I have been reading a number of posts, reviews, etc. about defective SD cards from SanDisk. The two most frequent complaints appear to be (i) SanDisk card malfunction after heavy or repeated use, or (ii) large file transfers result in either corrupted data files or the creation of garbage files on the SanDisk. SanDisk failures do not appear to be Axim-related, but instead appear across a number of PDA platforms.
Does anyone have any solid information on the best SD card available, and by "best" I mean most reliable, least failure-prone. I don't care about cost -- spending $20 less on a card that repeatedly fails is no savings whatever. (It may be SanDisk is, in fact, the most reliable. The failures I've read about could well be a function of SanDisk's large market share -- if you sell 50 times the product of the nearest competitor, elementary statistics say you will have more failures in absolute numbers. It's the percentage of unit failures relative to units sold that I'm concerned about.)
Am especially interested in 256 MB card (or 512 MB card, but I don't think they are widely available just yet in SD, and I don't want to blow the CF slot on storage when the SD slot is readily available).
I bought myself and my dad 128Mb Viking SD cards and they seem to be working great.
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Thank you for the responses. Someone else had posted good results with Lexar's SD cards (the post disappeared). I think I'm going to take a look at Toshiba, Samsung, SimpleTech, and Viking - if other posters have been using them continuously and/or for large file transfers, please post your results, good or bad.
We need an unbiased, authoritative, comparative study concerning the reliability of various SD card manufacturers, and at this point I'd even settle for a synopsis from Consumer Reports. Unfortunately, I have come across no such studies or comparisons. Hence, the anecdotal evidence reported here is valuable information.
(Posted a response before but it too was deleted. I think the changeover destroyed some posts.)
Sequitur: I use mine every day, from Movie/MP3 transfers to take to school, to daily notetaking, so stuff gets added/removed from my Viking 128Mb very frequently. It's been running perfectly. I don't know if all SD cards have this, because I haven't worked with them since I got my Ax, and these are the only ones we own, but there is a lock switch on them to lock all the data from deletion/modification. Nice feature if you have multiple cards and want to make sure you don't accidently delete something important. Again, all SD cards might have this feature, I'm not sure.
I got ours off of Amazon.com... they ran a deal where it was 50% off all SD and CF cards. I went with SD instead of CF simply because of our wireless CF cards, they usually occupy the CF slot.
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I have a SanDisk in my machine. I have had 0 problems. It is a 256MB size.
I purchased a SimpleTech 128MB for my wife's Axim. No problems from that unit as well.
I doubt you can find an unbiased analysis of secure digital cards. The best you could find would be speed testing but then again that may depend on model size and I bet even manufacturing lots may differ within the same brand and size.
You also have see many complaints with SanDisk regarding corruption and speed. I think you have to take that in the fact that SanDisk is in my opinion a LARGE manufacturer/seller of SD memory cards. More products out there, more complaints due to the sheer numbers. On the flip side, I don't see too many complaints with Lexar or SimpleTech.
Long time user of Lexar. I espicially like the option to buy cards at diffrerent speeds. I buy 12x or higher for my digital camera. The high speed cards increase the number of continous shots I can take.
I would think that the higher speed cards (12x ~ 24x) would improve movie play back. Has anyone tested this? I might post this question in another Forum for better response.
I've been using SanDisk for a while now (get them dirt cheap from work) and never had any problems with them. Samsung and Kingston are the other two that I tend to pick up, but Lexar isn't half bad these days either.
As for the speed thing, never been able to tell the difference yet, but since I'm still waiting on my Axim, its hard to say. Last time I tried testing speeds was on a HP Jordana (540 series) and a Palm m505. My guess is that is more depends on the actual speed of the slot its in than the card itself. Hope one of you gets the chance to find out for us :p
Oh, one more thing, all SD cards of the security switch. Its was one of the features they all bragged about when they first came out. A few low-end companies don't bother adding them, but that's a good sign something might not be right about buying from them.
The lexar 128mb sd has performed magnificently now for over 3 weeks.....just as long as I have had my Axim....still have the first one...no complaints.
i am currently using lexar for my PDA and viking for the digital camera. i'd certainly recommend both. i have not had any problems at all with either. Used Samsumg before; also a good brand....
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