How do SD cards start to fail?

[scott kirkpatrick]

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I recently had one of my Transcend 150X 2GB SD cards go south on me. It did so gradually, and I missed the first warning signs. After I had taken several shots in quick succession, the camera's write light just blinked forever, only stopping when I removed the battery. Individual shots worked fine. Then I noticed that the card was unusually slow to download. Finally I realized that I was losing exposures, and seeing corrupted files on the card. With another card, the problem was gone. And by now, the more reliable SanDisk X-III's cost less than the Transcends had cost me half a year ago.

 

Has anybody else seen this sort of behavior, or similar slow failures with clear warning signs?

 

scott

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[Paul_S]

I use the SanDisk Ext III cards, no problems so far. However, I did experience the behavior of the camera's write light blinking forever after taken several shots in quick succession. I had to remove the battery as well and do the shots over again. It happened once or twice, 1-2 month ago.

[carstenw]

I have also seen the infinitely blinking light once, some months ago, with an Ultra II, but have had none of the other issues. I think that this blinking is more of a firmware bug than a card problem.

[cbretteville]

Has anybody else seen this sort of behavior, or similar slow failures with clear warning signs?

 

Scott,

Yes, I had a similar experience three years ago with a TwinMOS card in my Digilux2 (I shot a friend's wedding). Not seen it since, but then I wowed to steer clear of all TwinMOS products. No such issues with my M8 in which I use 2GB XIIIs (I have five that I rotate).

 

- Carl

[vanhulsenbeek]

I use the SanDisk Ext III cards, no problems so far. However, I did experience the behavior of the camera's write light blinking forever after taken several shots in quick succession. I had to remove the battery as well and do the shots over again. It happened once or twice, 1-2 month ago.

 

I have been shooting panarama's recently and this has happened several times to me. It was not forever, as the light stopped after a few minutes. 10 pictures is 100 Mb to process and write to the card! And the internal process and buffers of the M8 are not the fastest.

 

No problem with Sandisk II and III cards, and, frankly, for single pictures I feel no difference in writing time.

[digibob]

Had a similar problem with a 2 gb Transend card .Had to remove the battery to stop the blinking ***** it also takes longer to write ! + I was getting duplicate images when first using it.After formatting a few times no issues.Also had a blinking light syndrome with a Leica 1gb card that came with a Digilux3 I used to have. Seems to me that the problem lies with software and certain cards.

Mostly use 1gb lexar or Teko cards which function fine. rf

[Dolce]

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The same thing happend to me with a 20D, I took it to Canon 6 times and they couldn't fix it.

 

The first time I took it in, they had kept it for 47 days, saying that they didn't have the part and it was being flown in from japan!!! I didn't have a backup body at all, and was forced to use my Elan7

 

BTW, I got the camera back after those 47 days, and the sensor was still dirty. So I really dont' think they did anything on the first run of things.

 

Anyway, my guess could be something that gets lose in the wire'n of the product. Maybe they need an electronic engineer inspector to look over the camera bords more carefully before leaving the factory..