Do SD cards wear out?

[wristpin]

Took the 64? Micro card out of my carcam to download some footage and decided to reformat it. Followed that procedure as instructed using first SD Formatter and then GUI formatter but the camera shouts out "insert formatted SD card". It is quite happy with a 32 card. Spoke to the suppliers of the camera and they were surprised that the card had lasted as long as it had (purchased in October 2014)
Their price for a new 64 card of the "right specification" is £60+ which seems a bit steep?
All well out of my comfort zone !!

 

[tflnemesis]

In a word... Yes!

Memory cards and SSD harddrives have only so many read/write operations per block before that block becomes unusable. These are in the tens of thousands so normally the card/drive would be upgraded before it fails.

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Its being written on constantly they do suffer.
Try reformatting with different software first. You did format to the correct type?

Shop around. Should find them cheaper than that.

 

[gaz1]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/KINGSTON-...452084&hash=item3aebff78da:g:nQoAAOSwRMtZX2FC

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SANDISK-6...722589&hash=item1a0215cc5b:g:WHYAAOSwHjNV-DJJ

just so you know

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SanDisk-E...425542&hash=item3aec50ecc9:g:i-4AAOSwXetZOPS0

 

[Robotstar5]

I mainly use Sandisk or Kingston media from 7dayshop.com with no problems over the years I've been using them.

 

[HMB]

Sandisc never has problem with them

 

[Matthew76]

I use a place called picstop. Based in jersey pretty cheap & have always been very fast to deliver.

 

[rcx132]

Mine just stopped working.
Also, if I recall correctly, the cards slow down with each read write!
Pro cameras usually have two slots so that everything is written to two cards in case one fails. On a professional job you then keep the two cards at two separate locations during the shoot, one goes back with you, the other goes to an off site secure location.

 

[gerrymoore]

I've got a 1gb card of 'unknown' make in my canon pocket camera - it's been working now for about 12 years!!

 

[rtbcomp]

So it's best not to delete photos until a card is full, otherwise you'll be re-using the same part of the card over and over leading to degradation of the lower addresses whilst the rest of card remains in good condition? Or does card formatting mark "bad sectors"?

 

[gordon stephenson]

I Remember in the early days of memory cards, the price was a £1-00 per Mb,!!

 

[julianf]

They do have limited cycles, but that won't be the issue here. Bad sectors get marked etc, and, besides, we're talking a *lot* of cycles.

More likely the format is incorrect.

Can you format the card directly from the host device (ie the camera)?

Another question - if you just format the card in the PC, with a standard format (fat32 etc) does the card work with the PC? If it does, that's kind of conclusive....

 

[Pete.]

I had several cards go bad one time. It started off with some of the photos having half of the previous photo 'ghosted' over the top. Turned out to be a cheap card reader. I've no idea what it was doing to them but they quickly went from working fine, to ghosting on some of the photos, to randomly not being recognised, to totally useless.

I suspected the card at first but when it killed off a couple more I bought a new reader and the problem went away.

 

[Shox Dr]

I Remember in the early days of memory cards, the price was a £1-00 per Mb,!!

Circa '89 I paid over 600quid for 16mb, to upgrade a DX33 386 to 20mb. First quote I got was £1800

 

[Robotstar5]

I just copy the days photo's onto the PC and upload to cloud leaving everything on the card until it's full, then replace it.

 

[wristpin]

They do have limited cycles, but that won't be the issue here. Bad sectors get marked etc, and, besides, we're talking a *lot* of cycles.

More likely the format is incorrect.

Can you format the card directly from the host device (ie the camera)?

Another question - if you just format the card in the PC, with a standard format (fat32 etc) does the card work with the PC? If it does, that's kind of conclusive....

Formatting has to be done with the PC - W10 . The camera supplier recommends SD formatter for the 32gb card but for the 64gb first with SD then again with GUI - has worked ok in the past. Would running check disk on the card prove anything?

 

[bigegg]

Circa '89 I paid over 600quid for 16mb, to upgrade a DX33 386 to 20mb. First quote I got was £1800

First memory upgrade I got was 125 quid to upgrade from 1kb to 16kb.
And it crashed if you didn't keep it perfectly still.

 

[julianf]

Formatting has to be done with the PC - W10 . The camera supplier recommends SD formatter for the 32gb card but for the 64gb first with SD then again with GUI - has worked ok in the past. Would running check disk on the card prove anything?

My 2nd suggestion was to just do a standard pc format on the card, and move some flles on and off it on the pc - ie use it as a pc device entirely.
If it works in that context, then that (kind of) proves the card good.


As someone said above, i had no end of problems with a card once, and it turned out to be the port on the pc itself (or the drivers for the port - i cant remember)
It would write the files, but the CRC values were wrong. In this instance, the SD card held the OS for another hardware device...

 

[tinker jim]

My memory. Com is a good place for legit cards good prices too.

 

[tinker jim]

25 quid for 64 gig EVO card