Ever had a card fail?

Have you ever had a card fail, and could you recover the images?

  • Never had a failure

    Votes: 97 66.9%

  • Had a failure on a cheap card, recovered the images

    Votes: 7 4.8%

  • Had a failure on a cheap card, couldn't recover the images

    Votes: 12 8.3%

  • Had a failure on a branded card, recovered the images (Kingston, Sandisk, etc)

    Votes: 16 11.0%

  • Had a failure on a branded card, couldn't recover the images (Kingston, Sandisk, etc)

    Votes: 13 9.0%
  • Total voters
    145
dakid

dakid

Messages
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Yes
I'm trying to work out whether to go for fewer large cards, or more smaller ones ... so I'm interested in who's had failures with them, and whether they were recoverable?
 
dakid said:
I'm trying to work out whether to go for fewer large cards, or more smaller ones ... so I'm interested in who's had failures with them, and whether they were recoverable?
Click to expand...

Never had a card fail only time I have coorupted one was by removing t before the buffer had cleared, and old D60 V.slow
 
I've never had a card fail, but I only use branded cards (currently all Sandisk) and don't want to run the risk of losing everything so have a load of 'small' 4gb cards and back up the HD regularly.

One of my friends described it as paranoia, to which i replied - yes, until something breaks when it becomes a damn good plan.
 
Also, never had a failure, even on older cameras.

Guess I must be lucky!
 
My wife had one fail in her canon Ixus - good brand as well. This resulted in lots of swearing but managed to recover every photo with software from the web which cost me £10!!
I only uses branded cards and this is the only failure I have ever had since we have both gone to digital.
 
madhouse said:
I've never had a card fail, but I only use branded cards (currently all Sandisk) and don't want to run the risk of losing everything so have a load of 'small' 4gb cards and back up the HD regularly.

One of my friends described it as paranoia, to which i replied - yes, until something breaks when it becomes a damn good plan.
Click to expand...


My own ideas precisely :thumbs:
 
I've only ever had a card fail on 1 occasion. That occasion just happened to be the first wedding I ever shot and I had 2 cards fail in 2 separate cameras. I had a CF card failure in my D300 and an SD card failure in my D80. One was a Kingston, the other was a Toshiba. No idea why the 2 cards failed but luckily I managed to recover all the images after a lot of sweating and panicing.

I now only use Sandisk cards and have never had a problem.
 
* while crossing fingers * - Never had a card fail, all of mine are Sandisk because I thought they were very good
 
Only a couple of "Corsair" SD cards (widely available in the USA). They fell apart (case split). I'll stick to CF now.
 
I had a Crucial CF card fail about 5 years ago in a Canon Powershot A series camera. I was able to recover the images with additional software and the card was replaced no questions asked by Crucial. I've had no problems with the other Crucial cards I had although I now use Sandisk. Because of that experience however, I go for several smaller cards rather than one big one.
 
Never had a card fail, but I will not use cards lager than 4gb just incase.
 
If you can recover the images its not a card failure - its usually corruption on the card and can be caused by unplugging the card without using the eject function or can be caused by switching off a PC / Laptop rather than using shutdown as well as loads of other things :)
 
Not yet [touch wood] - have only ever used Sandisk Extreme IIIs (4GB & 8GB).....
 
I had 2 Sandisk CFs that corrupted some images with a big grey square over the entire thing br a bit on the side. Most images were ok but those ones were long gone! Also had a 16GB Kingston off the bay that would only take 33 images. I suspect it was fake though.
 
I had a 2GB Datawrite CF card that was DOA four years ago. Other than that I have never had a card go bad on me in almost ten years of using memory cards. Nowadays I use 2 X Transcend 32GB 133X CF cards, which I've had for around 18 months, and used in four different cameras, all without incident. I also have Sandisk 8GB Extreme III 30 MB/s and some Transcend Class 6 SDHC cards (16GB and 8GB). Not a peep from any of them. Video, tick; 10 FPS and a big dump from my 1D3, 7D or 5D2, tick; no issues.

When 512MB were all the rage everyone cautioned against 1GB cards. This has repeated itself with every iteration of increased capacity, with doom mongers predicting the end of the world every time a larger card is released. Well 18 months ago I thought "b****r that!" and just bit the bullet and went for 32GB cards. I have no regrets. I probably wouldn't go larger than that because I simply have no need, but I certainly wouldn't fanny about with 4GB cards any more, not with a 7D and 5D2 churning out GB upon GB of raw files.
 
