rod gamble

Just a word of caution to fellow photographers regarding Lexar photo cards.

I have been using digital cards since 1998 when Sony first introduced their 128 MB Memory Stick. I have always stuck to Sony, Samsung and San Disk SD and Compact Flash cards and in 17 years have never had a card fail on me.

Three months ago I bought a new Sony A7s camera and the Samy's Camera salesmen convinced me to buy a couple of Lexar Professional 32GB HC II 1000x SD cards because they were fast and on sale.

Two weekends ago I drove about 3 hours from my house to do a two day photo shoot and took 500 plus photos on my Lexar card which up until now had done fine in my camera, my laptop and my desktop computers. This time was different. I went to review my shots on my camera and got an error message saying the card could not be read, would I like to format at this time. Obviously that would mean loosing my entire photo shoot so no I did not want to reformat.

By the end I saw my photos one time, on my laptop and started to download in batches. I got one batch of 30 photos and that was the last I saw of my weekend shoot. the rest were gone forever. I tried using my desk top, a patch cord, and a card reader. I tried using Lexars recovery 3,4 and 5 software programs all to no avail.

I have a photographer friend (Linda) who shoots weddings. She used this same type of Lexar card and lost an entire wedding shoot. After Lexar pretty much told her to own it, she got her card back and took the card to a pro recovery shop where she ended up paying $2,500 to recover most of her wedding shoot.

I mailed my card back to Lexar. They will not try to recover anything but promise that within the nex 14-21 days, they will check the card and if they find it to be faulty they will send me a replacement card.

Whoopy ding. I'll not be trusting Lexar cards ever again in my cameras.

ralphc4176 Loc: Conyers, GA

I don't have any Lexar SD cards, but I have other Lexar products which have served me perfectly so far. Thanks for providing the warning about the specific card which caused so much trouble for you.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Try Recuva or others.

https://www.piriform.com/recuva
http://www.z-a-recovery.com/
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

One thing I like about upper level Nikons is their dual slot system. I can have a Lexar in slot 1 and have it back up to an SD in slot 2. Two slot/two brands. It's like the pilot and copilot eating different meals on a flight.

Jim Bob

Lexar sucks. Lost some irreplaceable images using that POS. I only use Sandisk.

picturesofdogs Loc: Dallas, Texas.

Sandisk only for me.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

You're friend was ripped off. If the images were recoverable, they sure wouldn't cost that much to recover with a reputable service or the purchase of the right recovery software.

mainshipper Loc: Hernando, Florida

I have had two failures with Lexar cards and will not buy any more. I'm not one to cast a black cloud over a whole brand but I don't want to risk a failure with some Irreplaceable images so I will stay away from Lexar. The failures I've experience have been with individual shots and not the whole card and has happened on both SD and CF formats. They did promptly replace the one CF card that I had issues with. I use Fuji, Sandisk, or Transcend.

RDH

The Pro level Canons also have a two slot system, very useful.

Mark7829 Loc: Calfornia

I keep my cards in my camera and download directly from them. If you take them in and out and put them into other devices readers and alike you might have corruption issues. When you open the door to your camera, who knows what the wind will blow in. You take your card and put it on the table, pocket, car seat, etc., who knows what it will be exposed to.

Another piece of personal advice, don't delete images on your card as you shoot. I have heard that can mess things up. I don't know how that would cause an issue but the less you do in that regard is not going to hurt either.

Cards just fail and every manufacturer has failures.

Jim Bob

Yeah, but some are much worse than others. You use Lexar and I stick with the "failures" of Sandisk.

Jim Bob

Short term fix not available on most consumer cameras. Rather than compensate for poor quality products I prefer to use something else.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

One thing you might not know about Lexar cards is that if you are using one of their cards that is UDMA 7 you should use a card reader that is UDMA 7 compliant. If you don't, then every time you use one that isn't compliant the card degrades a little until you have a card failure. A person that I know well had this problem. They sent him a new card. The first question they asked him on the phone what what card reader he uses. He told them that his Mac uses a fast reader (I don't know Mac so I can't remember what it's called) and that's what he's been using for years. They told him to only use UDMA 7 compliant card readers on their fast cards that have UDMA 7 designations or they will corrupt over time. As soon as he told me this, I bought a new USB3 card reader from B&H. I got the dual SD/CF Lexar UDMA 7 card reader and it was under $20 at the time.

Tracyv Loc: Del Mar, Ca

jeep daddy :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Part of the problem is that these cards are not all identical, neither are the card readers, nor the cameras, nor the computers.

These are memory devices, and they have a file system structure applied by formatting them. If you format the card in the camera, then using the camera to delete individual images should not cause a problem, since the cameras OS and the card format should be completely compatible.

However, if you format the card with a card reader and your computer then there can be differences that could cause problems of varying kinds. Keeping things consistent is important.

As mentioned by Jeep Daddy, there can be other compatibility issues that can be problematic. It is important to read the instructions and compatibility information, since the devil is usually in the details.

Even the best products can fail if used incorrectly. Keeping things simple and consistent usually helps.

ricardo7 Loc: Washington, DC - Santiago, Chile

"Two weekends ago I drove about 3 hours from my house to do a two day photo shoot and took 500 plus photos on my Lexar card"

Cards can fail. That is why I would never put 500 plus images on a single card. I use 8GB cards and never put more than 100 photos on them.

I also had a Lexar card fail. It was a new card and was quickly replaced by Lexar.