Card life

[Chris Hewitt]

Having used Class 10 SDHC cards now for a couple of years, I'm wondering just how long they last.
I use SanDisk with my Panasonic cams and haven't had any issues, just using the same two over and over although I do have back up spares in case.
If you have any thoughts about card life or some issues, it would be good to hear.

[James Manford]

Originally Posted by Chris Hewitt

Having used Class 10 SDHC cards now for a couple of years, I'm wondering just how long they last.
I use SanDisk with my Panasonic cams and haven't had any issues, just using the same two over and over although I do have back up spares in case.
If you have any thoughts about card life or some issues, it would be good to hear.

I would of thought the life expectancy was based on how many reads & writes you do on them? which would be well in to the hundreds of thousands.

I wouldn't worry ...

It's always a gamble using memory cards & hard drives etc. And I would class it as an act of god if something went wrong.

You've already covered the basics by using a reputable brand.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Chris

If you go back to your tape usage days, if you were like me you used a new tape for each camera for each wedding so in my case if was often 3 or 4 tapes at $8.00 a pop (I used to buy cases of 10 for $80.00)

If you add that up it comes to a pretty sizeable figure for media cost so based on that, I buy 4 16GB cards every 6 months and then "retire" (not throw out!) the current 4 cards. I will shoot on those 4 cards for things like Realty jobs where, if the card was faulty from the start, I can always reshoot the job. After the 4 new ones have been "initiated" They then replace the 4 current ones which I use for reshootable jobs and then use the new ones for weddings. It's still a fraction of the cost of buying new tapes for each weddings and my new cards are also rotated so I used two for a wedding then the other two for the next which gives them all around the same amount of wear and tear.

Funny, I bought a batch of 4 Sandisk Ultimate (93mbps) cards a few moths ago and found I was getting the odd card error on frames now and again so I have actually reverted to Transcend cards again ..never had an issue with those at all but I'm sure it's just a personal choice. For what it's worth I still find that Class 6 cards are far more reliable than Class 10 and that was on both the Sony and Panny cameras.

Retire your current cards every 6 months and you shouldn't have an worries at all!!

Chris

[Nigel Barker]

I'm not convinced that cards wear out. We are still using some 16GB Transcend Compact Flash cards that were purchased with our first 5D2 over 4.5 years ago. They are not as fast as current cards but this only means that they take longer to unload to the computer.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Nigel

Quite correct .. technically being solid state they should go on forever really. I guess the gold plated contacts must eventually wear out especially if you slide them in and out of the camera thousands of times but I know some quote something like 10K insertions which for us would be a lifetime!!!

Chris

[Nigel Barker]

I doubt that on average my cards get inserted/removed even once per week i.e. 50 times per year so they should be good for at least 100 years.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Nigel

Well, both you and I certainly won't outlive our cards, that's for sure!!

I'm probably putting in a card about 20 times a month as I do Realty shoots too during the week so technically even with that frequency I have no issues!

I do notice that the contacts in the camera mark the gold PCB connectors on an SDHC card but never a problem there ...CF cards have pin connectors don't they? So even less wear there!!

To keep Chris Hewitt from worrying I have been (after a reluctant start) on card media now since 2004 after dropping tape and never lost anything from card failure but occasionally I might get a tiny bit of green blocking on a single frame but that tiny glitch has never caused a major issue yet and it's very rare. I have noticed that when it has occurred it's always been on the first clip on the card so what I always do is record the floor/grass for around 5 seconds before I shoot for real.

Chris

[Mike Beckett]

I've been using cards for years without problems in all sorts of cameras and camcorders. The only SDHC card I've ever lost is one that fell into water. I was still able to get the files off it, but the case sort of disintegrated after it dried out.

It's always good to have a camera that can dual-record to two cards, but that's more for peace of mind for me, it's never been needed yet. Touch wood!

[Kelly Langerak]

If they fail for me it's when they were near new. I prefer Lexar over Sandisk because of my experiences with Sandisk. 0 failed with Lexar and I've had 4 Sandisk fail but both companies will replace them for free and if that model isn't available then they upgrade you. I LOVE IT!!!

[Al Gardner]

There's no forever life for any card. I use Sand disk exclusively in the conference world often recording 8 hours a day for several days.

And while they won't last forever they can last a long damm time.

http://www.apotelyt.com/memory-card/sd-card-reliability