SanDisc Memory Card failure

Last weekend I drove to a mountainous area about 150 kilometers north of Trondheim, for a photo excursion. I brought my 67ii kit and the K20D. I had a wonderful day in the mountains and shot about 326 images with the K20D in RAW+ (thus 652 in total).

When I came home I eagerly plugged the K20D into my Mac, but only seven pairs of RAW+ images showed up on the screen, the other 319 RAW+ images would not load. I tried loading the images onto my other Mac's, without any luck, I only got a message about the files being corrupt or damaged. Even though photo is not something I make any money from, only a passionate hobby, the possibility of having lost most of my images filled me with dread.

But in the end I successfully managed to load the files onto a PC, by copying first the jpeg's in small numbers (10 at the time), and then the RAW files in a similar manner. I felt great relief when I finally managed to import ALL the files into my Aperture Library

The memory card has been used in my K20D since 2009, the camera has seen about 12000 accentuations.

The SanDisc card (SanDisc Extreme III, SDHC, 30mb/s, 16gb) is possibly corrupt or damaged. Is this breakdown something to be expected based on my moderate usage during four years ?

I am grateful for any advice on this matter.

Bjørn

All memory cards have a finite life. I format them every time I re-use them, in the camera of course. This minimises any chance of error, but at the first sign of any glitch they are discarded and replaced. They are too fundamental to the imaging process to mess about.

Not usual for this to happen. But it can. Now You have your files. I would return the offending card to Sandisk under a warranty repair/replacement check. As the card is still under warranty. I wouldn't risk using it again.

SanDisk Extreme® Products Warranty Period (Years)
SanDisk Extreme® III SDHC™ Card Lifetime** ; 30***
SanDisk Extreme® III 30MB/s Edition SDHC™ Card Lifetime** ; 30***
SanDisk Extreme® SDHC™ Card Lifetime** ; 30***

The cost of returning the card by the only method Sandisk accept is more than the cost of a new card

As they don't make 30mb?s cards anymore they might replace it with a 90mb/s card, that's what they did with me making it well worth it.

Thank you very much for your helpful advice!

I need to contemplate returning the card to SanDisk, or just buy a new one. Are there other brands of SD cards that are worth considering as an alternative to SanDisk?

Bjørn

The cost of memory cards has fallen dramatically over recent years so that they are now cheap compared with the VALUE of the images we store on them.
I therefore tend to use a new card every time and keep the used cards containing the files as my 3rd backup.

Meanwhile good luck with the current images, but if it were up to me I'd just buy some more !

Best regards
Peter

Bjorn - I'm currently using PRETEC sd cards. They are shipped out from an address in Denmark, although the cards are manufactured in Taiwan. Currently, they offer a card with a 667x speed. Google them for more info. I had a card that had a faulty weld, and they replaced it without fuss.

As the weather is on the up and up here, the events calander is packed with fashion shows, auto meets, boat shows, music events and currently Oktoberfest events.

I carry and use three bodies. A weekend will often see close to 700+ images, often more. So three new cards a week is what I would be looking at if I followed your work flow.

Best regards

SD cards are not permanent and if stored for long periods of time the data on them can become unreadable. They may not be ideal for long term backup.

Hard drives and cloud storage are even cheaper!