Back in 2000 when I bought my first Compact Flash cards, I was trying to decide which brand to buy. I was shooting Nikons at the time and the Nikon branded card that came with my camera was made by SanDisk. I decided that since SanDisk invented the CF Card, that was the brand that I would use. I have owned about 50 of them over the years and never had a problem.
I remember back in about 2003. I found the SanDisk 1 GB CF cards on sale. They were $250.00 (yes, you read that right) marked down from $500.00 (yes, you read that right too). I bought 2 of them and went out and shot a wedding with them the next Saturday. Everything was backed up to my PowerBook and iPod before I left the wedding, then to the server and DVD's when I got to the studio. Well, a couple of days later, mom was over at my house helping with the laundry and she found my two new 1 GB CF cards in the bottom of the dryer. She pulled them out and said, what are these? I was sick, I thought there was $500 down the drain. They had been through the washer AND the dryer. Well, to this day, they still work fine. I don't use them any longer because now they are so small. But after that, I was definitely sold on SanDisk.