SDHC Card high failure rate
Posted by: Dungassin on 31 January 2013
Either I've been very unlucky, or SDHC cards have a high failure rate.
Since acquiring the Korg MR2 recorder, I have been making extensive use of SDHC cards for the recordings. Initially I started off with a couple of 8GB Class 8 cards (originally purchased for our HD camcorder), but bought a 32GB Class 10 Sandisc 30mbs card. This worked OK, albeit a little slowly, for about 3 'fillings', but then the MR2 refused to recognise it, with Fatal Error 1 message, and my laptop wouldn't read/format it either. Back it went to Amazon and I got a 32GB 7DayShop card (again Class 10, as all my subsequent purchases would be). This worked OK for six months, but has now failed like the SanDisk, so into the bin it's gone.
In the meantime I bought another 32GB card (can't recall the make) which didn't work at all (refund from Amazon ... sigh), and replaced that with an Integral Ultima card (20mbs), which is still going strong.
Last week one of my 8GB cards failed (same problem), so I thought I'd give the SanDisk card (as above) another try. This one was only used once, and gave VERY slow response times, with repeated 'card busy' messages (I had re-formatted it on the Korg before using), and the recordings suffered from very obvious drop-outs (10 hours of recordings had to be re-done) on my Ultima card), and on re-formatting again, I got the dreaded 'Fatal Error 1' message, and even my laptop doesn't recognise it.
Iit's gone back to Amazon for refund and I have ordered another Integral card to replace it.
Am I just unlucky, or are these things not very reliable in long-term use? Thankfully, I've been able to get refunds from Amazon for all the duff 32GB cards. I've even wondered whether the Korg is damaging the cards, but if so, why do any of them work?
Our ordinary SD cards (as used in the NIkon and Panasonic cameras) seem to go on forever with no problems