Experience with SD and CF cards

SD and CF

SD and C.F.

Over 15 years of active work with different memory cards, two SD/SDHC memory cards and zero cards completely failed CF.

  • Transcend SDHC 8GB Class 10 cracked in half while being removed from the camera socket Nikon D90served for about two years. The data has not been recovered.
  • SanDisk SDHC Extreme Pro 32GB V30 UHS-I U3 95MB/s fell apart while being removed from the nest Nikon D40. The data was recovered by combining the chip with the body of another memory card using improvised means. At the same time, this is the most advanced line of Extreme Pro memory cards.
  • many times a particular SD / SDHC / SDXC memory card was not recognized by the computer, and the operating system offered to format it. It was treated by using another card reader or by repeated attempts to connect. Perhaps this is due to the problems of card readers. The data has always been saved.

True, during the operation of the cards CF They bent the contact pins in my card readers several times. One card reader still works with a bent leg, in another I carefully straightened the leg and it still works.

In general, I have never had any particular problems with either SD, neither with CF memory cards. But I know real stories in which cards CF the legs of the camera card reader contacts are bent, which is usually treated only at a camera repair service center.

Personally, I don’t fool myself with questions about the reliability of memory cards SD и CF. The final role is played not by the reliability of memory cards itself, but by the conditions of their use.

It is also worth adding that memory cards CF have already become obsolete and have been replaced by other, more productive solutions. And here are the cards SD continue to develop and have good backward compatibility.

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Comments: 80, on the topic: Experience with SD and CF cards

  • Yuriy

    For myself, having created a combination of microsd and an adapter to SD, after that the SD card cracked. You can always remember the adapter, and the photos will be left intact

    • Arkady Shapoval

      I refused micro sd, some cameras refused to work with them through an adapter (the reasons are unknown). Therefore, for cameras I use exclusively full-fledged SD. But this is my personal case, since I have to constantly use different and varied cameras and there is no way to get “complete incompatibility”.

      • Ledogor

        micro sd, in my opinion, are not particularly reliable. Several pieces lie dead weight, it's good that they managed to pull out the frames from them after dancing with a tambourine, a lighter and several card readers. Quite expensive memory cards from Sony, a proprietary memory stick, often suffer from splitting of the case. One of the full-sized sd cards crumbled in the contact part, had trouble removing the card itself and especially small fragments from the socket. The impression is that the plastic case was of poor quality.

      • Igor

        Micro SD sometimes die from a bad adapter. I have one that died. For they are almost paper. They say that Samsung's adapters are more reliable than the SD cards themselves, but it's better to take a real full-size one. All the same, there is zero practical benefit from MicroSD, but they cost more with comparable characteristics.

    • Igor

      An extra link of contacts in the chain is not buzzing.

      • Yuriy

        That's right, Igor!

    • Vv

      MicroSD I have died more than SD (pieces 5-7 MicroSD from 1 to 32 GB versus two SD - one for 8, the second for 16 GB), despite the fact that I have 15-20 SD, and microSD - less than a dozen . Statistics are not in favor of micro. In addition, as Arkady wrote, I also had microSD bugs much more often than full-sized SDs, so I refused micro.

      • BB

        … forgot my mail

  • Vladimir

    Conclusion: Nikon breaks SD cards. ;D

    • Arkady Shapoval

      Breakfast with them

  • Salavat

    And how many sd cards were lost or given away to schoolchildren, do not count
    But for some reason, CF has not been lost in 15 years. And two or three of them, who refused to work on Canon-one, work great on Nikon carcasses. True, I sometimes straightened contacts both in card readers and in carcasses. Last
    time on old Nikon carcasses, I try not to take out memory cards at all and copy files via cable. I have a CF-sd-micro-sd adapter and I often use it when I pick up the ancient Canon 1D patriarch. As a result, over a decade and a half, an opinion has been created that CF cards are an order of magnitude more reliable than SD cards.

    • Arkady Shapoval

      Many people say that CF is more reliable. This is where size and cost come into play. They are larger and the cost is higher, which is why they are psychologically valued higher.

