SDHC card failure rate

O

offbeatbryce

Well-known member
Hello,

I've googled this left and right and can't come up with a good answer on how often SDHC cards fail.

What sucks about my camera is that if I choose to use Dual Layer record mode where it records the same thing on two cards at once it won't let me record at the maximum 35mpbs quality. Dual Layer reduces it to 25mbps.

I would love to have my camera set so it records on two cards one at at time rather than two at once so I can get the maximum quality.

Is there really a risk of me shooting on SDHC cards and having it fail? I've been recording for a year now and haven't had one fail so far.
 
Of course there's a risk of failure, the question is how to quantify that risk. While I've personally never had one fail, I read on this forum accounts of failures. Seems card brand & how much writing the card has experienced are a couple of the contributing factors. One of the reasons I am upgrading to the GH5 is so I can have a back-up when recording important events. While it hasn't happened to me (yet), I fully expect it to at some point.
 
Steve Ogden said:
One of the reasons I am upgrading to the GH5 is so I can have a back-up when recording important events. While it hasn't happened to me (yet), I fully expect it to at some point.
Click to expand...

I agree with Steve, have a backup if possible. Anything can fail, no matter how high the quality. But you can mitigate the probability of failure by purchasing quality cards, and taking care of the cards. I handle my cards with kid gloves, avoid touching connectors, avoid heat, water, dirt, dust, etc. I have a DVX200 and can record in both slots. If your camera cannot do this, is it possible to use an external recorder and also record internally at the same time?

Also, I am only concerned with backups for important events. I have never had a card fail. But I have had computers fail, and hard drives fail. I also buy a lot of cards and do not work them to death - I imagine the more you use a specific card the more likely that card will fail. Quality cards seem to be very reliable.
 
I have had card failure, back in the AF100 days. It was an awful experience. Thankfully it was the "B" camera of a 2 camera shoot, but still never heard from the client again. I felt really bad about it, so much so that I moved on from the camera because it wasn't capable of simultaneous record.

Simultaneous record does give a bit more confidence, but only a bit more as the failure could happen "upstream" of the card(s)???

For the business I do on small sensor shoots, P2 cards & micro P2 cards have been bulletproof for over a decade. If a P2 card failed, it wouldn't matter as that'd mean armageddon, so it wouldn't matter.

This business has a flaw as we are all dependent on hardware to keep on working. Sometimes life isn't fair and it isn't a matter of if, but a matter of when it'll happen. Happened to me and if you keep at it long enough, it'll happen to you.

The most popular camera of our time doesn't even use cards that have a write protect switch. That is just plain stupid.
 
Design Media Consultants said:
I agree with Steve, have a backup if possible. Anything can fail, no matter how high the quality. But you can mitigate the probability of failure by purchasing quality cards, and taking care of the cards. I handle my cards with kid gloves, avoid touching connectors, avoid heat, water, dirt, dust, etc. I have a DVX200 and can record in both slots. If your camera cannot do this, is it possible to use an external recorder and also record internally at the same time?

Also, I am only concerned with backups for important events. I have never had a card fail. But I have had computers fail, and hard drives fail. I also buy a lot of cards and do not work them to death - I imagine the more you use a specific card the more likely that card will fail. Quality cards seem to be very reliable.
Click to expand...

I can record to two cards at once with my cameras but the frustrating thing is when using the dual recording mode it doesn't record at maximum quality. The manual states this "when dual record mode is on to record to two cards at once you are limited to 25mpbs. If you turn off dual record mode you can record in 35mbps." why would the camera be made so it can't record at 35mbps while in dual record mode? Here is a link to a screenshot of the section in the manual that also refers to quality loss in dual record mode http://imgur.com/0CpJHfE
 
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I understand your frustration. Everything we buy is a compromise - the designers do the best they can based on anticipated selling price, target market, available technology, etc. It's up to us to do the research & decide if it meets our needs. Sometimes we understand what the manual means after we've made the purchase. Learning can be expensive - sure has been for me. Or as a friend once said "if ignorance is bliss, I'm sure blistered."
 
Do you have to use SDHC cards ? Or can your camera use SDXC cards ? ( all of my card failures have been with SDHC cards, but not one SDXC card has failed in the past 6 years of shooting )
 
TheDingo said:
Do you have to use SDHC cards ? Or can your camera use SDXC cards ? ( all of my card failures have been with SDHC cards, but not one SDXC card has failed in the past 6 years of shooting )
Click to expand...

