Related
Taking delivery of my phone soon.
What's the latest on microSD cards?
Are 32GB worth it? Do they work?
Any particular minimum Class I should get, even if I have to get 16GB?
Thanks
M
Mus said:
Taking delivery of my phone soon.
What's the latest on microSD cards?
Are 32GB worth it? Do they work?
Any particular minimum Class I should get, even if I have to get 16GB?
Thanks
M
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
am using class 6 works fine.
I use an 8Gb, class 4 without any issues. Resco is installed on the card.
Although if your going to flash a ROM from a micro SD card use one < 8Gb.
Thanks,
Al
From my experience, it's not the class or size that matters. It's the make. (Obviously a smaller card with a higher class will have faster r/w speeds, but that's not usually a noticeable issue.)
I never buy any SD cards now that are not SanDisk, and I can't remember the last time I had one that didn't work.
Some brands seem to get a lot of complaints.
The class wouldn't really matter if you're just using it to store data/apps.
I use a Nokia N900 and run Android off the SD card. A higher class gives a better speed when running an O/S off of one. But using one to store data/apps wouldn't give a noticable advantage of one class than another.
Obviously the size does matter but depends on what you'll use it for.
Plus for flashing use < 8Gb.
Thanks,
Al
PS. I agree with the brands. I don't buy cheap non-branded ones. Although I've never had an issue with any of the 'cheap' ones.
The size of the card depends on your needs. If you cram a lot of stuff in there or apps, then aim for 16gb or 32gb.
You can find 32gb on amazon from $70 up (sandisk, kingston, dane elec -- those are deem legit 32gb cards) and most of them should give real class 4 performance (even when they're listed as class 2 like sandisk).
For me I like San Disk,but I want to test Toshiba 16GB Class4.The seller told me that Toshiba quality is good also and I decided to buy it.
Never had any problem with file transfer and running android on SD card.
I've used it 4 months now.So far so good.
I use a kingston 8gb class 4.. Never had any issues with performance
Thanks for all the replies guys.
I'll probably run Android off the card initially with the standard WM 6.5 tweaked. Maybe put some SatNav on there too.
As for Apps depends what I come across. For WM I have an old large build of offline Wikipedia and some dictionaries etc.
Ta
I had my 8GB SanDisk in my G1 for 2 years, then my HD2 for about 8 months, then randomly one day it stopped working.
If I plugged it in, all of my content appeared on the phone such as pictures. Then after about 30 seconds it would freeze, and then the phone would say no SD card is inserted. I managed to copy all of my pictures across on the PC luckily before it froze.
Granted it was old - but they do fail after a while.
Hello members,
Bought a new lg optimus one a few days ago. Came with a stock 2GB card and did not install anything much in it.
Just songs and a few apps from android market like - angry birds, handcent SMS etc..
Yesterday I saw this sd unmount problem for the first time.. Even the contacts in the contact list disappeared. But after a restart and all things came back to normal. Then again saw same things a few hours later.. But did not act on it and things became normal by itself!!
Can you please help me:
1) identify my sd card class?
2) identify if my phone is suffering from sd unmount problem?
3) solve this sd unmount problem(if any) with this stock card.
Hopping to get helped soon
Still awaiting help.. Please help guys.. :|
open the back cover and look at the sd card. The class of the card is written inside a small circle (the circle is not whole) [the sd cards of class 2,4,6 are common]
NOrmally class4 cards are reported to have issues. I myself have this problem on my CLass4 8gb san disk card.
A way to reduce sd unmounts is to install all the apps to phone memory and use the sd card only for read operations (like watching movies and listening to mp3's etc)
I have noticed sd unmounts while an app tries to write data to the sd card. I have never had any issues while reading from an sd card.
If the SD does not have the number inside the circle then its probably class 1. The stock SDs do not always work because they do not come from LG originally. They come from the your local LG retailer.
The solution is to go for a higher class. And not only the class, buy a MicroSDHC that is of a known brand. I had the same problem as you with my stock card and changed it directly because I had the same issue with my old GT540.
