SD card differrence (Page 2): Anyone who would hang onto their card after failure #1 waiting for failure #2 baffles me.

tinplater Loc: Scottsdale, AZ

Longshadow wrote:

I would rather have a six year MTBF than a six month one.

MTBF - mean time between failure
MTTF - mean time to failure
(But I've always <probably erroneously> referred MTBF as mean time before failure. (Like MTTF)

Anyone who would hang onto their card after failure #1 waiting for failure #2 baffles me.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

tinplater wrote:

Anyone who would hang onto their card after failure #1 waiting for failure #2 baffles me.

That has what to do with what I stated? I'm confused.

LarryFB Loc: Depends where our RV is parked

MTBF means Mean Time between failures, and typically applies only to REPAIRABLE mechanical or electronic devices. I don't consider an SD card a repairable device.

MTTF means Mean Time to failure. On SD cards I want the MTTF (which is measured in somes sort of time parameter) to be as high as possible. The time parameter could be measured in Hours, months, years, or even read and write actions.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

LarryFB wrote:

MTBF means Mean Time between failures, and typically applies only to REPAIRABLE mechanical or electronic devices. I don't consider an SD card a repairable device.

MTTF means Mean Time to failure. On SD cards I want the MTTF (which is measured in somes sort of time parameter) to be as high as possible. The time parameter could be measured in Hours, months, years, or even read and write actions.

A failure is a failure. It is not restricted to repairable devices.
(I was a Quality Assurance Engineer for IC's and semiconductors, we used the same MTBF connotation.)

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Obviously, you want the MTBF or MTTF as long as possible, but the actual calculated numbers are meaningless for the average person. It’s no accident that companies are loath to publish MTBF numbers, because there are multiple ways (which are not equivalent) to calculate the number. For example, the published MTBF for a number of hard drives in the market is greater than 250,000 hours. Does anyone find that number useful (or realistic for a specific drive)? I’ve been in the business of calculating MTBFs for Mil Std VME/VPX PCBs, and I’ve seen this up close - we often calculated MTBF numbers greater than 1 million hours based on the individual component MTBFs.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

TriX wrote:

Obviously, you want the MTBF or MTTF as long as po... (show quote)

And don't forget it's a mean.
Some will be sooner and some will be later.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

TriX wrote:

Obviously, you want the MTBF or MTTF as long as po... (show quote)

An MTBF of 250,000 hours is better than 150,000 hours.
That's why I purchased a WD GOLD drive for the desk top.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Longshadow wrote:

An MTBF of 250,000 hours is better than 150,000 hours.
That's why I purchased a WD GOLD drive for the desk top.

Excellent enterprise quality drive. Not cheap, but about as good as you can get.

John N Loc: HP14 3QF Stokenchurch, UK

I'd like to think that pricier cards are manufactured to higher tolerances and that therefore they would cause less harm to the camera fitment.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Bud Black wrote:

Is there really any difference in using a 5 dollar 64gig SD card or paying 20 bucks for the same item? Any card is basically a storage device of a series of ones or zeros. So how does one store a better image than the other?

The brand means a lot. I wouldn't use a free "HappySnappy" card, if one existed. Even if you see a brand name card, it could be a counterfeit. A 32GB card might be only 3GB, if that.

LXK0930 Loc: Souh Jersey

I do not believe that for many applications, you need to buy the fastest card on the market. However, I would advise avoiding the really cheap (64GB for $5) cards. .

I recently purchased such a micro SD card for my cell phone on ebay. I added a bunch of pictures, music, etc. Then, when I went to retrieve them, various errors occurred. I tried to reformat the card (EXFAT, both deep format and regular format) to no avail. Fortunately, nothing significant was lost, but several hours wasted!!

When I tried to contact the vendor, he was no longer available. It is not worth the time to chase down a $9 refund.

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

Bud Black wrote:

Is there really any difference in using a 5 dollar 64gig SD card or paying 20 bucks for the same item? Any card is basically a storage device of a series of ones or zeros. So how does one store a better image than the other?

Many vary on how fast they load data. I like the faster (more expensive) cards because I usually shoot at ten frames a second and like my card to keep pace. As with most products, the better quality ones tend to cost more. I am not sure there is a quality of image difference. I think a 20 meg photo stored on any card would be indentical.

Skiextreme2 Loc: Northwest MA

Another reason to get better cards is customer reviews. Go to a good website (B&H, Adorama, Newegg, etc.) and look at reviews for good cards and cheap cards and you'll notice anything with 4-5 stars isn't a $5 card.

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

Bud Black wrote:

Is there really any difference in using a 5 dollar 64gig SD card or paying 20 bucks for the same item? Any card is basically a storage device of a series of ones or zeros. So how does one store a better image than the other?

I'm not sure where you're going with this, but I have a couple of medium high end 64gb SD cards and just bough a couple of (same brand) cheaper SD cards. The upper end ones were about $100 each (if memory serves me correctly) and the others were about $30 apiece. The $100 cards are about 6 times faster than the $30 cards (according to the speed on the card). When I shot, I didn't notice it (because I had plenty of buffer and shot slowly) but I really noticed the difference when I was uploading the images to the computer. I have put the new slower cards in my card case as "emergency" cards. They give me backup or overflow storage.. of if necessary, I can transfer images to them from my "main" cards, while back at the hotel/motel. I will NEVER go cheap in memory cards again.

Canon70D

Bud Black wrote:

Any card is basically a storage device of a series of ones or zeros. So how does one store a better image than the other?

The SanDisk SD cards that came bundled with my 70D were not fast enough for recording video. I kept getting a "Movie recording has stopped automatically" message after a minute or so. I replaced the cards with SanDisk "Extreme" SD cards (with a higher MB/s rating) and that solved the issue.

If you take one photo at a time, I don't think a "better" SD card would matter in terms of storing an image as long as it is a quality/reliable card. But if you do a lot of burst photos/video then getting those files to the card in time could be an issue depending on your camera and settings.