Has anyone had a memory card fail and become completely unreadable?

Hi All,

I'm tempted to buy a 128gb XQD card for my D4, but I've heard people recommend that I use several smaller cards instead to minimise losses in the event of a failure.

I've had a CF card fail before, but in that case I was able to retrieve all but a few of the pictures using recovery software.

Has anyone had a memory card that failed and became completely unreadable even with recovery software?

Thanks!

Don't know about XQD, but I had a transcend 32 GB SDHC class 10, that failed, with most images lost and some corrupted. I never buy transcend any more

Yes, it has happened to me several times. Back in the days of microdrives we could just rip them apart and spin the drive heads manually to extract info, but if the controller part of a CF/SD/XQD fails it can pretty much be toasted (especially if the failure mechanism includes a voltage spike).

For CF, the worst reliability I had was with the old lexar 40x 1gb cards, none of them lasted over four years. I also had a bad card slot in a camera that toasted 4 32gb cards before it was replaced, but that was not a fault of the cards themselves. Seeing how i've been shooting CF for over 16 years that is a great track record (we're looking at low percentage of failures)

With XQD i've never had one fail on me, but the plastic has chipped/broken though the cards are still useable.

As for SD, it is a mess. I'm now up to 11 cards returned for warranty replacement and have only been shooting with SD for 14 months.

If you shoot to only one card, and these are vital shots, then by all means look for smaller cards for an entire shoot. But ever since two slots have been available in a camera, I always shoot .jpg on one card and .nef on the other. If the worst happens, and only the .jpg survives, it's part of life and at least you have an image for the client. Sure, having those two spread out further (on smaller cards) would mean that if a failure happens you wouldn't loose "all the .jpgs"....but at the same time, are you really worried about loosing all of one format if you already have a backup?

cm71td said:

Hi All,

I'm tempted to buy a 128gb XQD card for my D4, but I've heard people recommend that I use several smaller cards instead to minimise losses in the event of a failure.

Click to expand...

Unless you shoot a lot of video I can't see the point of 128gb cards. IMO. You should be saving as lossless compressed images. With my D810 I get over 700 raw images per 32gb card. With a D5 or D500 you should get 1200-1300 raw images per card. So a 128gb card will store about 5000 images. Do you really need a card that big except for video? I would prefer using multiple 32 or 64gb cards.

QXD, CF, SD, uSD never. Have been shooting for about 15+ years, but early on upgraded density.

IMHO two reasons card fails;

1) Physical damage; stress thru temperature cycle, physical stress etc. Break any electrical connection or the integrity to moisture and you'll be toast.

2) Electrical: Actual wear out or failure of a memory bit or circuit due to marginal capability or outright wearout. Between on chip firmwear and testing and quality of it hard to believe anyone read/writes a memory card to failure. Dang most cameras I see even if you wrote the whole life of the camera to one set of bits and upload/format and shoot you'd not technically exceed MTBF of the chips

I'd say 1) much more likely than 2) if you buy from real high quality manufacture products who have "reputation" to stand by and test. There are only a few manufactures capable of producing the fastest and higher density. THose with the most stringent test will test and discard or down bin in speed/density or discard to second tier suppliers.

I'd never buy the highest density as you pay a huge premium, buy the density you need plus a bit. I'd rather have a 64GB and a 16GB as backup / overflow than a 128 where I never fill it more than 16GB at a time and reformat.

i've had SD cards fail.

But that's why I have two cards in the camera and images writing to both cards.

In tens of thousands of photos, I've only had one slight glitch with a card, and that was a CF card I was able to recover all of the files, and disposed of the card). Since that one occurrence (about 7-8 years ago), I've shot thousands of frames on SD and CF with no problems. I do worry about CF pins though. And I tend towards using larger cards (64gb and 128gb SD these days). I pretty much stick to Sandisk as well; I don't trust the cheap cards with unknown brand names.

cm71td said:

Hi All,

I'm tempted to buy a 128gb XQD card for my D4, but I've heard people recommend that I use several smaller cards instead to minimise losses in the event of a failure.

I've had a CF card fail before, but in that case I was able to retrieve all but a few of the pictures using recovery software.

Has anyone had a memory card that failed and became completely unreadable even with recovery software?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Hi,

I heard and read that several which had problems with certain XQD cards. But that problem seems to be cured now and they are better produced.

Of the more than 30 CF cards I own, only one gave problems. Even the old ones of 256MB still work.

I depends on where I have to photograph, I prefer to use smaller cards of 16GB or 32GB and write to both. Sometiems i use the large SD's I often use as a copy card in the D800.

Michel

It's been a few years but I had a 4gb Lexar CF card fail completely once, and unable to read or pull pictures off even with recovery. I find this of less concern using 2 slot backup setting.

The short answer is ALL cards can fail. Seems there are too many variables to know when or exactly why.

I subscribe to using more cards and splitting up the job to minimize loss. It's not that difficult to swap a card.

DITTO! However, with serious shots I always use the second slot as a backup - old habits die hard.

LMCasey said:

In tens of thousands of photos, I've only had one slight glitch with a card, and that was a CF card I was able to recover all of the files, and disposed of the card). Since that one occurrence (about 7-8 years ago), I've shot thousands of frames on SD and CF with no problems. I do worry about CF pins though. And I tend towards using larger cards (64gb and 128gb SD these days). I pretty much stick to Sandisk as well; I don't trust the cheap cards with unknown brand names.

Click to expand...

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I had a brand new Sandisk 64GB SD card that overheated and blistered all the contacts whilst formatting in my D810. Card replaced by supplier, no problem with replacement.

Mike

I've never had a card fail. I mostly use Sandisk but have a few generic. I have a Sandisk that went through the washing machine in my pocket 2 years ago and still use it.

Never. But I'd buy two smaller rather than one huge card so if one did fail...:-(

Anything can fail with out notice not just memory cards.

In five+ years of shooting and at 200,000+ images I've had one 32gb SD card fail. I don't know if it was recoverable. Since I had a backup card, I just threw it away.

j_photo said:

In five+ years of shooting and at 200,000+ images I've had one 32gb SD card fail. I don't know if it was recoverable. Since I had a backup card, I just threw it away.

Click to expand...

The thing with solid state electronics is if it fails no chance of recovery, it its corrupt some or all may be recoverable.

Unlike an actual had drive with a platter the info is always their if part of it fails the plates can always be removed and data can be recovered.

Never store import data on solid state electronics (flash drives) get it off ASAP if it’s really valuable to you.

cm71td said:

Hi All,

I'm tempted to buy a 128gb XQD card for my D4...

Click to expand...

Please don't!

You're simply asking for a disaster to happen! Card may or may not fail, but when does, what's statistics gonna do for you?

With the tiny files :-D from the D4, I wouldn't go above 32GB. If your day requires thousands and thousands of shots, just add more cards.

Remember Murphy's law...

lgs6632 said:

As for SD, it is a mess. I'm now up to 11 cards returned for warranty replacement and have only been shooting with SD for 14 months.

Click to expand...

Seriously? What on earth are you doing to those SD cards?!

What sort of reasons are you returning them for?

Honestly, with that many failures, I'd start to suspect there was a problem somehere else in the workflow.

--
Lost in the void between the concept and the execution.