  • Eugene

    Several pieces of SD cards died, but of a small volume and in DVRs. Apparently, the resource was running out. Nothing has ever died in cameras, small-capacity cards simply “moved” to survive in the DVR gradually. Amateur.

  • Anon Legion

    It is believed that CF is more reliable

    • Arkady Shapoval

      However, they have almost disappeared from the market.

  • Anon Legion

    What about CFexpress cards?

    • Arkady Shapoval

      Very fast, most likely also very reliable. I had little contact with them.

  • Ivan

    A long time ago, strangely died CF Transcend on 4GB. Filmed the material. Looked in fotike - norms. He moved to the next room, pulled out the card from the turned off camera, inserted it into the card reader on a working computer - and that's it. The card is not readable, there are no photos, nothing could be restored. I was happy that the material was static, and just went to reshoot. I didn't use Transcend anymore and had no problems with CF cards.

    • Eugene

      I faced a similar problem - I start copying pictures to the computer through the reader, suddenly the process is interrupted, the card is not readable, the computer does not see it at all, and the camera offers to format it. What has managed to skopriatsya is what remains. The photos are well saved by the R.saver program, it pulls out everything that was taken in the last session and even more. The main thing is not to format. I bow that this is a jamb of the reader.

  • Michael

    Who and why thinks that CF are archived. It's in vain. These cards work and work. The regions are full of different cameras and for newfangled things like SQD or Cexpress, well, stupidly there is no money at all ... And the cameras, if they shoot, are wonderful. And yes, there are many, many options for cards and not always the most expensive ones are the best option

    • Arkady Shapoval

      and what is there to think about, remember, the last Nikon / Canon cameras that supported CF?
      All camera lines have abandoned them. The old with CF, of course, will be, but the new is no longer there.

      • Victor

        I wonder why both leading brands have been dragging support for CF cards for so long (until 2016)?
        It seems to be, as it was found out here, their reliability is comparable, the maximum write speed to the card too.

        • Arkady Shapoval

          everything is simple, there was no worthy replacement

        • Alexander

          CF cards have a significantly larger memory resource than SD cards.

          • Victor

            That is, a different type of memory is used in CF? Like SD - TLC, and CF - MLC (this is figurative)?

            • Sergei

              CF uses a memory controller that allows you to reassign sectors as they wear out, predict wear, batch write and read, cache, etc. things. SD doesn't have that luxury.

              • Joe

                Of course, SD has these basic features.
                The SD card includes an on-card intelligent controller to manage the interface protocol, security algorithms, data storage and retrieval, error handling and corresponding error correction code (ECC) algorithms, defect handling and diagnostics, power management, and clock control.
                https://jes-eurasipjournals.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s13639-016-0060-8
                Translation:
                The SD card includes an embedded intelligent controller to manage the interface protocol, security algorithms, data storage and retrieval, error handling and related error correction code (ECC) algorithms, defect handling and diagnostics, power management, and clock management.

              • Joe

                In addition to my previous comment, simplified SD specifications (including regarding controllers) can be downloaded and read at this link:
                https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/pls/

  • Alexander

    Personal experience:
    CF card PQ1 256mb x40 - loss of all data
    SD card Sandisk 8Gb - loss of all data
    miniSD card Kingston 512mb - loss of all data
    microSD Kingston 32GB class10 - partial data loss

  • Andrei_Bogdanoff

    Therefore, it is better not to remove the cards from the camera - to transfer data via wire or wi-fi. If SD cards are planned to be removed, then microSD through an adapter is better - then the adapter wears out, and the card is intact

    • Eugene

      But it's a hell of a long time to merge one and a half frames, 30 meters each, directly from the camera. And it’s not always the battery at that stage of charging (especially after a tight shooting), which would also withstand this long process.

      • Human

        The battery does not always withstand, but rather always does not withstand such a long transfer. This problem is partially solved by a battery on a wire, with an externally connected 7.2V power supply (from the manufacturer or analogues), or there are still a couple of conventional USB converters to power aliexpress from 5V.

