Was Secure Digital (SD) ready for prime time?

[sygyzy]

I have been using flash memory devices and storage for years. Smart Media, Memory Stick, Compact Flash, USB Flash Drives, you name it.

I have never ever lost any data nor have I ever had any write errors or corrpution of data.

Enter the wonderful world of 2210 and Secure Digital (or SD cards).

Last night I find my entire 256 MB card was wiped clean. Luckily I made a backup to HD a week ago so there was not really any loss. Also all the data was mostly ebooks and maps and I have original copies of those.

Did you use some cheap unknown brand sygyzy? Oh no. Lexar 32x high speed, high quality, 256MB of SD goodness. On clearance? Bought it with some rebates? Nope. Paid about $80 for it.

I have read enough posts to know that I am not alone in this. I don't do anything irregular. Just use my iPAQ day to day. Most of my usage does not even access the SD card! People have pointed to Sandisk cards being bad. So I stayed away from them. I'd be surprised if there are ANY SD cards that will last a lifetime without errors.

Who was responsible for letting SD out of the testing stages? Did they forget about something called QA?

Thoughts?

[Memnoch]

well, all I can say is that i've used 4 different sd cards, in 3 different ppc's and a camera. Never had a problem with any of them. So personally I don't think there's a problem with them in general. Of course you may have got unlucky with your particular card, doesn't mean the whole technology is duff...

[cratos]

Just because one Lexar card had the build quality of the sandisks doesnt mean the whole technology is bad. I mean it is quite possible that you got the bad apple. There is always a degree of failure when it comes to any electroic equipment.
Call Lexar and see if they will replace it for you. You are the first I have heard to have a problem with a Lexar card.

[sygyzy]

I realize I am just case, that's why I pointed to the fact that there are many more complaint cases besides my own. Just run a search and you'll see how often people have problems with them.

Now do the same for other cards (SM, CF, MS) and you will find less problems. That at least has been my experience.

[DaleReeck]

He's right, SD cards are probably the flakiest of the storage media. I've had an occasional weird problem, missing or corrupt files etc from a number of different vendors on a number of different PocketPC brands. I doesn't happen often, but I don't remember it ever happening with a CF card of mine.

My Lexar 512MB SD card actually has bad sectors. Only 300k worth, but still. Bad sectors on storage media today just shouldn't happen.

[jpmarth]

if you have never seen this with any other flash media you have looked out. every type and brand has had their issues. i remember when CF first hit mainstream use. it had more issues than is see with todays's SD cards. many more! i had several CF cards that i had to take back to the store or have the manufacturer replace due to corruption issues.

bet you can't wait for the day another media type comes out!

[sygyzy]

Untrue. I still don't trust SD and wish it never did come out. I don't remember any media types having problems besides SD. They should have kept it under wraps for another few years then release it.

[klam]

FYI, Lexar sources some of their SD cards from Lexar and the rest from Panasonic/Toshiba or someone else. Lexar doesn't actually make them.

[Neil Faulkner]

Originally posted by sygyzy
...last night I find my entire 256 MB card was wiped clean. Luckily I made a backup to HD a week ago so there was not really any loss. Also all the data was mostly ebooks and maps and I have original copies of those...Thoughts?

I have had the same problem with my Lexar 512 MB card. 1st time I lost some valuable data since I rarely back up the SD card. I back up my main RAM to the SD (which should be a reliable storage media) and didn't think I would need to backup data stored on non-volatile media. What I found was that the file allocation table gets corrupted if the card gets full. It works fine as long as I don't let it get too close to 100% capacity.

[Jeeters]

I've found that when something is writing to the card, it's best to not do anything else with the PPC until it's done with the card: I've had issues where a long write or delete is in progress, taking several seconds, and if I go and do something else with the device while I'm waiting for the write to finish up, I've ended up with a FAT corruption. I don't think the cards handle writes too well from different apps at simultaneous times.