Time to ditch the card?-rare glitch when viewing pics in cam

[Joe M]

I have a rarely occurring hiccup. It's so rare that I forget about it until it happens again.
First off, it's a 5D3 with a 64gb Lexar pro 400x udma7 card. I've used this card with no problems since Dec/12 (other than this hiccup which has probably happened three or four times and again today).
So on to the issue. When reviewing images on the back of the camera, I'll sometimes zoom in and quickly want to compare to the previous image or two to see if I've nailed something like shallow depth on a flower or ring or whatever. When zoomed in, I'll try to scroll from one pic to the other but the camera doesn't. I then notice that in the lower left corner where the screen should show (for example) 235/253 pics (viewing pic 235 of 253), there is nothing. Yikes. I blame myself for not looking into this the very first time it happened but here I am today, after a year and a half of shooting with this card I'm asking if anyone has experienced this sort of hiccup.
My other 5D3 has a comparable card but by Sandisk. I've used Sandisk for years and have a couple as backup and have never seen this happen with the other body/card. I might add that originally I used a Sandisk card in the camera in question but switched to the Lexar when I wanted to go 64gb and it was on sale at B&H. Otherwise, I probably would have bought Sandisk.
So, I don't want to turn this into what brand rocks and so forth as I think the consensus is both of these brands are decent. Again, I blame myself for not doing something about this hiccup when I first saw it but it seemed so minor and then not seeing it happen again for many months just makes me think it's some never to be seen again gremlin. But again today it happened. Sorry for the long post but I want to give as much info as possible so that we don't have to go back and forth too much with questions.
To that end, I'll add a little more info. So, when I go to preview the pic, I zoom in, it doesn't want to scroll from one pic to the other, so I simply hit the "play" button again so I'm not viewing the pics and then when I hit play to preview the pics, all goes as it should. Again, other than these (I would say including today maybe 3 times this happened), I've shot movies and many many thousands of pics without issue. I always format in camera before a shoot and while on a shoot, never ever delete a pic. I also try to chimp as little as possible. It just happens to be the way I shoot and not necessarily doing it to avoid write errors and so forth.
So if anyone's heard of this odd issue (non-issue?), I'd be happy to hear about it. I actually could just get another extreme for $150 and never have to think about it again but I'm curious if there is any info about this that anyone could provide. Thanks in advance....

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Have you tried giving it a full format (its sometimes called erase or low level format)? That must be done in a computer, the camera does not actually format a CF card, it just marks it as being empty, while a low level format writes to every memory cell and will find bad ones.

The controller for the card spreads usage of the memory cells evenly over the 64 GB, so that means that any defective memory cells will show up occasionally as damaged image files.

A low level format might find them and mark them as bad.

Since Lexar gives a 5 year or lifetime warranty, depending on the product, I'd send it in for a replacement. Lexar has a nice recovery utility called Image Rescue 4 which will not only recover images that were accidentally deleted, but will do a full erase of a card.

Note that a erase or low level format of a 64 GB card can take hours, so don't expect it to be something quick and easy.

 

[Joe M]

I've never done a format other than in the camera with this card or any other. I could try it but the only thing I'm wondering is that because this is such a rare occurrence, I may not know if it had an effect for quite some time.

As I said, I haven't had any image corruption or loss, just this weird momentary inability to scroll from one pick to another. At least that's a big plus (no image loss or corruption).

I also take it from your reply that you also have the impression that it is definitely the card. That's good too. A new or replaced card is easy, the camera is not.

I could try the computer format but I think you're right that I may as well just contact Lexar and be done with it. There are enough things to worry about in life and lost images isn't one I'm up for so no use pushing my luck.

thanks Mt Spokane

P.S., in case anyone has ever wondered about turnaround time, from my door to the U.S. and back to me with a new replacement was 5 business days. I'm fairly impressed.