Photography

You’re doing everything right and sadly even the best cards go bad and get corrupted over time. According to the standards of flash memory they should last on average 10 years, but this also depends on how much and how often data is going through it. I’ve had a couple of my heaviest used sd cards go bad just sitting around. If the micro sd isn’t that old and hasn’t seen near as much data go through it I’d say you’d be fine with that. I’d be a touch hesitant to buy cards at storefront prices but if they price match and you’ve got time, it couldn’t hurt.

SD cards definitely seem to be a lot more unreliable than other standards such as CFe. Always shoot to two card slots simultaneously if it's for work.

You've just been using the one card?

Yeah, don't do that.

Everything breaks eventually. Things you use thousands of times a week break sooner.

Sometimes the filesystem itself (rather than the card) can crash. I had this problem on my first photography expedition after buying a new one which came pre-formatted with ExFAT. Fortunately I managed to salvage most of the photos with recovery software (exfat-utils on my Linux computer). I reformatted the card as VFAT (as I've read that ExFAT is more prone to crashes) and have been using it ever since.

Every couple years I buy 4-6 new cards around Black Friday/Cyber Monday time. Usually spend $150-200 for the piece of mind since I usually shoot about 10k photos a month.

All storage media will eventually die either due to use, manufacturing defect or time.

To reduce the chances of it happening buy good quality cards (Sandisk Extreme, Prograde, Sony Tough, Lexar pro etc..) and upgrade/replace them occasionally. Modern professional level SD cards are designed to handle a huge amount of writes so most cards can last years of normal use.

I always make sure to format my cards in camera whenever I want to erase all of the photos on them.

So you haven’t thought about why pro cameras have two cars slots? Since you are a pro I would recommend using them:) Everything fails sooner or later.

Yes. Replace them every 3 years.

Prograde 64gb V90 cards on sale right now on B&H , those are very good , though may be faster than you need for a 6dii

Yes. All flash memory eventually goes bad, Those little switches can only be flipped from 1 to 0 and 0 to 1 so many millions of times. They can also only be read so many millions of times even if you don't change the bits.
When I have to setup digital signage that plays back off of SD cards we start by getting high endurance cards, and then if you have say a looping video. You don't just put the video on there and loop it. You put several copies of the video and you have it play copy 1, then 2, then 3... then loop to the beginning of the list because then it spreads those reads out over the whole card and it lasts longer before it crashes.
As soon as you have errors with a card replace it. Depending on how heavy you use the card start putting retirement dates on them for some that might be every 6 months, for some that might be every year or two. They are cheap just get rid of it before it goes bad, always have spares.

My floppy A discs from 2006 don’t work anymore so…

Couple of questions — Do you always format cards In Camera? Also, do you Chimp? That is, deleting images In Camera on the fly.

Always format in camera, dont do deletions via computer. And don’t Chimp. Just about everyone I know that has had card complaints chimps like crazy. Just leave the trash on the card. They will be gone when you format. If you are shooting so much the card fills up, get more cards. Also don’t shoot to the brink, meaning don’t use cards till they’re nearly full. Give the data some breathing room.

I recently retired from product shooting, and memory had gotten so cheap for the smaller cards that we used a freshly tested card for each shoot. Part of our backup plan. We just charged the small archiving fee back to the client. Also, the comments here about dual slots should be considered for the future.

Just don't buy knock-off cards. They will definitely fail much quicker (talking from experience).

funny you should say that, i used mine about 3 weeks ago on a job only to discover that some of the first few images were corrupt. I did a full format of the sdcard and its been fine since so not sure what went wrong.

They can, tricky little shits.

https://preview.redd.it/z5qd1vb8tc0c1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4436bcd845c47f6dd83e5218ab3d16d8a533ea04

it is expensive but said to be tough.

Sandisk anything likes to break and a few cards from other companies over the years had manufacturing defects and had to be recalled

yea they do. I lost a bunch of pics I took on a day trip because the card couldn't be read.

Fortunately it's rare, but it does happen.

I lost a full day of shots when I was on a cruise. Not a paid gig, but lots of shots of the boat, people, our excursion.

A few years later I found a tool that can recover files from a SD card. I was able to recover a few dozen, but I shot hundreds that day.

It was already abandonware and stopped working with some windows update.

SD cards have a limited number of write cycles. Heavy use can exceed this and result in corrupted data. If this should happen again, instead of reshooting, first take a look at data recovery software. EaseUS and Recuva are two companies that have this software but there are others. I have used Recuva to recover photographs from a corrupted SD card.

Paid gigs require a double card slot camera. I always download card 1 to my laptop (travel/paid gigs) then copy to my external HD, before reformatting both cards and continuing.....good practice to get use to, having multiple copies after downloading as well

There are SD cards with built-in WiFi module to backup to external device, such as laptop or iPad.