        But, as for me, camera manufacturers themselves often complicate the process of transferring these same photos over the wire from the camera. Why not, for example, make the camera simply connect as an external drive (olympus). So no, you need to fence the garden with a connection like a “digital camera”, which is 100500 times slower than USB 2.0 due to loading miniatures and something else (Canon). Somehow completely discourages the desire to connect by wire. Yes, and the connection is also often buggy. It is generally impossible to do any 2 actions at the same time, such as cutting 50 photos into one folder, 150 into another, everything hangs, the device is busy, in general, this is of course a pain. Moreover, with old CF cards, this is implemented even worse than with connecting the camera by wire. Any parallel action with almost 90% probability leads to a hang. On a poppy, it’s a separate song in general, without special software, he generally doesn’t see a Canon camera in any, and even with special glitches.

        As for me, this is all done on purpose, since there are normal implementations of this process. Or use a card reader

        • Joe

          > So no, you need to fence the garden with a connection like a “digital camera”, which is 100500 times slower than USB 2.0 due to loading thumbnails and something else (Canon)
          The problem in the situation you describe is not from Canon, but from the software you use on your computer.
          For example, in Linux, all photos from a Canon DSLR connected via USB are loaded without any pauses with one command: gphoto2 --get-all-files

        • BB

          And there are also USB3.0 card readers, but cameras still (?) 2.0

          • Eugene

            But on Nikon D810 since 2014 - usb3.0

  • Sergei

    I realized for myself that it is better not to remove the card from the fotik. I inserted it there and forgot, and dumped the photo through the string.
    The camera has Wi-Fi and BT, but I can't set up file transfer (Nikon D7500).

    • BB

      yeah, especially when the shooting card is over - take another camera?
      Yes, and as they wrote above, draining 20-60 gig through a lace is still a pleasure ...

      • Eugene

        Via Bluetooth it's even more fun.

  • Oleg

    yes, I agree with Arkady, micro sd do not justify themselves, there were failures and more than once, I use only full-fledged SD ... I have no experience using CF cards ...

  • Max Viktorych

    Micro SDs are unreliable on their own. It's not the adapter that's most likely, but overheating due to the small size, the heat sink is poor. IMHA naturally. I broke about 5 such cards and all in phones. In cameras and laptops, full-fledged SD and CF, none of them seem to have broken.

  • lego

    I use microSD Samsung Evo + 128Gb through a complete adapter. Those with recording up to 90 MB / s. A new line with such parameters only for 256Gb. Smaller capacity with recording up to 60 MB/s. Fast and reliable, adapters are alive. Sometimes I accidentally press the erase lock on the adapter when I insert it into the card reader. Already four cards. An acquisition for 512 Gb is on the way. Nikon digests them.

  • Ivan

    From my experience
    One Transcend SD 4GB on Nikon D50 crumbled after 3 years of slow operation. It has been replaced with the same one.
    Now three of my cameras have 3 CF cards. There were no problems with CF in cameras.
    My brother at one job quite often took off CF cards. They used it for promotional purposes. When there is an advertising interactive panel 1m wide and 2m high in front of the entrance to the store and the video is being played. So this panel is controlled by its built-in computer and CF cards are used for storage. These CF cards flew out. I have 3 or 4 CF Apacers of 2GB each, which broke down in such advertising stands. There is a suspicion that they broke due to overheating. So everything is relative.

    • Vladimir

      Does Nikon d50 support cards over 2GB?

      • Ivan

        Twenty-five again :)
        Once on this resource, I already proved that yes - it works and there were people who also used 50GB cards on the D4.
        The trick is that the D50 supports SD cards, so to speak, of the “first generation”, SDHC (up to 32GB) and SDXC (64GB and more) went further. Yes, among the recommended cards in the instructions you will not find a mention of 4GB SD cards, but the “first generation” SD standard itself describes cards up to 4GB, including 4GB. And some firms produced 4GB SD cards. This is the one I used.
        https://ibb.co/10x3vrc
        I have seen similar 4GB SD cards from kingston.
        And so - yes, the D50 does not know how to work with SDHC and SDXC

  • Basil

    And who can say anything about hard drives in the CF form factor. I bought 5D (first) and it has Hitachi Microdrive 4GB

    • Basil

      Lord, I don't understand. Or am I out of my voice, or have nothing to say? Has anyone come across hard drives in the CF form factor? What is there to say for them? :)))

      • Victor

        The voice is quite clear :)
        Personally, I have not come across hard drives in cf format, but, a purely personal opinion, their relevance has ended with the growth in the volume of solid-state media, and today there is absolutely no point in them.