I can use both. But I've read people have had card corruptions on SDXC as well. I'd rather film on dual slot mode if it's a one time event. That way if one card fails I have a second card with the same footage on it.
 
offbeatbryce said:
Hello,

I've googled this left and right and can't come up with a good answer on how often SDHC cards fail.
Click to expand...

Published data for SDHCs is on the order of 1million hours Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF). That's pretty meaningless as it says that it won't fail in your lifetime. That's theoretical, but not reality. Let's just say they are very, very reliable. You can't put a number on when an SDHC card will fail because as with all electronics, there will be failures. With billions of Flash cards out there, there are many failures everyday. Its a roll of the dice.

For electronics in general, manufacturers of industrial equipment expect failures of electronics in the area of .5% to 2.5% failures per year. SDHC should be much more reliable than that if not abused.

You just don't know if and when it will fail. You have to decide how you will deal with the limited odds of a failure.

If a card does fail and you have material to recover, there is a lot of software that will attempt to recover. If that doesn't work, because the electronics in the chip has failed, there are services that open up the chip and probe it to recover data. These can cost $100-$400 depending on how much data needs to be recovered.
 
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Cards can fail. But when you're talking about brands that fail, keep in mind that there is a rather active black market of counterfeit cards out there. If you're buying a "SanDisk" card off ebay, there's probably a decent chance that it is not, in fact, actually a SanDisk card -- it may be some junk commodity card that the seller's printed his own "SanDisk" label onto. The best way to avoid counterfeit cards is to only buy fresh, new cards from an authorized dealer -- go to the manufacturer's site and you'll find a "find a dealer" button somewhere, and that'll tell you what places are authorized to sell you their actual, genuine product. If you buy it from Abe's Camera Shop And Bait And Tackle Store instead, because it's $5 cheaper, well -- good luck, because if it's not from an authorized dealer, the odds are probably higher that you might run into a counterfeit card.

Recording on two cards is always better than recording on one, wherever possible, although your situation (35mbps/25mbps) certainly throws a monkey wrench into that axiom. That's probably one reason many folks have moved to external recording, so they can have a high-quality ProRes recording on their external recorder, and still have the camera-original recording on the internal memory card. In that way, even cameras that don't actually support multi-slot recording can still be used in such a way as to get multiple recordings and therefore increased probability of success.

The thing about card failures is that they are not common at all, but they are catastrophic when they do happen. Buy the very best quality memory cards you can get, from an authorized dealer. To me, the stupidest mistake a videographer can make is trying to save money by buying cheaper cards. It's a false economy. Bite the bullet, buy the best cards, and record to two whenever possible.
 
^ That

I'll also add other stuff you can do to minimize card errors:
- Never delete anything off a card. Format it instead, in camera, once you've copied the files to your PC. (THIS IS A BIG ONE)
- Make sure your card reader is not introducing data errors. Once I thought this was happening to me (cheap reader), then found out it was not that.
- Make sure your PC is not introducing data errors. I had this happen to me (nice motherboard... somehow gone bad).

You don't have to worry about the last two if you never have data corruption errors in your video stream (the kind where the image suddenly goes wrong and then parts of it move in a macroblocked way, according to the motion in the video behind). In my case, I spent a couple of years sparingly having those issues. Initially I thought it would be the card reader and got a better one, but problems remained; eventually I found out it was the motherboard.
 
Thanks

Thanks

Barry_Green said:
Recording on two cards is always better than recording on one, wherever possible, although your situation (35mbps/25mbps) certainly throws a monkey wrench into that axiom.
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also with my camera it only records 35mbps in 60 frames a second which I hardly need that frame rate. I usually film in 29.97 frames per second if it's for DVD or YouTube. I only film in 60 frames per second if I need to slow something down or there is fast motion but still even at 60 frames per second there is less light in the camera and that throws a monkey wrench as well if you have low light you can't control.


I hope to eventually have the money for an external recorder but currently don't have the budget for one.
 
