What SD card

[Howard]

Hi all

We have decided to keep all our photos that we are taking of our baby on SD cards , as CD's deteriorate , and hard drives die.

However , we have used up our 2 x 1gb Crucial SD cards ( which have been faultless ) , but it seems Crucial don't sell them any more .

What is a good reliable brand of SD card ? don't want giant ones , that hold millions of photos, as if one of these is lost we would lose a big portion of her life , much prefer to keep them on smaller cards.

Would much rather spend a few quid on reliable ones ( we can get them for £2 each on Ebay , but who knows where they come from or who they are made by )

All advice gratefully recieved.

H

 

[rascalmaster]

I got a couple of 16gb ones for 16 quid...
So I have back ups of back ups lol
Also back up the comp to an external hard drive lol

 

[rascalmaster]

32 gb for 22 pounds on here...

Have to be quick though; only till Monday ;-)

32gb memory stick - £21.99 @ mymemory - HotUKDeals

 

[rascalmaster]

32 gb for 22 pounds on here...

Have to be quick though; only till Monday ;-)

32gb memory stick - £21.99 @ mymemory - HotUKDeals

 

[Howard]

Want the smaller ones really , 1 or 2 gb.

 

[wemorgan]

This looks quite good value for branded SD media.

7dayshop.com - Online Store

 

[renault12ts]

SD cards are very small...and easily lost. I would store them on the SDs as you want, but also on your laptop and an external hard drive. Then (crucially) keep at least one full set off site with someone in the family.

You could store them somewhere in the cloud also, they would be accessible anywhere in the world, without need to bring a laptop or other physical medium with you.

 

[Ade B]

All my family snaps (& everything else) are on an external USB zip drive and back up and on line with Picasa and more recently Flickr.

The online stuff is great for sharing with family/friends - particularly Picasa, and I'm betting on google being around for a few years.

We keep meaning to get books printed of holidays and big events (birthdays etc). but have yet to manage it. The problem with digital pics is actually getting round to looking at them.

We've printed out quite a few of Junior B but Baby B is somewhat under represented in the flat...

Ade

 

[jepho]

Hi all

We have decided to keep all our photos that we are taking of our baby on SD cards , as CD's deteriorate , and hard drives die.

However , we have used up our 2 x 1gb Crucial SD cards ( which have been faultless ) , but it seems Crucial don't sell them any more .

What is a good reliable brand of SD card ? don't want giant ones , that hold millions of photos, as if one of these is lost we would lose a big portion of her life , much prefer to keep them on smaller cards.

Would much rather spend a few quid on reliable ones ( we can get them for £2 each on Ebay , but who knows where they come from or who they are made by )

All advice gratefully recieved.

H

I have never had a failure with any of the SanDisk products and I use loads of them. Amazon has good deals on SD cards at the moment. In my experience, they will not be selling cheap knock-off copies as is possible with eBay. More reliable if there are supply issues too. Memory cards are a market which has become flooded with counterfeit copies so do use a well-known supplier for your purchases. Amazon look pretty hard to beat on that front.

Amazon.co.uk: sd-cards - Electronics & Photo

 

[clever dicky]

Many electrical's cant handle 32gb yet. I know my phone doesnt. But what to look out for is the rating. 1 is crap, 4 mediocre and common . Class 10 is best.
Its to do with speed and lag when saving or play back. Last thing you want on a camera.

 

[jepho]

Many electrical's cant handle 32gb yet. I know my phone doesnt. But what to look out for is the rating. 1 is crap, 4 mediocre and common . Class 10 is best.
Its to do with speed and lag when saving or play back. Last thing you want on a camera.

Fair point: Sadly, there is much confusion between tests and nomenclature. The most comprehensive testing and test database (AFAICT) is the Rob Galbraith site, which maintains a very comprehensive database for the use of professional photographers.

 

[Howard]

Just to feedback on this , i got a twin pack of SanDisk 2gb cards from Play.com for £7.49 delivered in the end.

Many thanks to everyone who advised.

 

[Spinal]

Just keep in mind that SD cards fail as well... They are flash memory, which means they have a limited lifespan, usually measured in read/writes.

