Memory card failure

I have just had a nasty shock, taking a few still life shots for focus stacking and using live view when the screen went black with “unable to process image”. The camera had seized with the mirror up, switching off and on made no difference. Taking the battery out and putting it back luckily restored function but there was a message about memory card failure and no images. Taking the card out and putting it back restored everything except the ones I had just taken, so thank goodness they weren’t of anything special.

Stupid me, I had recorded only to the one card but from now on will save as RAW to both. To copy images to the computer I generally transfer the card as it is a bit of a faff using a cable but this the second card to fail, the first had a damaged contact so maybe leaving the cards in is safer. Any ideas?

Haven't had that happen to me yet, trying to avoid saying exactly what, tempting faith and all that.
So I'm of no help.
But I do have a question for you, does writing raw to both fill the buffer quicker ?
I usually shoot raw + jpeg to 1 card.
After trying out my 70-200mm I found I was missing shots due to buffer being full.
Will try just jpeg next time just to see if it allows more shots before filling up.
Not my usual way of shooting as I only edit raw files, might change that for sports and wildlife. ?
Derek

Probably Derek, but 95% of my shots are single, very rarely use rapid fire but as I have one of my presets set to tracking with continuous shutter I could make that save to one card only.

If it's the K-1 I think you'll find there is only enough hardware to write to a single card at a time, so writing to both cards is slower because of the switching back and forth.

I write jpegs and raw to BOTH cards without issue. But I don't normally use rapid fire modes.

There was a debate about taking the card out to transfer data to a computer vs. using the cable a while back - the card reader method won by a large margin.

Given that removing the card(s) is a pain in the parts, we now have evidence that they get damaged too. So what is so disagreeable about using the USB cable? I have three, permanently connected to the back of the computer: one for the K3ii, one for the K5 and one for the *istD (which uses CF cards). The cards only come out when they are full. Then I label them with date from - to and put them back into the cardboard and plastic retail pouch in which they were originally sold.

How many cards do you have at this stage David?
I take my cards out, pc has a built in card reader, copy files to pc then card back in camera and reformat.

Before I had a DSLR and now still for work I have used a pocket LUMIX which must be eight years old at least and I have always taken the card out for transferring images. It still has the original card and there has never been an issue. I think I will go back to the cable now though for the K1 and maybe for the LUMIX as well. David, I like your idea of using your cards just once, it is a simple and foolproof way of ensuring you don’t lose images but it could get expensive.

I do exactly this and have done from my first digital camera ( Ist'd ) with not a single, so far !! card failure.

Exactly what I have always done. No failures.

Me too but the Write Protect switch has fallen out of a couple of Sandisk Extreme cards (2GB & 8 GB) if that counts as a failure?

Well up till now I have never had a failure either, except the damaged contact issue but that one still worked in camera, so it is easy to get complacent. I am just glad it didn’t happen on a trip.

I don’t format the card until I am sure all the images are stored on two external hard drives.

Same here with the 8GB card in an old Canon P&S from around 2012 - I regularly take the card out and put it in the laptop card slot with no problems.