SD Card Reuse or New Each Time

[dstierer]

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I have a general question on SD card usage. Do you reuse the same SD card over and over by formatting in the camera,  OR do you use an SD card like a roll of film, by never erasing SD cards and keeping them with original images in a numeric order like we did with rolls of film.?  I have started by smaller SD cards and using them one by one and never reusing them, filing them away as we did with film stock.  Thoughts Please?

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[pegelli]

After the photo's are on my computer, backed up on a cloud service (Blackblaze) and stored on a 2nd external hard drive which is not stored at home (so I have three independent versions of the file) I reformat and reuse my SD cards, but never before I have all three versions in place.

On the other hand, in 18 years of digital photography I never had to resort to a backup copy, and I hope I never will in the future either, but better be safe than sorry.

[Stevejack]

I think it depends how many photos you're taking as to the best workflow, but as Al says I wouldn't trust SD cards alone for archive storage, hopefully you have them backed up elsewhere as well.

I do something similar to you, but with SSD drives instead which I don't erase. I re-use my SD cards, formatting in camera before each shoot.

My lightroom catalog is on an external SSD, usually about 2TB in size. I fill this up within the year, but rather than erasing and re-using the drive, I copy my lightroom catalog over to a new SSD and carry on. So the SSD counts as one copy of my files.

On import each shoot is dated, along with the name of the camera, and a reminder of what the photos were. So something like " 2024-02-12 M11M Kids at the park ". 

I keep two large Synology NAS, one is off-site, and I manually copy across all my RAW files from the SSD onto each NAS so that there is a copy of everything on an SSD drive, an on-site NAS, and a third copy on an off-site NAS. 

Ideally I would have an automated setup where the SSD gets backed up to the first NAS, and then the on-site NAS would automatically back-up to the off-site NAS, but I'm still working out the best way to do that over the internet with such a lot of data to transfer, so for now I do it all manually. 

 

 

 

[Fotoklaus]

I take them only as a temporary storage in the camera. Formating them in the camera and get a new one from time to time.

I store my pictures on two external HDDs. My oldest Drive is a Seagate external from 2005 which still works, but I won´t rely on that.

And so I don´t with SD- Cards. They are too cheap to save money worth of a McDonalds Meal and risk the loss of your pictures.

[ianforber]

Once I’ve downloaded the images, I put the SD card back in the camera and reformat it. I have multiple copies on different hard drives. I considered Backblaze but it was taking so long to upload my images that I gave up. Instead I export those I do not want to lose to Apple Photos for a cloud based backup. They’re jpegs but that’s fine by me, it’s only my hobby and not a business. 

[dpitt]

I always use the same card over and over again. (usually one or 2 per camera) Each day I import the images to my computer, and as soon as I have a backup on a separate drive (or cloud), the original images are deleted from the SD card.

I found that if I have issues, it is always with a brand new card. A new card either works or it has faults from the start that occur over and over again in about the same area... If this happens, you can either bin them, or leave a set of data on it to keep the faulty area occupied. e.g. I have copied a movie of ~1,5GB on a 16GB SD card that I use in my M9. As long as the movie sits there it is reliable and I have made 1000s of images with it that way, but if I reformat and re-use I will probably have a few corrupt files in the first GB... That is why I avoid to  re-format this one.

I have had 2 cards with issues like that. I rather reuse them now than risk using a brand new card for a critical shoot. A production issue can never be excluded, even with expensive cards. I only trust it 100% after the first use without issues, that is after it has been filled completely once and all the files have been processed without issues on my computer.

Edited February 12, 2024 by dpitt

[JTLeica]

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16 hours ago, pegelli said:

After the photo's are on my computer, backed up on a cloud service (Blackblaze) and stored on a 2nd external hard drive which is not stored at home (so I have three independent versions of the file) I reformat and reuse my SD cards, but never before I have all three versions in place.

On the other hand, in 18 years of digital photography I never had to resort to a backup copy, and I hope I never will in the future either, but better be safe than sorry.

Basically what I do,

As soon as the card is downloaded its backed up to external SSD's while on a trip, then to the cloud either if the Wifi is good or when home. Then a RAID Drive.

But to the OP... No, never would I use SD's like film that is just NUTS, just reformat the card once backed up and reuse, and reformat in the camera not the computer. No issues so far

[charlesphoto99]

The entire promise and premise of digital was/is to pay more up front for the camera and then dispense with the daily grind of film and processing costs. HDD's are pretty inexpensive, esp if one shoots upwards of 64GB plus a week as I have been on a personal project. 