Apparently, android 2.1 and higher need fast cards for writing.
or u could try some custom rom's
cause my phone came with a samsung 2G SD and had unmount problems with stock rom
Guys which class card should I go with?? And apart from changing to a new card, is there any other option?
ragavbpl said:
Hello members,
Bought a new lg optimus one a few days ago. Came with a stock 2GB card and did not install anything much in it.
Just songs and a few apps from android market like - angry birds, handcent SMS etc..
Yesterday I saw this sd unmount problem for the first time.. Even the contacts in the contact list disappeared. But after a restart and all things came back to normal. Then again saw same things a few hours later.. But did not act on it and things became normal by itself!!
Can you please help me:
1) identify my sd card class?
2) identify if my phone is suffering from sd unmount problem?
3) solve this sd unmount problem(if any) with this stock card.
Hopping to get helped soon
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the default sd card provided by lg is class 2
stock rom has unmount problem so try custom rom
if u want to change sd card go for class 6 or 8 san disk works good
shhbz said:
the default sd card provided by lg is class 2
stock rom has unmount problem so try custom rom
if u want to change sd card go for class 6 or 8 san disk works good
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which custom ROM can help me and which also has a good battery backup? My girlfriend actually owns it who is a light user... She do not want to play high end games and all.. She just wants the phone to work good..
Also purchasing a class 6 would be out of budget for me.. But can a SanDisk 8gb sdhc class 4 card do some good?
ragavbpl said:
Which custom ROM can help me and which also has a good battery backup? My girlfriend actually owns it who is a light user... She do not want to play high end games and all.. She just wants the phone to work good..
Also purchasing a class 6 would be out of budget for me.. But can a SanDisk 8gb sdhc class 4 card do some good?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
go for void if u want battery http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=887281
as far as sd card is concerned just try the custom rom and see id the problem persist since she is not a heavy user she wont be needing 8 gb card as well untill unless she listen to songs. while sd card class 4 is good enough i am using that too san disk since other was out of my budget i bought it as i needed higher storage space but my unmount problem was solved flashing custom rom in my 2 gb sd card provided by lg
move all the apps to phone memory. this will reduce the sd card unmounts.
Hey there fellow XDA members.
I caught wind of the deal that is going on at "1saleaday" early this morning and wanted to hop on it right away, but i decided to ask here first for some more knowledgeable advice. I currently have the stock 8GB which if I'm not mistaken is a class 4. Would it be wise to switch to the 32GB class 4? I did my research on how Class 2 and 4 cards have better random access speed and random read/write than class 6 or 10 cards in general. Source
I'm mainly using it for flashing rom's and themes, photos, music, etc. So what class would you guys suggest? Also if anyone has jumped on the deal, is it legit? What are your experiences as far as shipping time?
Thanks for any info on this matter.
Finally, as far as making the switch from one memory card to another, is it just transferring the data "drag & drop" style? or is it more complex?
Link if interested
SanDisk 32GB Class 4 -$29.99 + $5 Shipping
I don't think you'll see a performance change going from 1 class 4 to another regardless of size, but I could be wrong.
as far as transferring data - yes. Drag and drop. I've copied whole sd card to the pc, put new card in, then copied data from pc to new card. But, you may have to do it in small parts at a time - I kept getting freezes and such but my card at the time was bad too (why I was switching) and my computer also wasnt at 100%
gk1984 said:
I don't think you'll see a performance change going from 1 class 4 to another regardless of size, but I could be wrong.
as far as transferring data - yes. Drag and drop. I've copied whole sd card to the pc, put new card in, then copied data from pc to new card. But, you may have to do it in small parts at a time - I kept getting freezes and such but my card at the time was bad too (why I was switching) and my computer also wasnt at 100%
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Speed wise i don't mind, as long as it works exactly like my current one but with more storage space I'm a happy camper.
Your a little late to the party. I started this thread at 2am this morning in the accessories sub forum.
so I just bought this card cause I use lots of storage space pretty quickly, My question is wtf is going on here? it just sticks on "checking for errors" and never gets past it, it mounted up once and while I was dumping files on it over USB from my computer (in usb mass storage mode) both it and my internal storage just disappeared, the copy operation failed, so I restarted the phone and I have yet to get the phone to mount it since then.