        • Basil

          I thought to find out the pros-cons-ambushes of use. Since they took place in life, it means that in this “conversation” it is possible to mention. :)

  • Eugene o

    Those who write about “it’s better not to take it out”, how many frames do you shoot at a time? I'm not a wedding bomber, but often two cards in RAW are consumed per session (the second slot writes JPEG and, as a rule, the capacity is not fully developed). And then transfer two 32 gigabytes via USB 2.0? No, thank you, time is more valuable.

    • Eugene

      exactly. And I'm talking about the same

  • Dmitriy

    For 20 years statistics:

    a few SDs just died. The couple broke into layers.
    Only one CF died, took it out of the camera during the recording
    My friend's CF jammed the contacts in the digital back of a medium format camera. It is treated only by replacing the motherboard and is extremely expensive. but they themselves inaccurately inserted, and the contacts are unsuccessfully located there. On a narrow format, my contacts have NEVER been jammed, although I have used these cards for two decades and inserted them haphazardly when I needed to quickly insert them.

    Summary:
    – reliable CF cards have become obsolete, sent to the archive in the main. I have one camera still supports them
    - SD cards are unreliable, but "alive"
    – XQD and CFexpress are supported in few cameras.

    Total: the logic of the development of cards is that they break and the user buys new ones. or to pay a lot at once, thus paying off something that will not buy several cards in the coming years. cheap and reliable = unprofitable

    • Vlad

      So the problem is not that the card breaks and you have to buy a new one. And in the loss of data, which is ten times more expensive than the card itself

      • Eugene

        the manufacturer (read - huckster) on our data - we are the army. They are only interested in selling their product.

        • Joe

          The thieves' vocabulary about “hucksters” is hardly appropriate here.
          If it weren’t for a large number of different commercial companies, you wouldn’t even be able to express your opinion on the Internet, because there would be no Internet, no mass distribution of personal computers, no smartphones available to almost everyone, no software for all this. Yes, and the discussed memory cards in their usual form would not exist, as well as mass digital photography, and graphic editors.
          You can invent anything, but to bring the idea to practical implementation, to organize the mass production of technically complex goods is a very expensive undertaking, and in reality no one can do this without counting on profit, even if he wants to.
          In the meantime, there are no real alternatives to market relations, it is the profit from the sale of goods that allows us to develop a product, produce it, improve it, and reduce the price (20 years ago a 256 MB SD card cost $199, now you can buy a much faster UHS-II SD card for the same price 1000 (thousand!) times larger, 256GB).

          • Eugene

            Thieves' vocabulary has nothing to do with it. There are honest entrepreneurs who work honestly for a small plus and are content with reasonable needs, and there are large ones (or those who terribly want to become such), who have no conscience and do not see the shores, in their desire to buy the whole world, who came up with built-in obsolescence and an artificially limited resource of things. This is the bards.

    • Joe

      > Total: the logic of the development of cards is that they break and the user buys new ones. or to pay a lot at once, thus paying off something that will not buy several cards in the coming years. cheap and reliable = unprofitable

      Cheap, high quality, reliable, compact - how often do you see electronics that would meet _all_ of these requirements?

      Need high reliability - buy cards with industry standard SLC memory:
      https://maxmemory.ru/karty-pamyati-promyshlennogo-standarta-industrial-ru/sd-ind/karta-pamyati-4gb-secure-digital-card-high-capacity-sdhc-industrial-81.bc910.b003c-apacer/
      But at the same time, you should not count on a low price.