If your camera is equipped with WiFi module or Bluetooth and it allows tethered shooting, you may save photos to your laptop or iPad when shooting. Or may be you may connect and download photos a bit later.

There are devices that allow a backup of SD card info. Such as external HDD or SSD boxes with SD card slot.

If your camera is equipped with dual SD card slots, you may use one of those modes: RAW to 1 card and JPEG to 2 card, or backup mode. In first case, even if one of your cards fails, you still have info from another card, and with modern cameras JPEGs are much much better than in elder times, especially if you have got Fuji camera from 2014 and newer. And backup mode is self explanatory. Make sure to carry a battery charger and several fully charged batteries with you, because writing on both cards drains a battery much faster.

If your camera has neither WiFi nor dual SD card slots, get a camera with both options.

Use SD cards from the best brands: SanDisk, for example.

Yes, they have a write limit and heat can do them in.

I recently had a micro SD card fail after 3 years of use in a dashcam. So, continuous writing the card in hot and cold conditions, the card began to slowly failed. The dashcam was nice enough to alert me to the impending failure, which I confirmed with Blackmagic Speed test, which failed to write to part of the card.

Sure, they will eventually fail. But you're talking about so many read-write cycles that it's much more likely the contacts or the plastic housing starts to fail as opposed to the storage in the card.

It's like wine it can go bad or be extra good it depends on how you store it.

This is why film is still better.

Is you available for an musician artist

As a part time professional photographer since 2010, I have yet to have a single card failure. I typically use my cards for several years, until the transfer speed is getting so behind par it seems foolish to keep using them.

Other than common sense stuff, I have one rule for them: Never ever delete a photo from the card in camera. In fact, I never "delete", only "format". Other working photographers I've talked to also practice this.

SD cards can “wear out” since they have a limited number of read/write cycles.

I just replaced all my SD cards because they were failing randomly. They were all 10 years old, so they were due.

If format them often in the camera that you use them with they can be used for a long time.

Do SD cards go bad?

Short answer: Yes

Long answer: Here are ways cards exhibit failure. Might be completely or partial.

1. Physical damage from wear, heat, mfg flaw, water, blunt force & static electricity.
2. File corruption occur with camera or pin contact issue.
3. Write cycle lifespan

SD cards are made of NAND flash chip which have different levels of write endurance depending which technology is used.

• SLC 100K write cycles
• MLC 10K
• TLC 3K
• QLC 1K

Example: Samsung STD or EVO card uses TLC chips making them super cheap and attractive to consumer. While their more expensive PRO card uses MLC that fewer people buy.

Most cards sold are TLC NAND with 3,000x write cycles. However, that is not a minimum cycle before failure but actually "MTBF". In other words 3K on average. It could survive much longer or fail sooner. All based on probability aka luck.

Lets be conservative assuming TLC will 90% survive 1K writes. If you fill up the card every day for work etc it will last about 3-years before you should think about replacing.

Do I need a new sd card?

SD cards are cheap. Your a PRO working for money. I would get replacement just in case but better yet a dual card camera.

I’m a heavy pro user and I’ve had maybe two cards actually fail in 15 years. But the first time it mattered (thankfully not the second).

I shoot about 100k photos a year but I also have way more cards than I need. I think I currently have 10x256GB SD cards, and 4x512GB CFExpress cards. So the wear is fairly spread out. I also only buy good cards, and always shoot to dual cards. I switched from CF to SD around 2020, which meant all new cards, and have slowly used more CFE cards since then too (first my R5 and now the new GFX). Meaning I’m not using anything ancient.

My workflow assumes cards will always fail, but I never actually worry about it.

Pretty sure all data storage has the possibility of malfunctioning some way or another some day. When the cloud dies someday we're screwed!

Depending on the type of shoot, there are two tips:

Smaller size SDs so that even if one corrupts, itself not 500GB of images lost, but 64. Rather have your shoot divided into several 64GB lots.

Shoot tethered to a laptop/tablet/(and now the new iphone15) using capture one so it goes into your catalog as well as on your card if your camera does mixed output.

To the best of my knowledge all non-volatile flash memory goes bad eventually. It cannot be prevented and can happen without warning. I suggest marking them with the date they were first used and just get rid of the old ones after a year or two if you use them heavily. It's a bit of a waste to throw out stuff before you know it's gone bad but it's pretty minor if this is how you make a living.

Also, a camera with multiple SD card slots can help. If you don't have one of those, buy multiple SD cards and just swap them out during the day. If one fails, you only loose so much.

Yes, sometimes they do. Sooner or later, they all will fail; good cards just last longer.

This is why pro cameras have two card slots, so you can have a duplicate on a 2nd card if 1st fails. I always write to both cards on my camera when I do paid gigs.