SDHC card failure rate

offbeatbryce said:
so why have I read horror stories about where people use the qualified cards, shoot correctly and handle the cards correctly and still there are data corruptions?
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Generally because the people who don't know what they're doing, think that they know what they're doing, and they screwed it up, and they insisted "no I didn't."

No technology is absolutely foolproof. If you're that concerned about card failures, you can always sell your equipment and replace it with P2 cameras -- those have been time-tested and battle-proven for over a dozen years and it's the most bulletproof recording system ever developed. Even so, I imagine there's somebody out there somewhere who's had an issue with a P2 card.
 
OK, lock position is a nice concept but it isn't perfect... It will mark the card for no writes, but only if the reader actually obeys. The other thing we have found is a huge performance hit in both Sony Catalyst Browse and Media Composer when you try to copy the data from the card to a storage space with the slide in the lock position. No idea why, but it takes 10 to 20 times longer when you go to copy (in Browse) or after linking you go to consolidate (in Media Composer) to your storage. Baffled us for a good few days until I tried the lock switch and then the data flowed like normal.

One of the reasons Browse gets slow is (I think) because it is always ready to write data back to the clip (change clip properties, in/out points, etc.). No idea why MC slows down on the transcodes, but we have been able to prove this without fault. Again it might be wanting the opportunity to write to the card, even though there is no evidence that simply linking the media ever actually tries to write to the card.

We have been using Maxell branded cards for many years, when we couldn't get those I switched to Sony branded cards. Our cameras record XDCam EX at 35mbps so not really taxing a modern card, original spec. was for class 6 cards. Yes we are only working in HD but our cards have 50 to 100 cycles on them now, with way more insertions than data cycles over the past more than 4 years (Sony) or 6 years (Maxell).

As far as stories of dead cards, they do indeed die, from no fault of the user. Lots of reasons and only a few preventable. There is no perfect mass produced electronic device, but these modern cards are pretty close. Generally speaking, if you take a new card and format in camera, then record the full card worth of video, and then do this a couple more times, the card should be pretty reliable if you care for it.

So far out of the about 800 cards we bought, I've had one or maybe two that really failed after years of use. I did have about 100 of the Maxell fail right out of the package, they were warped and would not slide into the media slots on the camera properly. We flexed them back and forth the straighten the plastic, and most of them worked fine after what should have torn the chips off their little ball grid array solder points. The rest went back for warranty replacement since they were in the first 2 weeks of receiving them. Our Tape Services Inc. sales rep. was great and so was the Maxell regional rep. The Sony cards which were about 400 never had any problems, they were just correct out of the package and have worked great since.

This is my experience so far.
 
Barry_Green said:
If you're that concerned about card failures, you can always sell your equipment and replace it with P2 cameras -- those have been time-tested and battle-proven for over a dozen years and it's the most bulletproof recording system ever developed. Even so, I imagine there's somebody out there somewhere who's had an issue with a P2 card.
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One of our local stations shoots on cameras that use P2, they've had a few failures and of those I think every one was replaced under warranty. But the failures are few and far between.

The other stations shoots on the same JVC cameras we use, and they have had extremely few problems and didn't mention anything with cards when I asked a few weeks ago (because we are having a few camera problems).
 
Greg_E said:
One of our local stations shoots on cameras that use P2, they've had a few failures and of those I think every one was replaced under warranty. But the failures are few and far between.

The other stations shoots on the same JVC cameras we use, and they have had extremely few problems and didn't mention anything with cards when I asked a few weeks ago (because we are having a few camera problems).
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sounds like each person here has a different story. I'm just going to stick to dual slot recording for a shoot that is a one time thing, that way I have a backup.
 
offbeatbryce said:
so why have I read horror stories about where people use the qualified cards, shoot correctly and handle the cards correctly and still there are data corruptions?
Click to expand...

Personally, I think a big part of it is people not formatting their cards in camera before EVERY shoot. The formatting makes sure that the camera and the card are working together and ensures that no file garbage is on the card. ( no partially formatted cards, no bad file deletions, no incorrect formatting for the camera you are working with, etc... ) I know a couple of shooters that never format their cards, and I expect this to bite them in the *ss one of these days.
 
offbeatbryce said:
so why have I read horror stories about where people use the qualified cards, shoot correctly and handle the cards correctly and still there are data corruptions?
Click to expand...

1. Anecdotal information is often flawed. I used to deal with customer issues where 'the customer did nothing wrong - used all the correct procedures'. Most often, after questioning them for some time, eventually it comes out that they did not follow a procedure or just lied about what they did.

2. You can't know that you handled SDHC cards correctly. Electrostatic discharge can be unseen and un-felt, yet damage electronics.

3. Cards just get corrupted. The data is stored by holding tiny charges of electrons. That tiny charge can get corrupted by particles that radiate from the plastic packaging and from particles from space.

Note that SDHC (or any FLASH device) is not to be used for long term storage. Since the information is stored by tiny charges, these charges are slowly lost over time and the data will get lost over time.
 
Paul F said:
1. Anecdotal information is often flawed. I used to deal with customer issues where 'the customer did nothing wrong - used all the correct procedures'. Most often, after questioning them for some time, eventually it comes out that they did not follow a procedure or just lied about what they did.

2. You can't know that you handled SDHC cards correctly. Electrostatic discharge can be unseen and un-felt, yet damage electronics.

3. Cards just get corrupted. The data is stored by holding tiny charges of electrons. That tiny charge can get corrupted by particles that radiate from the plastic packaging and from particles from space.

Note that SDHC (or any FLASH device) is not to be used for long term storage. Since the information is stored by tiny charges, these charges are slowly lost over time and the data will get lost over time.
Click to expand...

Considering I have no real advantage of using relay recording where if one card fills up it goes to next I don't ever see why I'd use two cards and record in relay mode. I have like 5 hour cards so I have enough space to record simultaneously on both
 
I will add one more scary detail for SDXC cards. Recently bought a Sandisk Ultra 64GB SDXC card from Officeworks (Australia). This was to be used to send some footage to a client - not to be used as a media card. Anyway I could not get the card to mount on my mac via a Lexar card reader (usually the reader lights up as it reads the card). I thought the reader was at fault but no it worked with other cards. So I thought maybe I should format the card in my Canon C100. BIG MISTAKE. Turned on the camera and placed the card into one of the empty slots. Immediately the Camera died. Took the c100 to local dealer who sent it to Canon who had to replace the entire power board - It was as dead as a doornail. Cost $500 AUD.

Now I gave the card to the techy at the dealership and he has not yet found out a way to check the card but we all agree that the card it was most likely the cause of the problem - short - whatever. So in future with all new cards I will test them first in the reader to see if all is well before I put the into a Camera.

I will post back when I hear from the tech guy.
 
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