Card failure story?

[Jopa]

Had it once. Sony A7r + Sony 64GB SD card. The card failed, the camera couldn't read it, my MacBook can't read it, but... an old Sony Vaio Z3 laptop COULD read it. I was able to get all images and format the card. It's still unreadable anywhere except of that Vaio laptop. Paradox

 

[Orangutan]

You can be sure that everyone shooting big budget campaigns will have refined redundancy strategies in place regardless of how many card slots their cameras have

True dat! As should we all: merely relying on dual cards is not safe, you have to maintain a data security plan throughout your workflow.

Dual slots was a very useful innovation. Period.

No one said otherwise; the dispute is whether all cameras over a certain price threshold should be expected to have dual slots.

 

[Keith_Reeder]

Cards may fail. With wear, that chance will increase, and other factors will play as well (card quality, production batches, age, storage, etc. etc.)

That's ignoring the question - we all know it can happen, the question is whether it has.

No, from me - not one failure in 12 years' shooting.

 

[Keith_Reeder]

General Question, without bringing a laptop on a trip/vacation, is their any easy way to back the photos off the SD card and on to some other portable storage?

I haven't done it yet, but it must be possible to rig up a Raspberry Pi and a card reader purely for the purpose of copying files from a card to a portable hdd or large capacity USB stick....

 

[Keith_Reeder]

My last MF camera was a film kit, Mamiya RZ67, sold in 2002

Presumably it exposed to two rolls of film at the same time?

You know - just in case?

 

[Luds34]

General Question, without bringing a laptop on a trip/vacation, is their any easy way to back the photos off the SD card and on to some other portable storage?

I haven't done it yet, but it must be possible to rig up a Raspberry Pi and a card reader purely for the purpose of copying files from a card to a portable hdd or large capacity USB stick....

Ahhh, yeah, I like your thinking. Obviously use some giant micro SD card (like 128 gig), and like you said, would need an external reader to plug in via usb (or potentially the camera directly). A simple bash script running on detection of the new device (or automount more likely) could just do a simple rsync command. Not half bad.

 

[Keith_Reeder]

Yep - and I suspect there's a honking big audience for such a solution.

I hate having to lumber myself with laptops and other backup solutions when I'm on holiday purely for backup purposes, so a camera-to-storage solution that costs a few quid/bucks and fits in the palm of my hand, has huge appeal.

I'm massively out of the loop with such things though, but if someone else could spec up such a solution, I'd be all over it - and if someone wanted to make a device available in the UK - I'm your first customer.

 

[Zv]

Yep - and I suspect there's a honking big audience for such a solution.

I hate having to lumber myself with laptops and other backup solutions when I'm on holiday purely for backup purposes, so a camera-to-storage solution that costs a few quid/bucks and fits in the palm of my hand, has huge appeal.

I'm massively out of the loop with such things though, but if someone else could spec up such a solution, I'd be all over it - and if someone wanted to make a device available in the UK - I'm your first customer.

It's weird there isn't some kind of thumb drive / portable flash media device that can just plug into your camera's USB port and copy all the files. Or maybe there is and I'm also not aware of it. Feel like this could be a kickstarter project.

 

[jeffa4444]

On a personal level Ive never had an SD or CF card failure and Ive taken thousands of shots on numerous Canon cameras ever since digital appeared.

Professionally we have had a large number of CFast card failures shooting video, thankfully the data in every case has been recoverable but they are not a reliable medium in hard professional use.

 

[foo]

they are not a reliable medium in hard professional use.

what is though? getting that five nines level of reliability tends to be prohibitively expensive no matter what industry you're talking about

 

[foo]

I haven't done it yet, but it must be possible to rig up a Raspberry Pi and a card reader purely for the purpose of copying files from a card to a portable hdd or large capacity USB stick....

the problem is that most small low power devices like the RPi are USB 2.0. So while it's easily possible, it's also horribly slow. Given a camera with useful wifi you'd be as well just getting a wifi capable RPi, or a usb wifi dongle, and sending the images that way

my camera has usb 3.0, so what I do is to plug the camera directly into something with a usb 3 port (not an RPi obviously) the camera is detected and any new images automatically downloaded with gphoto2

 

[DJL329]

General Question, without bringing a laptop on a trip/vacation, is their any easy way to back the photos off the SD card and on to some other portable storage?

I haven't done it yet, but it must be possible to rig up a Raspberry Pi and a card reader purely for the purpose of copying files from a card to a portable hdd or large capacity USB stick....