I'm running eclipse 1.3rc2, is this because of the sd flip-flop, the size of the card or the fact that it's class 10?
the card works perfectly fine in my camera, and in multiple PCs, but as soon as I stick it in my X2, it just doesn't want to work.
I noticed the stock SD card has a "bootable" partition flag, whereas this one doesn't. maybe this is my problem?
also what filesystem should I use, I run linux on my PCs so I can do whatever I want with it.
what if I just delete its partition table, put it in the phone and then let the phone format it? I've reformatted it with my PC and no dice.
Cheapxj said:
so I just bought this card cause I use lots of storage space pretty quickly, My question is wtf is going on here? it just sticks on "checking for errors" and never gets past it, it mounted up once and while I was dumping files on it over USB from my computer (in usb mass storage mode) both it and my internal storage just disappeared, the copy operation failed, so I restarted the phone and I have yet to get the phone to mount it since then.
I'm running eclipse 1.3rc2, is this because of the sd flip-flop, the size of the card or the fact that it's class 10?
the card works perfectly fine in my camera, and in multiple PCs, but as soon as I stick it in my X2, it just doesn't want to work.
I noticed the stock SD card has a "bootable" partition flag, whereas this one doesn't. maybe this is my problem?
also what filesystem should I use, I run linux on my PCs so I can do whatever I want with it.
what if I just delete its partition table, put it in the phone and then let the phone format it? I've reformatted it with my PC and no dice.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I got the 8gb card and using now it was acting weird ...would copy files when in the phone. I formatted it using the phone and it has worked fine since.
Good luck.
I can't say it will work for u but it cured the problems I had at the time.
just make sure u format the right card since in eclipse its switched around and recognized as internal in menu.
well, It took exchanging it for a class 4, and now it seems perfectly fine.
so note to self (and others)
NO CLASS 10 CARDS IN DROID X2, IT DOESN'T FN WORK!
Cheapxj said:
well, It took exchanging it for a class 4, and now it seems perfectly fine.
so note to self (and others)
NO CLASS 10 CARDS IN DROID X2, IT DOESN'T FN WORK!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think that is true...I thought I saw plenty of users say they use them.
Mine is class 6 and works just fine
Did u try formatting from in the phone while stock? Don't know if that would make a difference at all
I didn't read one single thread from someone successfully using a class 10 card without having issues, sometimes it took a few days/weeks, it only took me one mount/dismount cycle.
besides, the class 10 cards, while having a higher sustained transfer rate, their seek times and random access times are overall slower. basically these class 10 cards are ONLY good for digital video cameras and things that don't actually utilize a filesystem.
that or they're getting cheap chinese cards that are just remarked class 6 cards, the X2 can't read and write to a class 10 fast enough resulting in data corruption, period.
Yeah im not arguing
I understand what ur saying now
I can confirm class 6 being completely fine tho
I think the "issues" I had was the file size I was trying to transfer(4gb)
I don't think it's the class rating but the capacity. In my experience 32 gb cards just aren't as reliable as smaller-capacity ones. Perhaps it's a consequence of packing too many memory cells into such a small form factor, I don't know, but I've had three 32 gb micro-SD cards fail on me since the beginning of the year, whereas not a single 16 gb card has failed me yet.
I just dumped 4.8gb of crap on it, over usb and it took it like a champ, it's also significantly faster than the stock 8gb card in terms of mounting, remounting, scanning my media and even opening up fileexpert is faster.
class 6 i'm sure is fine, probably the best balance, but I can even take HD video straight to this card with no frame dropping or glitching. it's currently playing hd video on my hotel room TV right off the SD card w/ no issues (the stock 8gb couldn't do that)
Ha. Mine came wit a 2gb class 2 sdcard ...