[marchyman]

Neither?  I do use the same card but I do not reformat.  My "import" process is a script I wrote that copies the images from the card to a location on my photos drive.  After the copy the file on the card is compared with the new copy on my photos drive.  If the copy compares the same the image on the card is deleted.

I've yet to have a bad compare.  My experience is that the camera complains about cards going bad before my computer.  Bad cards get replaced.

On the M11 I've set internal to be a copy of what is on the SD card.  After importing my images and adding them to my Lightroom catalog I delete the duplicates from M11 internal memory.

[jimtong]

On 2/12/2024 at 5:26 AM, dstierer said:

I have a general question on SD card usage. Do you reuse the same SD card over and over by formatting in the camera,  OR do you use an SD card like a roll of film, by never erasing SD cards and keeping them with original images in a numeric order like we did with rolls of film.?  I have started by smaller SD cards and using them one by one and never reusing them, filing them away as we did with film stock.  Thoughts Please?

Depending on the occasion. If I am on a long trip, I will pack a few SDs with me and how I use it is to cycle the SDs every 1 or 2 days. But with the M11 that comes with the internal storage, I may have a different strategy.

After the trip, I will copy the photos to my Mac for post processing and safekeep. I leave the SDs as it is until I need them for new project/trip.

[Chris_Jenks]

I’ve always been a SanDisk Extreme Pro user but after suffering numerous freezes with my M11 I switched to Lexar Professional 2000x 128GB cards. After transferring the DNG files to my MacBook I format the card in the computer using the “SD Card Formatter” App before formatting the card again in the camera. Happy to say that the freezing issue has now been solved. I back up my MacBook every few days onto 2 different external hard drives.

[V23]

On 2/12/2024 at 8:47 AM, pegelli said:

After the photo's are on my computer, backed up on a cloud service (Blackblaze) and stored on a 2nd external hard drive which is not stored at home (so I have three independent versions of the file) I reformat and reuse my SD cards, but never before I have all three versions in place.

On the other hand, in 18 years of digital photography I never had to resort to a backup copy, and I hope I never will in the future either, but better be safe than sorry.

SD Card backup?

When backing up SD card to say computer HD or SSD do you copy DCIM file where all the photos are or you copy file private as well or do you create a file named i.e. Rome Jan. 2024 and drag and drop SD card to that file?

[adan]

On 2/11/2024 at 2:26 PM, dstierer said:

Do you reuse the same SD card over and over by formatting in the camera,  OR do you use an SD card like a roll of film, by never erasing SD cards and keeping them with original images in a numeric order like we did with rolls of film.?

I reuse my SD cards.

But the fact that there exist "SD card storage boxes/books" with a small labelling map in the top (just like my ancient slide storage boxes) indicate some folks must be working that way.

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=SD+card+storage&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

However, flash memory is volatile (subject to losing data bits) over the long haul (~10 years), so they still need a backup backup.

And/or should be "migrated" to new storage types as they appear (what computers today can read a 35-year-old floppy disk easily - and at how many Mbytes per second!?)

Tips I got from the newspaper's "Newsroom Technology Editor" (she who was responsible for maintaining the newspaper's computers and terabytes of electronic files) 20 years ago was:

- Get the fastest media you can - reducing backup time and effort is an "anti-procrastination device."
- Keep three copies of everything - with at least one copy "off-site." (safety deposit box, home + office, Cloud, etc.)
- Migrate data to new media types at least every 5 years. EVERYTHING will wear out or become obsolete eventually - yep, even The Cloud.
- Never use writable CD/DVDs - think of them only as Post-It™ notes (her phrase) for transfer of information.  🤪

I even make prints and printed books of my best works, as further backup (and they will be more easily-recognizable as "photographs" 100 years from now). There is no guarantee that any digital format (.DNG, .TIF, .JPG, .PSD) will be recognizable forever.

[pegelli]

2 hours ago, V23 said:

SD Card backup?

When backing up SD card to say computer HD or SSD do you copy DCIM file where all the photos are or you copy file private as well or do you create a file named i.e. Rome Jan. 2024 and drag and drop SD card to that file?

I rename all my files upon import (by lightroom) to a standard string which contains the camera used, file # (assigned by the camera) and date taken. These renamed files are then over time backed up to Backblaze and the external HD. On my desktop HD and external HD the files are in folders by year/camera/month. Only after both backups are in place I reformat my SD cards (in camera). All the other info needed on the file (lens used/location/subject/....) is handled by assigning keywords.

Edited February 25, 2024 by pegelli