Ahhh, yeah, I like your thinking. Obviously use some giant micro SD card (like 128 gig), and like you said, would need an external reader to plug in via usb (or potentially the camera directly). A simple bash script running on detection of the new device (or automount more likely) could just do a simple rsync command. Not half bad.

Years ago, I remember seeing an external HD that could offload your photos. I did a quick search and found this one from Western Digital:

https://www.wdc.com/products/portable-storage/my-passport-wireless-pro.html

I has an SD card slot, but also accepts inputs, such as a CF card reader or connect directly to the camera. It even has it's own battery to charge USB devices.

 

[jeffa4444]

they are not a reliable medium in hard professional use.

what is though? getting that five nines level of reliability tends to be prohibitively expensive no matter what industry you're talking about

Most of the damage is through mechanical use so it points to CFast not being robust enough regarding its pins. We have had a much lower number damaged through power spikes because the cards have no protection (which given their design would be hard to do).

 

[foo]

I has an SD card slot, but also accepts inputs, such as a CF card reader or connect directly to the camera. It even has it's own battery to charge USB devices.

That sort of thing is ideal.. Interestingly tho, from the specs it has a usb 3 port for connection to a PC, but the port for a camera / CF reader is only usb 2... So in-camera copy from CF to SD first then put the SD in that will probably work out quicker.

 

[neuroanatomist]

General Question, without bringing a laptop on a trip/vacation, is their any easy way to back the photos off the SD card and on to some other portable storage?

I haven't done it yet, but it must be possible to rig up a Raspberry Pi and a card reader purely for the purpose of copying files from a card to a portable hdd or large capacity USB stick....

Ahhh, yeah, I like your thinking. Obviously use some giant micro SD card (like 128 gig), and like you said, would need an external reader to plug in via usb (or potentially the camera directly). A simple bash script running on detection of the new device (or automount more likely) could just do a simple rsync command. Not half bad.

Years ago, I remember seeing an external HD that could offload your photos. I did a quick search and found this one from Western Digital:

https://www.wdc.com/products/portable-storage/my-passport-wireless-pro.html

I has an SD card slot, but also accepts inputs, such as a CF card reader or connect directly to the camera. It even has it's own battery to charge USB devices.

Seems as if you may need a tablet along for the ride if you want to transfer images via a card reader, but maybe not, it's not clear from the docs/reviews (and maybe transfering from the camera's USB connection directly would work?). SD cards can be automatically imported with no other device required. You'd need a tablet to view the images, and RAW images cannot be viewed (so you'd need to shoot RAW+JPG to view on a tablet on the go).

The Sanho HyperDrive I mentioned a couple pages back directly accepts both SD and CF cards, and you can view images on the device (no tablet required). However, it's a more costly solution than the WD device.

 

[BillB]

To truly play it safe, back up your images at least nightly while traveling (or bring enough cards to use a new one each day).

I tend to agree. This year I already took some big trips, definitely some once in a life time as even if/when I go back, it will be a different trip. Just got back from France recently, did Northern California two months ago, and before that a trip to Asia (Hong Kong, Cambodia, Thailand).

I would be lying if I were not paranoid about losing the photos, especially from theft on all of those trips. I typically don't buy anything bigger then 32 gig cards to your very point that I don't ever want/need too many photos on a single card. So while I didn't swap out cards every night, I did every 2 or 3 days. Of course then my fear was also losing the SD cards.

General Question, without bringing a laptop on a trip/vacation, is their any easy way to back the photos off the SD card and on to some other portable storage? Because my general rule on a vacation is to enjoy the vacation, leaving work, and the internet behind.

Traveling by car, I like having the laptop along for initial ratings of shots and getting ideas for what I might like to reshoot. Traveling by air, a laptop is definitely more of a hassle

 

[derrald]

I have had three failures in 12 years of shooting. The first two times I was able to get my images off my card. The card simply stopped taking images and I kept getting Err messages. This was with CF cards on older camers (20D, 5D).

The last time it happened I had just bought my 5DsR and had put in new cards. I had it in dual write mode (backup) and when I went to shoot it would lock up the camera. It was very strange. It was so strange that I thought the camera was defective. I actually shared my experience with Bryan Carnathan with The Digital Picture and we went through some scenarios. After more thorough testing it proved that the card was bad out of the box. (CF again)

My photos were safe in this instance because of the dual write.

In all cases these were SANDISK cards, incidentally. I always keep my bad cards and mark them as such.