Wait...now that I think about it.. I had bought a droid pro initially. It had a screen issue...I took it back and paid extra to get the x2. Then I told em I didn't wanna lose my pics/video I had taken and he switched the cards. So I guess he basically just kept the one I wax supposed to get instead of moving my data to the new one....prick...
iCurmudgeon said:
I don't think it's the class rating but the capacity. In my experience 32 gb cards just aren't as reliable as smaller-capacity ones. Perhaps it's a consequence of packing too many memory cells into such a small form factor, I don't know, but I've had three 32 gb micro-SD cards fail on me since the beginning of the year, whereas not a single 16 gb card has failed me yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what brand(s)?
I'm using a Patriot LX 32GB Class 10 MicroSDHC now. I came from a Lexar 32GB class 10 which failed within a month. I haven't had any problems with the Patriot.
i am using a class 4 32gb card and transfer 16g of music on and off at one time constantly with no problems. i have had it since july
ninjasailas said:
i am using a class 4 32gb card and transfer 16g of music on and off at one time constantly with no problems. i have had it since july
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
post the brand too.... this info is not useful.
in my case the 32gb class 10 pny card worked fine in everything but this damn phone.
L2_n19h7m4r3 said:
I'm using a Patriot LX 32GB Class 10 MicroSDHC now. I came from a Lexar 32GB class 10 which failed within a month. I haven't had any problems with the Patriot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use the 16gb of this and it works great. I did hear more than once that even a good 32 gb can be a problem.
My pny class 10 32gb is still rockin with not a single error
from my X2 roaming the north
Over the years I've owned about every brand of cards from eBay cheapo's to the best the industry has to offer like Samsung. I shoot HD wedding videos, take millions of pictures and edit so micro SD cards have been a necessity.
It just dawned on me today when I was looking at the mountain of SD cards I have in my office and realizing the life span on all the cards I've used over the years. Therefore, I'd like to share my experience along with asking those who are knowledgeable in the area of memory cards to help answer some of my questions.
I shoot HD videos and take lots of pictures on my Note 3 so having a reliable card is very important to me. Currently I'm locked and loaded with a 64GB | Class 10 | SanDisk microSDXC UHS-I card in my Note 3. (I also have a Samsung 64GB PRO Micro SDXC | Class 10 Memory Card (MB-MG64DA/AM), which I use in my Canon Video Camera and it is by far the best card out there. Period.)
The 6 most reliable cards that I've owned throughout the years: (Best to Worst)
Samsung
A-Data (Samsung chip, go figure. However, they are highly likely Samsungs '2nd hand' chips as they are not as fast as the actual Samsung brand labeled chips.)
PNY
SanDisk
Kingston / Sony (tie)
Transcend
It's not worth listing the other non-brand ebay junk so I've left those out.
Lately, I've been very disappointed with SanDisk's quality. Especially with their Class 10 cards, where I have found them to have a very weak 'integrity' in their chips. A good card should give you about a million write cycles. (Write cycles is a whole another can of worms...)
I have had more failed SanDisk's (lemons) cards than any other brands combined. This is why I will never buy SanDisk again and am switching to what has never failed me, Samsung. I can't afford the chaos and hate having to recover priceless wedding pictures from a card who decides to kick the bucket when you need it the most.
Recently my 64GB | Class 10 | SanDisk in my Note 3 decided to go belly up and I had to use a data recovering software to salvage all my 4,000 pictures and hundreds of HD video's. WTH right? This card is a couple months old. My previous SanDisk in my old Note 2 did the same thing after a couple of months.
ME, MYSELF AND MICRO SD CARDS...
With a new card I reformat it to Fat32 with Disk Utility (Mac) and then pop it in my device.
Since I take a lot of pictures / videos, I connect my phone to my computer (Android File Transfer, works flawlessly on Mac), copy over everything to my hard drive, back it up again if it's important and then properly eject the phone/card. I've always read and heard from camera guru's that it's best to reformat your card from the device instead of deleting the pictures in the folder from your computer while it's still connected. Therefore, after copying over the pictures/videos I would immediately eject and delete directly from the phone. The 'theory' surrounding this is that if you leave your card connected to your computer, it will access (checking byte order/changes) the directory more times than you would want it to thereby decreasing the life expectancy of the card.
