Need a memory card for the digital camera. I understand so far that i need a *class 10* speed for a camera. I get the impression that people think that Sandisk although the most expensive are the most reliable. But would i be wrong in thinking that they are probably produced in the same chinese factories as the cheaper, but equally common makes like Phillips, Kingston etc. So should i be paying the extra money for a Sandisk i'm asking ?
Yes. IME, buy a well-known make from a reputable supplier. There are vast numbers of fakes on the market.
+1 Sandisk owns foundries and makes their own chips. Well WD now, but that's not the point :) IME Crucial for Dram and Sandisk for flash ram. YMMV, naturally.
Have been happy enough with a string of Samsung micro SD cards. I don't go mad benchmarking or anything but they seem decent and reliable - so far. As said, though, beware of who you buy from.
+1. I have a collection of Sandisks, also some Kingston and Samsung, I don't think I have ever had one fail. The price differential is not all that large. Certainly beware of anything which looks too cheap. I happily buy from Amazon and eBay, but I do look for volume sellers with feedback.
Owners of flash fabs are: Toshiba / Sandisk Samsung Intel / Micron (=Crucial, Lexar) SK Hynix
I'd stick to Sandisk or Samsung. I don't have enough experience with Lexar products to comment on those.
Other brands buy flash chips on the open market and rebrand them. In particular that runs the risk that they may change the flash chips inside a card if they couldn't get supply that week.
I buy on Amazon, from Amazon themselves - *not* marketplace sellers and *not* Fulfilled By Amazon, only items listed as 'sold by Amazon.co.uk'. If you need an alternative source, mymemory.co.uk is useful too.
Beware eBay, Amazon marketplace, Alibaba etc - too many fakes about.
Theo
I got stung on eBay, so will not buy memory cards/sticks there any more. It was a beautiful fake, packaging and all, but was only an 8Gb stick labelled as a 32Gb. The guy did give me my money back.
john west scribbled
I bought a Scadisk from Amazon that was a fake. There is software that claims to detect fakes.
Jonno scribbled
Bollocks - forgot the links
and there's a program for Android that I used -
SD Insight.
I have bought own brand cards from 7DayShop, which claimed to be Class
10, which were not. They choked recording video with my Canon, but could still be used for ordinary photography.Huge scribbled
The bastard probably flogged it onto another sucker.
Yes. And as others have said buy from a reputable supplier. It's not like any of them are a lot of money.
7dayshop.com do some good own brand flash cards. Been using them for years. Never had one stop working except one that I physically broke.
I have a couple of 32G microSD cards from 7day shop and they do ~50Mbytes/s writes on my PC (better than 80 Mbytes/s reads) but the camera can only manage about 15Mbytes/s. More than fast enough for HD video. It does appear that some cameras work better with some cards than others.
I bought Kingston, from Kingston web site, on the basis that it would definitely BE Kingston, and if it failed I might get my money back.
How much are your images worth to you? How upset would you be if you found a 'cheap' card had failed?
I would never (again!) buy from Ebay, nor from Amazon unless it was 'dispatched and sold by Amazon'. Mymemory are usually good on price and are official Sandisk resellers.
H2testw is the first thing I do with any new flash memory. It writes/reads the entire capacity, detects fake and faulty devices.
And if the card isn't already worn out that will make sure it is :-0)
H2testw? It writes random data to the card, reads it back and compares. It is a tool to detect cards that have less actual capacity than they report.
One write won't wear anything out!
Thomas Prufer
Two writes don't make a wrong. :-)
The data may be randomised but, as you pointed out to TNP, it's written in a single sequential write pass, afaicr, in 1GB files plus a final one that's simply the size of the remaining free space. It's the read pass that detects the classic signs of wrap around addressing induced data corruption which reveals the true size of any faked flash memory.
The only problem with running the test is the time required to write all that test data and test read the 1GB files. It, obviously varies with the speed and the size of the memory cards/pen drives in question, taking anywhere from half an hour to several hours to complete in some cases.
The time isn't a major issue with just one or two cards to check out but the whole process can get real old very fast if you're looking to verify something like half a dozen or more cards. :-(
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