To further this conversation, I own two cameras with dual slots - a 7D Mark II and the 5Ds R. With the 7D Mark II I use the dual slots as overflow because I use that as a wildlife camera and want to continue shooting if the card fills. The 5Ds R is always in backup mode because it is mainly landscape, macro.

A single card slot is not a deal breaker for my use, but it is a nice feature and I always appreciate.

 

[privatebydesign]

General Question, without bringing a laptop on a trip/vacation, is their any easy way to back the photos off the SD card and on to some other portable storage?

I haven't done it yet, but it must be possible to rig up a Raspberry Pi and a card reader purely for the purpose of copying files from a card to a portable hdd or large capacity USB stick....

Ahhh, yeah, I like your thinking. Obviously use some giant micro SD card (like 128 gig), and like you said, would need an external reader to plug in via usb (or potentially the camera directly). A simple bash script running on detection of the new device (or automount more likely) could just do a simple rsync command. Not half bad.

Years ago, I remember seeing an external HD that could offload your photos. I did a quick search and found this one from Western Digital:

https://www.wdc.com/products/portable-storage/my-passport-wireless-pro.html

I has an SD card slot, but also accepts inputs, such as a CF card reader or connect directly to the camera. It even has it's own battery to charge USB devices.

Seems as if you may need a tablet along for the ride if you want to transfer images via a card reader, but maybe not, it's not clear from the docs/reviews (and maybe transfering from the camera's USB connection directly would work?). SD cards can be automatically imported with no other device required. You'd need a tablet to view the images, and RAW images cannot be viewed (so you'd need to shoot RAW+JPG to view on a tablet on the go).

The Sanho HyperDrive I mentioned a couple pages back directly accepts both SD and CF cards, and you can view images on the device (no tablet required). However, it's a more costly solution than the WD device.

No you don't need a tablet to backup/copy from a connected card reader or camera. You can set it up to copy any connected USB device automatically, of course with no tablet/phone you have no way of viewing those backed up files to see if they were in fact copied but it will do the backup sans third device.

I just got the WD Wireless Pro to accompany me on my travels with an iPad, more for other media than photo backup.

But for those inveterate travelers we do now have a fully working mobile RAW only workflow. I use an iPad and the Lightening to USB 3 Camera Adapter and connect my camera directly, it can use card readers by why bother with yet another item? Anyway, Photos now takes RAW files and LightRoom Mobile now processes RAW files and you have most of the controls the desktop app gives you. If you need the space you can move the files off the iPad onto the My Passport Wireless Pro or that gives you the option of another backup. All of this is fully available with no internet connection.

You can then sync the files and edits/keywords/ratings etc to your CC account and/or home LR library via the internet if you want to and have availability, or wait till you get home and do it then.

It isn't buggy either, we now truthfully have a full RAW workflow available whilst traveling light.

 

[Aglet]

flawless performance from all Sandisk and Lexar cards I've used, some now many years old and re-written 100 + times.

mixed results with no-name cards, never trust them for anything critical.

surprising partial failures from numerous Kingston cards, sometimes right from new.
Usually manifesting as corruption and failure to read, file loss. They generally smarten up for a while if I low-level format them but I've come to no longer trust them for critical work.

I'm now testing Samsung EVO & Pro SD cards... So far not thrilled with their write speeds.

 

[tron]

I may have an issue with 5D4 and an SD card that works perfectly on 5D3 7D2 5DsR.

When taken from these cameras and put to 5D4 it couldnot be formatted/seen/written (either with previous data or formatted on the previous camera). I do not have this issue with other cameras and this sd card.

I do not remember testing with a 2nd card though.

The only way this card can be seen from 5D4 is to fully - not fast- format it on a pc and then put it to 5D4 and format it.

My 5D4 runs latest firmware (1.04).

I had an old freeze incident with my 5D4 and a SD card (and I had also solved it by fully formatting on my pc)

I cannot be sure that this is the exact sd card but all cards (CF and SD) worked - and work - flawlessly on all my pre-5D4 cameras...

It isn't a big deal since if I leave it on my 5D4 all the time I have no issues but it makes me not trust completely the sd slot in 5D4.

I understand that I have not tested all combinations (more SD cards, CF card, etc).

EDIT: I have an old backup device: Hyperdrive UDMA (ver 1) which backups successfully FAT32 cards (not exFAT) which for my Canon cameras means all CF cards up to 128GB (I do not have bigger than that!) and SD cards up to 32 GB. I do have bigger than that so I also got a NEXTTO 2901 which understands exFAT. So why I keep the Hyperdrive? It supports recover function which means I have rescue capabilities in case I need them.