Now of course it's not convenient or practical by no means to do this every day with your Note 3...most people just plug in and play with no problems whatsoever throughout the life of the card.
QUESTIONS FOR THE GEEKS
Explain the difference in the structural integrity of the internal SD card vs external SD card.
How much more life expectancy / write cycles does the internal card have vs an external card?
For a heavy user like me I have always put everything on the external card to avoid using the internal memory as much as possible avoiding unnecessary stress.
How often should the external card be reformatted for a heavy user like me where I'm constantly copying over, deleting, etc...
To be continued...
I don’t know about card in deep technically but all I learned so far, generally cards these days have very long life span, at least average 10 years, unless physically damaged or any uncommon technical issues.
I too concerned about this too earlier but now technology is so fast upgrading you shouldn’t worry about its life span. Technically what I know its life span also depends on it read and writings like you said and even if your car had heavy use then there is no point to formatting it frequently. Card is not like windows which creates junk files by time. Deleting and formatting does the same thing and both will free up same space if you delete all, where formatting read or write more data than deleting. So formatting frequently could reduce its life but that could be unnoticeable. The same way defragmenting, shredding also reduces its life. But shredding is good if I lost it any other couldn’t restores any private files.
So I think there have no logic to format it frequently to keep it healthy, unless its corrupted.
By technology is so fast upgrading what I mean is like, few years back I brought a new phone and brought the best card at that time, it was Samsung 32GB class 6. It was best on the market during that time. But then class 10, pro, plus released. Then when I got note 3 I had already a 32 GB card but I brought a class 10 pro one due to the HD recording. So after 5 years from now even if this card is working I will still have to buy a new one, as there will be far better technically upgraded one. I hope I make sense.
And I too use Internal memory very less, as loads on internal memory make the phone slower.
Thanks for the reply. I agree that with a decent name brand of a card, the life expectancy shouldn't be too much of a worry. My experience with SanDisk has been pretty poor in that I don't think they make cards with good quality material. As mentioned, the structural integrity is very weak. Their older cards were better. The newer ones in my opinion and from my experience have to be treated with a mentality of 5 years ago, because they do wear noticeably.
soumen.sam said:
I don’t know about card in deep technically but all I learned so far, generally cards these days have very long life span, at least average 10 years, unless physically damaged or any uncommon technical issues.
I too concerned about this too earlier but now technology is so fast upgrading you shouldn’t worry about its life span. Technically what I know its life span also depends on it read and writings like you said and even if your car had heavy use then there is no point to formatting it frequently. Card is not like windows which creates junk files by time. Deleting and formatting does the same thing and both will free up same space if you delete all, where formatting read or write more data than deleting. So formatting frequently could reduce its life but that could be unnoticeable. The same way defragmenting, shredding also reduces its life. But shredding is good if I lost it any other couldn’t restores any private files.
So I think there have no logic to format it frequently to keep it healthy, unless its corrupted.
By technology is so fast upgrading what I mean is like, few years back I brought a new phone and brought the best card at that time, it was Samsung 32GB class 6. It was best on the market during that time. But then class 10, pro, plus released. Then when I got note 3 I had already a 32 GB card but I brought a class 10 pro one due to the HD recording. So after 5 years from now even if this card is working I will still have to buy a new one, as there will be far better technically upgraded one. I hope I make sense.
And I too use Internal memory very less, as loads on internal memory make the phone slower.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know that feel of losing data, I have had 3 64 GB SanDisk cards die since January - right now I am using a 8GB. sad n true
Wow, sorry to hear. That sucks. Then again, you've verified my point even further about how crappy SanDisk cards have become.
Let your next card be a Samsung. I'm weeding out my stock of cards, heck I've given some away already.
