 

 

---Michael

[k-hawinkler]

Agreed...

 

But how are we supposed to purchase SDHC cards for the cameras if the specifications change? What was once 'OK' is now no good, as you (and I) have discovered... This basically throws out the list of 'OK' cards that Leica put together, as the cards have all surely been updated over the last 1.5 years.

 

It's time that Leica speak up and provide some guidance, and ultimately a resolution to these problems.

 

 

---Michael

 

 

I agree. Thanks.

 

Best, K-H.

[sblitz]

i have used promaster, transcend, and hoodman cards and all have worked for me so far -- before and after the upgrade. you really do not need the really super-duper high transfer rate cards, those are designed for cameras shooting video as well.

 

i do agree, however, that a word from leica on this would be in their best interest and ours.

[k-hawinkler]

i have used promaster, transcend, and hoodman cards and all have worked for me so far -- before and after the upgrade. you really do not need the really super-duper high transfer rate cards, those are designed for cameras shooting video as well.

 

i do agree, however, that a word from leica on this would be in their best interest and ours.

 

 

Hello,

 

I agree with that blue text.

 

What I find very intriguing is the Overview description here Panasonic 8GB SDHC-UHS-I Memory Card RP-SDU08GU1K B&H Photo

 

Quote: "Smart data writing, a long archival life, and power failure protection thanks to the Super Intelligent Controller" that's the intriguing part.

 

Those features in the memory card have the potential to negate some problems created by the M9.

 

Very very slick.

 

Best, K-H.

[sblitz]

i would agree, but check to see if some of their slower cards have the same protection just a slower transfer rate. a lot of this is, as you well know, marketing more than meaning.

[k-hawinkler]

i would agree, but check to see if some of their slower cards have the same protection just a slower transfer rate. a lot of this is, as you well know, marketing more than meaning.

 

 

I hope not.

Please, read the next level of detail - if you haven't already done so.

I didn't want to post B&H's text here.

 

Cheers, K-H.

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[ho_co]

... It's time that Leica speak up and provide some guidance, and ultimately a resolution to these problems.

Michael, I agree in principle but there is one practical matter: It's impossible for Leica to check every change a card maker makes.

 

Extreme IIIs are good one day, then the manufacturer makes a change and the cards don't work as well. As Karl-Heinz has said, the cards should work as well so long as the manufacturer holds to the definition of the standard. But that isn't always the case.

 

In the matter at hand, we agree that it's up to Leica to bullet-proof their card-writing capabilities, but I think it's out of the question that they be asked to continually update cards lists at the whim of the card manufacturers' changes.

 

All lists go out of date. We might be better served by not making lists at all than by trusting them blindly.