[Malvern] SD Cards

[Richard Forster]

Yes.
I had problems getting the later pictures off a 2GB card. I actually had 
problems both with a card reader and via the camera. The camera could 
always show the pictures properly by the way.
When using a card reader there were a variety of symptoms. From files 
seeming to be totally corrupt, to older pictures appearing with newer 
file names, to a picture only showing half the image. When trying to 
export from the camera over USB it would just give an error and fail.
In the end I deleted the older pictures using the camera (select by date 
is mighty handy) and found I was then able to export the newer ones to 
the PC. Luckily the older pictures I'd already exported.

This was all before I reformatted the card in the camera (though not by 
many minutes).
I have now found that it is even harder to read the files properly in a 
card reader but I've not yet taken over a thousand pictures to test 
whether the export from the camera is reliable or not, which is what 
matters. Taking a mere few hundred is fine.

On the other hand...

I also have a 1GB card which has a USB connector under a neat little 
flap. This has had 700+ pictures and multi-megabyte video files on it in 
the past and never let me down in USB mode or camera export mode. This 
has not been formatted by me at any time. Obviously the idea of using it 
in a card reader is too silly to have been tried.

Both cards are Sandisk and not bought from eBay, so there are no 
reliability issues from that point of view. The 2GB one really can write 
at the claimed 20MB/s too.

Be careful with really high capacity cards. IIRC 2GB is the largest a 
pukka SD card can be before it breaks the standard. If it's over that 
size both the card and the gizmo reading it have to be SDHC.

I suppose I could stress test my 2GB card tomorrow by videoing the talks :-)


Cheers

Rick

Ian Pascoe wrote:
> 
> Next, SD cards; a thread has started on the UK Ubuntu list about the
> reliability of large capacity SD cards when used outside of their native
> environment  ie used in a card reader and not in the camera etc.
> 
> I have a 1Gb SD card that I use in my personal sat nav system and although
> it works fine in the PDA that's running the sat nav, it doesn't appear to be
> always readable in my laptops card reader.  Anyone else experienced this
> kind of problem?
> 
> Ian