Flash cards die one after another

[Lucas28]

Again a flash card stopped working. This time it's a PQI compact flash card from the F1 series.
So this is the third card in a short time that gave up the battle.
Some weeks ago two cards from A-data broke. One 4 Gb compact flash card and one 4 Gb SD card. The last one lost its write protect slider, so the data could be saved.

I know, flash cards aren't expensive any more, so what's the catch? Answer: the data gets lost.
Now I ordered 'industrial' cards from Advantech, I don't want my photos to get lost in space again.

Anyone else here experienced the same problems?

 

[costadinos]

I've had at least one bad experience with every memory card I had that wasn't either SanDisk or Lexar (Hama, A-data, Apacer, even Kingston). I'd suggest you stick with these two, they more than worth the extra money, especially if you are using them for important projects...

 

[The Hat]

I am sorry for the loss of your photos but why are you storing them on of all things a flash card ?

They would be far safer on an external hard drive or DAT tape, even CD’s are not the best place for long time storage so I imagine the storage life of an unused flash card would be months rather than years.

I would recommend using an old EIDE hard drive format to Fat 32 file system and that should good for a very long time and by then something more reliable may come along, Floppy disks used to be great till the digital camera came on the scene and made the file sizes huge..

 

[stratman]

They would be far safer on an external hard drive or DAT tape, even CD’s are not the best place for long time storage

What's DAT Tape, grandpa?

I would recommend using an old EIDE hard drive format to Fat 32 file system and that should good for a very long time and by then something more reliable may come along,

EIDE? Talk about planned obsolescence. Yes to a hard drive solution but tepid no to EIDE which is an additional expense and hassle for connectivity as motherboards drop IDE ports and become solely SATA-based.

Concerning CD/DVD's -- Use quality disks such as Taiyo Yuden and monitor for data degradation.

 

[turbguy]

Again a flash card stopped working. This time it's a PQI compact flash card from the F1 series.
So this is the third card in a short time that gave up the battle.
Some weeks ago two cards from A-data broke. One 4 Gb compact flash card and one 4 Gb SD card. The last one lost its write protect slider, so the data could be saved.

I know, flash cards aren't expensive any more, so what's the catch? Answer: the data gets lost.
Now I ordered 'industrial' cards from Advantech, I don't want my photos to get lost in space again.

Anyone else here experienced the same problems?

The SD card slider works the same as the break-out tab on old VHS tapes. Just use a small peice of material securely taped in place to replace the slider in the position you desire. There is no "electronic" connection to the interior. As to the failure of the CF cards, what is your evidence of failure? "Card not recognized" or some other warning?

 

[The Hat]

What's DAT Tape, grandpa?

OK Sonny,
A Dat Tape is Digital Audio Tape and maybe

when you’re grown up you’ll be let play with one, there’re the dog’s Liathróidí for long term storage.

As for EIDE drives, yes there’re obsolete but still very useful if you have one lying around not been used, there’re strong and they are ultra-reliable and can be connect to the computer by way of USB.
............................................

As for the quality of CD’s yes they’ll see me down but not much good for the grand kids, they work one day but not the next, expect to get 10 years out of them reliability !

 

[Lucas28]

The flash cards are not used for tong time storage but short time, in the camera. In this case All the photos of Easter got lost, but what if it was a wedding photo shoot? Ouch!

With the large flash cards nowadays photos of the whole vacation fit on one card.

Turbguy: I tried to repair the write protect slider with aluminium tape, but the card became to thick to fit in the camera again. No big deal, the data didn't get lost anyway.
But compact flash cards lost their data. CF error in the camera and unreadable flies in the computer slot. The cards couldn't be formatted again.

 

[stratman]

OK Sonny,
there’re the dog’s Liathróidí for long term storage.

More like the dog's magairlean.

I used DAT in the old days. I still have a Colorado tape backup and a dozen or more mini-cartouches from the 90's somewhere in a box.

 

[mikling]

Do you use the disconnect USB utility prior to removing the card. Did they become corrupted or just gave up the ghost.
I used to have some problems with corrupted cards a loooong time ago when using the reader on my Epson printer. It looks like you're using a reader off a printer. Hmmm.....
Then the potential for a bad external reader exists as well...went through that one too.

With electronics ...anything is possible. Even the "light bulb" that simple thing now has integrated electronics. I used to be able to "look" at the filament and see if it was good.

 

[Lucas28]

I finally received the new flash cards. On the photo left the dreaded PQI card, on the right a new industrial grade card.

The camera only accepts cards with a maximum of 2 GB.

The industrial grade card should be reliable. I noticed that the parallel connector is of much better quality. What will happen after hundreds of times rewriting? I'll let you know.