Had a "datawrite" card thats flakey (long thrown away). Only use Sandisk now, taken about 30,000 images on various 2/4gb CF's.
 
I have never had a problem but even as a rank amature I keep 2x8gb sandisk cards in my bag, along with my old 2x2gb sandisks just in case!
 
I had two Lexar CF cards fail within a month of each other, I tried recovery software with no joy so sent them to Lexar who also failed to recover any images. One card just lost me some snaps but the other had a series of shots (bird behaviour) that I had been trying to capture for some time and that I have been unable to get again in the following four years... needless to say I don't use Lexar cards anymore.
 
My wife had an sdhc card fail. It fell apart, the lock mechanism flew apart and disappeared. The card is now useless. I cant remember the make although it sat on my desk for ages. I know it was a 4GB card and was about 2 years old.

Apart from my earliest cameras which used those old thin wafer cards, the name escapes me at the moment (seems to be an age thing). I have always used CF cards and so far not had a problem in about 10 years.

For the last 4 years I have been using an 8GB Sandisk Extreme III and put a minimum of 25,000 images through it. I get about 900 RAW images on it at ago, although the in camera counter say 590 when it is empty, and have a couple of old 4GB cards in reserve.


Ivor
 
Since 1998 I've used microdrives, cf cards (credit card sized ones), cf cards, sd cards and, touch wood, haven't lost a frame....yet
Happily using Sandisk 16gb/8gb at the moment.
 
Had a CF fail. It was an Ebay Sandisk fake. Supposed to be a 4Gb Extreme 4 and was 4Gb but speed was not at all extreme.

I knew it was fake before it failed, and managed to get my money back, but kept the card anyway. Now in a landfill site somewhere!
 
postcardcv said:
I had two Lexar CF cards fail within a month of each other, I tried recovery software with no joy so sent them to Lexar who also failed to recover any images. One card just lost me some snaps but the other had a series of shots (bird behaviour) that I had been trying to capture for some time and that I have been unable to get again in the following four years... needless to say I don't use Lexar cards anymore.
Click to expand...

It wasn't with one of the cameras listed here, was it?

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/c...oryid=139&modelid=11154&keycode=2112&id=27683
 
Only card failure I ever had was when 1st starting out. I had been using card prob 3 occasions. I was then doing some house cleaning on p.c. and decided to re-format my card. In the p.c. slot. ***! why I dont know it just seemed like a good idea. It would not work in the camera again.
I am lead to believe its a different format process, never found out true reason but since then, 10 years on, never had anothe fail once I have down loaded and backed up pics I use the camera to clean and format.
 
I had a sandisk extreme III fail
Couldn't fault the customer service though.
I couldn't recover the images so they sent me a copy of their "industrial" image recovery programme.
I got them all back and the last 2 were half image half black, rather like the old film used to be sometimes.
Oh, and no problem getting a replacement card either :thumbs:
 
I've had a sandisk extreme 4 fail on me.. could read the images off the card but could no longer write anything or format the card. I tried to format on the camera and computer but no joy.
 
Nop never.
 
I have never had a card fail on me.

Had a couple of corrupt images, though I have never figured out how they happened. I didn't try too recover the images as the shot wasn't of anything important.
 
I had a failure on a 4GB Seagate microdrive a few years ago, lost some pretty important stuff so then moved onto Sandisk CF cards and touch wood all has been well since.
 
Yep - Kingston 16 meg 133x. These just don't work properly on Nikon bodies - you get error messages, and lost images within a few frames.

I know when these were posted in Suppliers as a "Bargain" loads of us had problems (mainly Nikon owners) but IIRC some Canon owners has issues too.
 
Yes had a Sandisk fail one time and occasional errors always managed
to retrieve stuff with photos rescue software still would never only use one big card
 
Had a Sandisk Extreme III CF corrupt and was able to recover the contents.

Also had two Sandisk Extreme III SD cards physically fail - the lock tab broke off in the read only position.

Still would only ever use Sandisk... although did note the Nikon stand at Focus used exclusively Lexar UDMA cards
 
I've had two Sandisk SD cards fail fairly recently, however never had a single CF card fail on of any brand/unbranded! CF FTW!!!
 
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