      Ordinary memory cards are a mass product for the consumer market, a reasonable compromise between quality and price.
      Moreover, in practice, these most common memory cards are quite reliable - I still have 2 GB SD memory cards - for its time it was a lot, the cards are still in good condition, but are no longer relevant due to their small volume and low speed by modern standards write / read.
      For about 15 years of using different memory cards with different cameras, I can remember 1 situation in which some kind of failure occurred - the pictures recorded on the memory card were not readable, it turned out quickly, directly during shooting, the card was formatted in the same camera, after which works fine so far.
      In reality, memory cards become obsolete faster than they break (if you handle them carefully and wisely), and new ones are bought precisely for the sake of larger volume and faster operation, and not to replace faulty ones.

      And for greater reliability, I repeat, there are industrial solutions with a higher price.

      • Victor

        >> And in practice, these most common memory cards are quite reliable - I still have 2 GB SD memory cards

        Fi, they found something to surprise)) I still have 128 MB micro-cd cards, and SD cards - as much as 8 MB (eight MEGAbytes), and they are also quite serviceable. While LIE :-)

        • Victor

          Micro-SD is, of course, a typo.

  • Tserg

    Everything is like at all. CF May pieces 10 different capacities. Naystarisha, 512 MB from 2004 year, koristuvavsya it in Sony R1. Alive and well. Tsіkavo those who didn't show up with her since 2009. And from the infection, having inserted it into the card reader and won't work, it's not surprising.
    And I won’t say a good word about the SD fomfactor. 3-4 rocks and cards cease to work, otherwise they break and fall apart. Prices include Kingston, Transsend, and Sandisk Extreme Pro. The first one was covered by Sandisk on 128 GB and it was not possible to record on it. A similar situation was with the same card and with the son. I still don't buy high capacity cards, only 32 or 64 GB. If you breathe, then not with a great volume of photographs.

    • Tserg

      CF didn’t burn and broke. Navіynіst їх temple navіt at trіvalіy ekspluatatsії. It's a pity, in the new models of cameras їх are no longer vikoristovuyut. Wanting to go beyond the roses is not so great.
      SD so sobі, small, ale nedovgovіchnі і skhilnі up to shvidkogo out of the fret or breakage.
      MicroSD I try to bypass, only on smartphones. For a camera, she looks like an undignified look.

  • Ivan

    There was such an article on the site Foto.ru. Now only in the archive. Looks like an ad:
    https://web.archive.org/web/20090217205407/http://www.foto.ru/articles/?article_memory_Sandisk_extreme

  • Sergio

    I have 2 Nikon D700 CF and D7000 SD.
    The problem with (micro)SDs is poor quality contacts that wear out over time.
    The problem with CF is the possible bending of the legs of the camera's card reader. And it's just a disaster.
    Therefore, I don’t do nonsense and use a cord to transfer data through Nikon-transfer2. It only seems to be a chore, in fact it is simpler and most importantly RELIABLE of all.
    Don't lose your data.

    • BB

      Playing with shoelaces, killing a nest is still a pleasure. Add here a very low speed, then generally 'beauty'. A USB3.0 card reader cost as much as $2.
      Plus, the situation when you shoot a lot - it is better to use several rollers of a small volume than one large one.
      If you work on a stream, then your option is not an option at all. While the assistant throws off / sorts the photo, the photographer continues to shoot.
      The problem with MicroSD is their shitty quality, I don’t know what to do with the card in order to physically erase the contacts. MicroSD has died from a dozen, most of the contacts are ideal, tk. were used with adapters, respectively, if it was erased, then the adapter, and a couple of pieces died in the phones, they were not removed from there at all.

  • Azake

    on my canon 5d2 camera, several contacts of the card reader were jammed. the camera worked, but ate too much energy even when it was turned off. two batteries died safely, including my own. the third new one was swollen. It's good that the service found this problem and fixed it. now everything seems to be fine. 300 frames and the non-native battery did not lose a single division. but I keep thinking how all the same these contacts were bent and how to prevent this in the future.
    as for SD, yes, my nikon has already lost the captured footage several times. I noticed that this happens with cheap microSD as part of the adapter. it's easier to put an old SD and not suffer. this format did not really justify its name secure digital.

    • Azake

      .