I'd like to add a couple of things from a rental house perspective (we have gone through hundreds of SDHC cards, CF cards, and many XQD, CFast, P2, SxS, SSDs etc):

There are a few different types of failure:
1. Mechanical failure - bent pins, broken cards, melted cards (yes I said melted) etc. This is probably the most common failure we see as a rental house (because never underestimate the power of people to destroy gear). Unless you're dealing with bent CF pins on the camera side it usually means the failure does not happen unnoticed. IE: Card wont read so you can't start recording. As far as failures go, as long as the damage does not happen to a card that is already full it usually results in little data loss.

2. Data Corruption - Almost always user error. This might be the second most common failure we see. Usually on the lower end cameras using consumer level cards. This failure can be catastrophic or it can be relatively minor. I know of one client who insisted having the largest cards possible...they were from out of country and were shooting over a week and didn't want to dump any material. They lost almost 3 days of their shoot when in their hurry to swap batteries the operator didn't shut down the camera or stop recording. Most common cause of data corruption is power interruption. With higher end cards this usually means you may lose anywhere from a few seconds to a minute of the footage being recorded. With lower end cameras this could corrupt your whole card. Many times just inserting the card back into the camera may fix it. Sometimes data recovery programs recover most or some of the data. Another one we ran into is malware or viruses from the dumping computer corrupting or deleting data from the card. You should always use the write protect on the card when possible. Once a card is designated to be used for camera only that camera should be ever writing to the card. Write on camera, remove from camera, copy protect, copy data to computer, back up data, insert card in camera again (after removing the copy protect) and format in camera. Nothing but that camera should ever write a single bit to that card.

(One last bit specially with newer standards like when CFast first came out: Different card manufacturers may use different memory controllers and they may not play nice with all cameras at first. We had an issue were early Ursa cameras would brick Sandisk CFast cards and we knew the cards were good as they were bought when we got our Amira and had been working just fine. Turns out the Ursa didn't like Sandisk cards but preffered Lexar cards...well apparently the Amira didn't like some Lexar cards (certain models) it was nightmare)

3. Quality control failure - Counter fit cards, bad cards out of the factory. I think this is the biggest failure you read/see online. Its more common with consumer cards than professional media. Usually due to counterfit cards which can look just like the real deal (sometimes they're just older legit cards that have been repackaged as a faster card...this kind is the worst for people using higher end consumer cameras as the card may appear to work fine until you reach its write capacity). Anyways this one is also the easiest to remedy:
NEVER use new media without doing a read/write test. And I mean a full read/write test. You should always (and I can't emphasize always enough) fill out every card you intend to use on the field fully at highest quality possible on the camera you intend to use it. Leave it recording until the very end and the camera stops recording due to insufficient memory. Then take the card and use the card reader you intend to use with it, and download it fully to your computer. Do this at least once and you can be certain the card will work properly.
Oh yeah and never skimp on media. Don't go through best buy or some electronics store, buy media from professional camera resellers; B&H, AbelCine, Adorama, Sammy's, EVS, etc. I'd even avoid Amazon unless you know what you're doing (don't buy from amazon affiliates but from amazon directly).


If you test your cards when you get them, always use copy protection when available, don't let your camera run out of power/yank cards out while still writing to them, and don't physically abuse your cards then your failure rate should be extremely low. In fact I would feel confident enough in saying you're more likely to experience the occasional camera hardware failure than you are card failure (on the field) if you follow this protocol.
 
VenezuelanD said:
I'd like to add a couple of things from a rental house perspective (we have gone through hundreds of SDHC cards, CF cards, and many XQD, CFast, P2, SxS, SSDs etc):

There are a few different types of failure:
1. Mechanical failure - bent pins, broken cards, melted cards (yes I said melted) etc. This is probably the most common failure we see as a rental house (because never underestimate the power of people to destroy gear). Unless you're dealing with bent CF pins on the camera side it usually means the failure does not happen unnoticed. IE: Card wont read so you can't start recording. As far as failures go, as long as the damage does not happen to a card that is already full it usually results in little data loss.

