So I take hundreds of photos a day, 5 days a week for work and have never had this happen to me before. I was copying my work onto my computer after working all day and 3/4 of the way, my sd card got corrupted and lost the ability to view/download my photos. On my computer and even on the camera. It’s like the information was there, but my camera said “Can’t play back” or something when trying to view, and my computer just showed it empty.
Luckily it was my biggest client, so it was not an issue to go back to reshoot my shots needed. But I’m very worried it will happen again. I have a big shoot today, with a potential big new client, and can’t have this happen again. Do I need a new sd card? I only have another micro sd with the adapter, so I’m just debating going to get a new one right before my shoot.
Has this happened to anyone before? And how do I prevent this in the future?
Thank You
My floppy A discs from 2006 don’t work anymore so…
You still used floppy disks in 2006??
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.
It’s a good practice to reformat cards for this vary reason. Doesn’t hurt anything and moreso of a sanity check.
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.
I also do this, and also on Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
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.
I always make sure to format my cards in camera whenever I want to erase all of the photos on them.
So do I, but I also occasionally run TRIM on them through the card reader on my computer.
Is Sandisk Ultra a good enough card that can last long?
M SanDisks have all had a long life and get replaced periodically just so I can hold more photos on them if needed. I did have an issue with a brand-new Lexar once and thankfully it wasn’t a paying client, but personal use. However, I was taking shots of the first-time event for my youngest, so we’ll never have those photos.
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.
- Physical damage from wear, heat, mfg flaw, water, blunt force & static electricity.
- File corruption occur with camera or pin contact issue.
- 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.