AC160 Estimated life of sd cards

[tazza]

I have been shooting depositions and some of these go 5 hours or longer, having a 64gig SD card in each slot gives me an automatic backup which is great.
I am using class 10 sanDisk cards. So far no bad cards or files - but does anyone know just how long or about how long these cards will last?
and if so are any cards capable of outputing data as to the life of a card?

 

[Mark Whalen]

I've been shooting depos on the same 16GB and 32GB Sandisk class 10 cards for well over two years. Each card has dozens of cycles and hundreds of hours of use at this point, and I've never had a problem with Sandisks (Transcends, yes). I can't speak to the data life or internal reporting capabilities.

 

[strangways]

Every once in a while, I run a Write and read test with Check Flash to check for problems. http://mikelab.kiev.ua/index_en.php?page=PROGRAMS/chkflsh_en

 

[Excalibur]

I have the same experience as Mark. I use SanDisk Extreme Pro class 10 cards for the GH-3 and for the AC130 facing no problems at all. The Cam's are used more or less all days. So there are a lot of cycles/card. So no problems with SanDisk, but with Transcend, yes!

 

[Mike Beckett]

Same here. I've been using Sandisk SDHC cards in my cameras and video cameras for years without any problems. I use 2 sets of 2 cards for my AC130. I abandoned Transcend a few years ago after repeated failures. And yes, they were genuine cards.

The only issue I ever had was when I dropped a Sandisk Extreme card into water. It still worked, but the case came apart not long after I got the data off it!

 

[ChrisHarding]

Hi Guys Funny, the only two failures I ever had were Sandisk cards (16GB) They just died and gave errors after about 3 months ... I have been using genuine Transcend cards for 5 years now (all 16GB though) and never an issue but they were genuine ..You can check that your cards are genuine normally on the manufacturers website by typing in the batch/serial number on the card. Just for interest Transcend did have a recall of Class 10 32GB cards a little while back so maybe those were the failures? If you take your running costs in the days of MiniDV and compare them with card costs it isn't going to hurt your budget at all by "retiring" say 4 cards every 6 months and getting new ones! To give you an idea, just with weddings I was using 4 MiniDV tapes per wedding and 4 weddings a month and at $8.00 a tape I was spending over $700 on tape every 6 months ... 4 new cards after 6 months will certainly not cost you anything like $700!! Purely for peace of mind as the only thing that gets physically worn are the contacts on the card.