Weekend Lexar Memory Card Sale at Adorama

[clicstudio]

Re: BEWARE LEXAR FAIL!

I had 2 Lexar 1000X Professional CF cards literally die on me. One time after taking 500 irreplaceable
vacation photos and the second time after 2 hours of a paid shoot which I had to restart completely.
I went back to Sandisk Extreme Pro 1066X which hasn't failed me in 13 years.
Save yourself a headache and don't buy Lexar.

It's not an Anecdote. It's a fact. 2 cards from different batches failed. Also your beloved transcend also failed me.
You buy cheap, you get cheap.
And exactly how do you test a CF card thoroughly? There is no way.
The testing should be done at the factory. It's called quality control. I use the card normally and I perform 3 formats before working and you never know when the card is going to fail. There is no warning.
None of the software I have was able to see the cards so there was no way to recover any data.
At one time I was using 2 simultaneous cards just in case but it slows the çamera down so finally sandisk came out with a 1066x and now I have no problem.

 

[expatinasia]

Problem with these stories is that there are plenty of people who have problems with SanDisk, and plenty that have had problems with Lexar etc. Once you have a serious problem with regards to the card, you may not be too concerned, but if it happens again then you are more than likely to change brand, and brand loyalty. Normal. The problem obviously lies with what do you do when the same happens with the new brand.

Hopefully none of us have this problem. I have sat in thunderstorms with torrential rain and lightening covering sporting events and can only imagine how angry (and disappointed) I would be if a card failed. Not like I could ask them all to do the tournament (or games) again!!

I just recently used the new Lexar 1066X at a sports event and it may be my imagination, but it does seem faster than the 1000X (and I am talking about the original 1000X which was being advertised at write speeds of 145 mbps - not the newer 1000X which Lexar seems to have slowed down somehow).

 

[Orangutan]

Re: BEWARE LEXAR FAIL!

It's not an Anecdote. It's a fact.

I didn't mean to come across as insulting, or as questioning your truthfulness. To me, an anecdote may well be true, but is not independently verified and compared with similar stories. What I meant is that for every person who has problems with Lexar, there are as many who have problems with Sandisk, Transcend and other brands. The only way to determine whether a specific brand has a higher failure rate is to do some kind of scientific test.

My main intent was to help you figure out what the problem is. As I say, not many people seem to have the failure rate you report, not for any major brand.

And exactly how do you test a CF card thoroughly?

From my work in information technology, I encountered a program called DBAN, which is a free tool to securely wipe hard drives of private data before you get rid of them. I run 20 passes on new cards. You need to be careful with this program, though, it can easily wipe your main hard drive if you're not careful.

Prior to that, I had written a program that simulated storing and erasing files on the device until it was full. I also ran 20 passes of that.

If you want to do it manually, you can do a full format, copy some files until it fills the drive, then format and repeat. That would be tedious for 20 reps. I'm told there are programs out there designed to test the speed and error condition of flash memory and USB flash drives.