Here's the best: Samsung 64GB PRO Micro SDXC | Class 10 Memory Card (MB-MG64DA/AM)
I use it in my Canon and it's extremely fast.
marquis.hagetaka said:
I know that feel of losing data, I have had 3 64 GB SanDisk cards die since January - right now I am using a 8GB. sad n true
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
iunlock said:
Wow, sorry to hear. That sucks. Then again, you've verified my point even further about how crappy SanDisk cards have become.
Let your next card be a Samsung. I'm weeding out my stock of cards, heck I've given some away already.
Here's the best: Samsung 64GB PRO Micro SDXC | Class 10 Memory Card (MB-MG64DA/AM)
I use it in my Canon and it's extremely fast.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That Samsung card sounds impressive, just not ready to spend any more monies on getting one right now.
off subject are you still in Honolulu..
iunlock said:
Thanks for the reply. I agree that with a decent name brand of a card, the life expectancy shouldn't be too much of a worry. My experience with SanDisk has been pretty poor in that I don't think they make cards with good quality material. As mentioned, the structural integrity is very weak. Their older cards were better. The newer ones in my opinion and from my experience have to be treated with a mentality of 5 years ago, because they do wear noticeably.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I never used any SanDisk card on phone, only Samsung cards so I’ve no personal experience and I’ve seen many user complains about its compatibility and issues on Samsung device. However I’ve been using a SanDisk high-speed MMC card on my Nikon SLR over last 5 years and still its performing great.
I believe Samsung cards works great in Samsung devices. So far only one card got damaged many years back and that was a stock Nokia card.
I currently have a 64gb sandisk class 10 in my phone I always used sandisk and never had a issue. I can't say the same for kingston. I found out it doesn't mess up when you unmount it when taking it out. I never did that before and they got messed up even if it did get messed up warranty is always there.
currently using the sandisk extreme plus 64gb card with no issues whatsoever. will update this thread once it crap out on me (it probably will in about 6 months) and how the warranty process goes.
I had a 32Gb Sandisk Extreme die in my Galaxy Note 3 while recording 4k video on to it.
Without a compatibility list and guarantee from Samsung, I am reluctant to buy another high end microsd card.
I am sick of these SD Cards. In my Galaxy S3, the thing would ocassionally take a dump and have to be reformatted.
Now I just restarted the Note 3, and boom, card took a dump.
I think I'm going to just live without.
Sandisk has always been reliable for me, apparently there are only 4-5 chip manufacture, and majority of a-data's card are rebadged from sandisk, same goes with transcends, whiles kingston are with toshiba, and PNY is a mix of sandisk and toshiba.
For data recovery and/or SD card repair, had anyone given Spin Rite a try?
I've been using a UHS-I 16GB Team card in my phone, been pretty reliable so far and gets pretty quick read/write speeds. Also been using a 32GB UHS-I Samsung card in my Sony NEX-5T camera, also been having no issues.
Just had my first Warranty experience with SanDisk. My 64 Gig SanDisk Ultra had crapped out by not allowing any write cycle this would not allow for deleting files or format or any changes to card. After a brief chat session on the SanDisk website I had my RMA and got emailed a label to print. My old card was off to SanDisk. 10 days later the new card arrived. This was a good warranty experience. Hope the new card will have more writes.
minoch said:
Just had my first Warranty experience with SanDisk. My 64 Gig SanDisk Ultra had crapped out by not allowing any write cycle this would not allow for deleting files or format or any changes to card. After a brief chat session on the SanDisk website I had my RMA and got emailed a label to print. My old card was off to SanDisk. 10 days later the new card arrived. This was a good warranty experience. Hope the new card will have more writes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm glad I'm not alone on this. I have my first 64GB microSD on Jan last year. I chose Sandisk because I believe many of tech experts favor them over every other brand. At the time I wasn't at all concerned about its lifespan because I am using it for such a simple task like music storage. By the end of Dec last year, the card refuses to write and format. Folks at Sandisk forum suggested to use SDFormatter, however if you get "write protected" error, your card is not repairable, they say.
I was lucky to get a new one so close to the end of my one-year warranty. But seeing Sandisk cards are getting less reliable these days, I might give Samsung a try if my Sandisk fails again.