  • Aleksey68

    Commentary by an industrial electronics and special purpose design engineer.
    CF cards have not disappeared anywhere, they continue to be produced and widely used in serious equipment. Their reliability is much higher than all other (serial) removable storage media. Yes, consumer goods are not produced, yes, industrial CF cards are expensive, but you don’t need to think that they don’t exist anymore, as some say here)) They exist and the equipment that uses them, controls machines, production lines, printing and medical equipment, and some other types of equipment that are not commonly referred to as “live”

    • Victor

      All this plays little role in terms of application in photographic equipment, doesn't it?))

      And in CF photographic equipment “everything”.

      • Aleksey68

        And what about photographic equipment? Arkady wrote above that “Izya fso”, that CF is no longer produced, and so on. This comment of his was my comment.
        I am writing these lines from a computer, on the motherboard of which a CF connector is installed, into which a CF card is inserted with Linux installed, which is my working OS.
        And the DSLRs I have use exactly CF cards))

    • Viktre

      So after all, how “what does it have to do with it” - the site is about photographic equipment))

      And it seems that when Arkady wrote “Izya fse”, he did not mean ancient machine tools, not medical equipment, and not “some other types of equipment that is not customary to talk about”, namely, that photographic equipment))) In which really CF fse and for a long time)))

      But you never know what anyone has - there are also computers with punched cards in the museum - you won’t say that they are still relevant?)))

      • Arkady Shapoval

        yes, in the context of the photo. Both in the context of photography and for photos in new camera models, cf is no longer used (if you do not take into account a completely different standard - cf express)

        • Aleksey68

          Yes, the newest GALLUS flex machine model of 2021 uses cf express, before that it used regular CF, but everything else on the industrial equipment still works on CF, and with a small capacity using SLC technology, I think it’s clear why.

      • Aleksey68

        Equipment using CF is still produced today, we are not talking about any antiquities, no need to distort))

        • Viktre

          Never distort)

          Fanic, fagor, nc have been (figuratively) using the usb interface to connect drives for a hundred years))) So ninada)))

        • Viktre

          Well, in general, as it was correctly noted above, we are talking about the photo. And in the cf photo, that's all, and this is a fact, as it were. Yes, and there are practically no cf left in computer stores, I also think it’s clear why.

          • Aleksey68

            We both bought CF from the manufacturer, and continue to buy and install in our equipment. Well, USB is generally banned in our industry, I think it's clear why.

            • Dmitry Kostin

              Do you buy something like this?
              TS32GCF200I 32GB CompactFlash CF Card 200I Industrial Grade Transcend
              CF Industrial grade will most likely be made for a long time.
              They were expensive before, and now even more so: 32GB costs about $500.
              In medical equipment, for example, COM ports and various archaic solutions are still found, but successful models can be produced for 10 years or more - everything suits everyone, and something new and unusual can unnerve lab managers.

          • Viktre

            I won’t argue, maybe in some retrograde industries they still drag the CF standard behind them, and they will drag it for another 30 years)))) This, in general, is not an indicator that CF is still alive today. Yes, of course, the manufacturer will continue to supply you with such cards (and I have a strong suspicion that a 1GB card “from the manufacturer” will cost the same as SD, say 128 gigs :)) ), but in stores such cards, for example, will soon not be available at all find.

            • Aleksey68

              Industrial CF cards cost several hundred dollars, but they are capable of operating under severe operating conditions (temperature, vibration, humidity, pressure drops) and have a guaranteed life and reliability. Yes, their capacity is small, because the SLC technology, but this is a price for reliability.
              In stores, we never buy anything, only direct deliveries.
              In especially critical applications, NAND memory chips are installed directly on the board and filled with a compound.

              • Viktre

                Well, you yourself understand that all this actually has nothing to do with the photo.

  • Azatbek

    no one has encountered such a problem with canon 5d iii cameras that the camera does not see the SD card. all except those with 2GB and 4GB memory. cards that the camera does not see with a capacity of 8 and 32 GB. SD HC card type as allowed according to the instructions. formatted as FAT32 and work fine in other cameras. Naturally, formatting is not available in the camera itself because the camera does not see the card.

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