SD Card Failure

[carlmuck]

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Had an interesting event this morning. In the neighbor's yard were 4 fox cubs frolicing in the sun. Composition was great, woodland environment, with a patch of grass well lit by the morning sun.

 

Grabbed the M8, shot ~140 images when I realized I still had the camera set from the previous evening ISO 640 -2EV, so I quickly reset to ISO 320 shot another 20 or so and filled the card (a first for me!).

 

When i put the SD card in my Mac Book I got the dreaded "Disk Insertion" error, all it offered was to re-format the card.

 

Luckily I'm used to bad CF cards so I have a copy of Data Rescue, it recovered about 1/2 of the photos. Some of the recovered ones showed really bad magenta blotches, I assume that the data was recorded improperly.

 

I attempted to re-format the card in the M8 after pulling the images off, but it showed a formatted value of 1.4G, not the normal 1.9G (I'm using Transcend 150x 2G cards).

 

Question for the audience, should I just dump the card or continue to use it at its reduced capacity? I have 2 cards, so if I dump this one I'll be down to one until a replacement comes in.

 

I know that Guy swears by the Transcend cards, what are others' failure rates. I couldn't have put many more than 500 images through the card.

 

c.

[jwcane.enw]

I have had good luck with my R8/DMR and SD cards by Kingston. One anomaly occurred after erasing the card in my reader instead of using the native formatting of the DMR. That simply validated the guidance from an instructor in a digital photography course that I took last year.

 

Do you format your card on the computer or within the camera?

 

jwc

[carlmuck]

Unless there is a problem, I format in the camera. I do delete from the computer occasionally, but I think I'll even stop that.

 

c.

[cme4brain]

Had an interesting event this morning. In the neighbor's yard were 4 fox cubs frolicing in the sun. Composition was great, woodland environment, with a patch of grass well lit by the morning sun.

 

Grabbed the M8, shot ~140 images when I realized I still had the camera set from the previous evening ISO 640 -2EV, so I quickly reset to ISO 320 shot another 20 or so and filled the card (a first for me!).

 

When i put the SD card in my Mac Book I got the dreaded "Disk Insertion" error, all it offered was to re-format the card.

 

Luckily I'm used to bad CF cards so I have a copy of Data Rescue, it recovered about 1/2 of the photos. Some of the recovered ones showed really bad magenta blotches, I assume that the data was recorded improperly.

 

I attempted to re-format the card in the M8 after pulling the images off, but it showed a formatted value of 1.4G, not the normal 1.9G (I'm using Transcend 150x 2G cards).

 

Question for the audience, should I just dump the card or continue to use it at its reduced capacity? I have 2 cards, so if I dump this one I'll be down to one until a replacement comes in.

 

I know that Guy swears by the Transcend cards, what are others' failure rates. I couldn't have put many more than 500 images through the card.

 

c.

 

I have been using the Ridata 4GB data cards- no problems (gives 386 DNG + JPEG files per card!). I also use the tried and true Sandisk II 2Gb data cards.

[roccoriley]

Your card could be a cheap counterfit card. About 80% of the cards now sold on eBay are knock offs (and many sold off of eBay) and eBay has posted a page that includes photos and descriptions of real and fake cards.