2. Data Corruption - Almost always user error. This might be the second most common failure we see. Usually on the lower end cameras using consumer level cards. This failure can be catastrophic or it can be relatively minor. I know of one client who insisted having the largest cards possible...they were from out of country and were shooting over a week and didn't want to dump any material. They lost almost 3 days of their shoot when in their hurry to swap batteries the operator didn't shut down the camera or stop recording. Most common cause of data corruption is power interruption. With higher end cards this usually means you may lose anywhere from a few seconds to a minute of the footage being recorded. With lower end cameras this could corrupt your whole card. Many times just inserting the card back into the camera may fix it. Sometimes data recovery programs recover most or some of the data. Another one we ran into is malware or viruses from the dumping computer corrupting or deleting data from the card. You should always use the write protect on the card when possible. Once a card is designated to be used for camera only that camera should be ever writing to the card. Write on camera, remove from camera, copy protect, copy data to computer, back up data, insert card in camera again (after removing the copy protect) and format in camera. Nothing but that camera should ever write a single bit to that card.

(One last bit specially with newer standards like when CFast first came out: Different card manufacturers may use different memory controllers and they may not play nice with all cameras at first. We had an issue were early Ursa cameras would brick Sandisk CFast cards and we knew the cards were good as they were bought when we got our Amira and had been working just fine. Turns out the Ursa didn't like Sandisk cards but preffered Lexar cards...well apparently the Amira didn't like some Lexar cards (certain models) it was nightmare)

3. Quality control failure - Counter fit cards, bad cards out of the factory. I think this is the biggest failure you read/see online. Its more common with consumer cards than professional media. Usually due to counterfit cards which can look just like the real deal (sometimes they're just older legit cards that have been repackaged as a faster card...this kind is the worst for people using higher end consumer cameras as the card may appear to work fine until you reach its write capacity). Anyways this one is also the easiest to remedy:
NEVER use new media without doing a read/write test. And I mean a full read/write test. You should always (and I can't emphasize always enough) fill out every card you intend to use on the field fully at highest quality possible on the camera you intend to use it. Leave it recording until the very end and the camera stops recording due to insufficient memory. Then take the card and use the card reader you intend to use with it, and download it fully to your computer. Do this at least once and you can be certain the card will work properly.
Oh yeah and never skimp on media. Don't go through best buy or some electronics store, buy media from professional camera resellers; B&H, AbelCine, Adorama, Sammy's, EVS, etc. I'd even avoid Amazon unless you know what you're doing (don't buy from amazon affiliates but from amazon directly).


If you test your cards when you get them, always use copy protection when available, don't let your camera run out of power/yank cards out while still writing to them, and don't physically abuse your cards then your failure rate should be extremely low. In fact I would feel confident enough in saying you're more likely to experience the occasional camera hardware failure than you are card failure (on the field) if you follow this protocol.
Click to expand...

So you are saying I won't ever have a card fail if I know what I'm doing and don't do what some users have done? That still sounds like a risk if I'm shooting a wedding and you only have one chance.
 
Dealing with students we see very little of #1, lots of #2 and before we started to loan the students cards lots of #3.

Of the cards that we loan out, we have had very few real card failures in the last 6 years with our JVC HM700CHU cameras. The few #1 condition is usually because they are carrying cards in their pockets and not in the case we provide. #2 is often fixed by running the repair utility built into the camera. And #3 is of course buy good cards from proper resellers.
 
Greg_E said:
Dealing with students we see very little of #1, lots of #2 and before we started to loan the students cards lots of #3.

Of the cards that we loan out, we have had very few real card failures in the last 6 years with our JVC HM700CHU cameras. The few #1 condition is usually because they are carrying cards in their pockets and not in the case we provide. #2 is often fixed by running the repair utility built into the camera. And #3 is of course buy good cards from proper resellers.
Click to expand...

so after I film move to tab so it's in lock position? won't that mean I can't transfer the files to the computer?
 
offbeatbryce said:
So you are saying I won't ever have a card fail if I know what I'm doing and don't do what some users have done? That still sounds like a risk if I'm shooting a wedding and you only have one chance.
Click to expand...
Any card can fail at any time. For that matter, tape cameras could fail. And film cameras could fail. Sometimes you get back to the lab and find out that there was a hair in the gate and all your film is covered with a hair, or a piece of grit got in there and now your film's all scratched.

It's life. Occasionally things happen. We've always had to deal with it -- you will always have to deal with it.

What VenezuelanD laid out are some excellent best practices to minimize the risk. Card failure is already pretty rare, and if you eliminate the foolish things people do, you minimize that risk to microscopic. But there's still a chance. Just like there's a chance you'll be struck by lightning while filming that wedding -- there's still a chance.

There's no guarantees in life, other than that nobody makes it out alive.
 
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