Last time I checked, this was around 100,000 writes before the card startss giving up the ghost...

Some tips from another site:
•Do not defrag a memory card. This consumes write/erase cycles and shortens the MTBF.
•Use FAT32 instead of a journaling file system (like NTFS), which will write more often.
•SD cards are rated to hold data at something like 10 years sitting idle. I recall reading (not sure where) about re-energizing cards by occasionally inserting into a reader.

M.

 

[jepho]

Last time I checked, this was around 100,000 writes before the card startss giving up the ghost...

So they will be only useful if you restrict your writing files to once per day... for the next 273 years before they begin to fail.

Carp product eh?

 

[Dryce]

So they will be only useful if you restrict your writing files to once per day... for the next 273 years before they begin to fail.

Carp product eh?

There are internal processes that affect the semiconductor material over time.

However most cards are kept cool and not powered. The biggest risk is probably that if they last 20 or 30 years then there's no kit or software to read them.

As regards the comments relating to brands. I avoid Sandisk. Expensive and slow for the money IME and they obfuscate the speed/performance terminology so that they're difficult to compare with other brands.

 

[Smatt]

My wife (prof photographer) uses the better(mid to high range) Sandisk or Lexar cards. We would not buy cheaper brands- they are less reliable- more prone to errors & failure

 

[jepho]

There are internal processes that affect the semiconductor material over time.

However most cards are kept cool and not powered. The biggest risk is probably that if they last 20 or 30 years then there's no kit or software to read them.

As regards the comments relating to brands. I avoid Sandisk. Expensive and slow for the money IME and they obfuscate the speed/performance terminology so that they're difficult to compare with other brands.

You are, of course, correct. I had forgotten to append the sarcasm/humour tags to my post.

It is clear that image data which is precious should not be stored on SD/CF memory cards. Archival solutions are beyond the pocket of many casual users. They can only watch trends and then convert their files as demands are invoked by technology changes.

I would encourage users to make use of the RAW file format for image storage. It has the disadvantage of being proprietary and unique between different manufacturers but it should permit re-purposing as the technologies change and improve. It has a processing and a storage overhead that many will find onerous.

The Adobe DNG format is effectively universal but many people do not want to see a repeat of the same sort of stranglehold that Adobe has on the portable document format, leading to the necessity to buy expensive software to access all of the format's possibilities.

Tiff is a good stable file format but it creates large files and saving 16 or 32bit files reduces the available storage capacity very quickly. It can store alpha channels and layered image files of 8, 16 or 32bit but I would think that there must be questions about the useful life of the format as advances in digital imaging technology become apparent.

For casual users, 8bit files that can store an alpha channel are going to be restricted to the widely available PNG format or the less well used jpeg 2000 format. As for Sandisk products ~ I can only speak from my personal experience. Initially (with the advent of CF card storage) they were the only game in town and they were very expensive. I recall paying $400 in the USA for a 10Mb CF card to expand the memory of my Psion PDA. I have used many Sandisk CF cards at all sizes. They are reliable and speed is not an issue even when saving full 1080P video directly to the card. This Sandisk card could not be described as slow (write speed up to 90Mb/s) in my opinion.

 

[The G.F.P]

why would you only want 1 or 2 gig ones!

ive got 2 x 32gb SD, 2 x 32 usb (all class 10)

and about 15 other ones from 8gb down to 1gb micro sd

rule of thumb is £1 per gb but the newer smaller they are the more that goes up (as in 1gb wont be £1 and 64gb wont be £64 they both be more)

ive just seen on the hold hotukdeals a 4tb external drive (might be 2x 2tb nas)

for home use ive got 8TB as i collect old tv series

but per device, phone 8gb & camera 16gb the others are all for ps3 stuff

 

[Howard]

If i put the first year of her life on a 32gb card and lose it , then i have lost everything.

If put each month on a 2gb card , and lose one , ok it's not great but then i've lost a month , not a year.

That's why i want small ones

 

[BTB 500]

You will have more of a problem if/when you start doing video though. A one and a half minute clip on my little Sony Bloggie (set to one down from the highest resolution) is over 80 MB.

I use a 1 TB USB hard drive for backup, under £60.