Quick question, though: where else does Samsung evo and pro differs beside speed? Does pro have longer lifespan?
Interesting. I've been using Sandisk for well over 10 years in everything from my DSLRs to my phones, never had a single card die on me.
I have owned 3 64GB Samsung MicroSD's over 2014 and they all died within two months.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk 2
ShadowLea said:
Interesting. I've been using Sandisk for well over 10 years in everything from my DSLRs to my phones, never had a single card die on me.
I have owned 3 64GB Samsung MicroSD's over 2014 and they all died within two months.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree with you, sandisk is probably the most reliable brand available.
Been using sandisk when the first had them as transflash.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADATA
iunlock said:
Over the years I've owned about every brand of cards from eBay cheapo's to the best the industry has to offer like Samsung. I shoot HD wedding videos, take millions of pictures and edit so micro SD cards have been a necessity.
It just dawned on me today when I was looking at the mountain of SD cards I have in my office and realizing the life span on all the cards I've used over the years. Therefore, I'd like to share my experience along with asking those who are knowledgeable in the area of memory cards to help answer some of my questions.
I shoot HD videos and take lots of pictures on my Note 3 so having a reliable card is very important to me. Currently I'm locked and loaded with a 64GB | Class 10 | SanDisk microSDXC UHS-I card in my Note 3. (I also have a Samsung 64GB PRO Micro SDXC | Class 10 Memory Card (MB-MG64DA/AM), which I use in my Canon Video Camera and it is by far the best card out there. Period.)
The 6 most reliable cards that I've owned throughout the years: (Best to Worst)
Samsung
A-Data (Samsung chip, go figure. However, they are highly likely Samsungs '2nd hand' chips as they are not as fast as the actual Samsung brand labeled chips.)
PNY
SanDisk
Kingston / Sony (tie)
Transcend
It's not worth listing the other non-brand ebay junk so I've left those out.
Lately, I've been very disappointed with SanDisk's quality. Especially with their Class 10 cards, where I have found them to have a very weak 'integrity' in their chips. A good card should give you about a million write cycles. (Write cycles is a whole another can of worms...)
I have had more failed SanDisk's (lemons) cards than any other brands combined. This is why I will never buy SanDisk again and am switching to what has never failed me, Samsung. I can't afford the chaos and hate having to recover priceless wedding pictures from a card who decides to kick the bucket when you need it the most.
Recently my 64GB | Class 10 | SanDisk in my Note 3 decided to go belly up and I had to use a data recovering software to salvage all my 4,000 pictures and hundreds of HD video's. WTH right? This card is a couple months old. My previous SanDisk in my old Note 2 did the same thing after a couple of months.
ME, MYSELF AND MICRO SD CARDS...
With a new card I reformat it to Fat32 with Disk Utility (Mac) and then pop it in my device.
Since I take a lot of pictures / videos, I connect my phone to my computer (Android File Transfer, works flawlessly on Mac), copy over everything to my hard drive, back it up again if it's important and then properly eject the phone/card. I've always read and heard from camera guru's that it's best to reformat your card from the device instead of deleting the pictures in the folder from your computer while it's still connected. Therefore, after copying over the pictures/videos I would immediately eject and delete directly from the phone. The 'theory' surrounding this is that if you leave your card connected to your computer, it will access (checking byte order/changes) the directory more times than you would want it to thereby decreasing the life expectancy of the card.
Now of course it's not convenient or practical by no means to do this every day with your Note 3...most people just plug in and play with no problems whatsoever throughout the life of the card.
QUESTIONS FOR THE GEEKS
Explain the difference in the structural integrity of the internal SD card vs external SD card.
How much more life expectancy / write cycles does the internal card have vs an external card?
For a heavy user like me I have always put everything on the external card to avoid using the internal memory as much as possible avoiding unnecessary stress.
How often should the external card be reformatted for a heavy user like me where I'm constantly copying over, deleting, etc...
To be continued...
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Lifespan? Didn't know they were supposed to "die", or even wear out, and stop working eventually. Been using this same SD card for the past 2 years, and works like the first day I got it.