Memory card problems

[Red Studio]

Hi

 

I'm using a Nikon D3100 DSLR camera and have just started using a new memory card in it.

 

I was previously using an 8GB class 10 card by Integral without any problems and have now bought a double pack of 16GB SD HC cards by PNY (possibly a Currys/PC World brand?). After a lot of discussion I settled on a 50 MB/s as it had a faster write and a slightly slower read than their top spec one (my PC is old and doesn't read that fast so I was more concerned to get a faster write as I frequently use the rapid fire on the camera.)

 

Anyway - long story short - in almost 80 shots so far I have had three corrupt jpg files, never having had any before. They can't be zoomed or edited on the camera but can be downloaded. They are unreadable to Photoshop but I can trick my way round this by rotating the canvas 90 degrees in windows explorer before I open them. There is still visible corruption as though some parts of the image have been shuffled to the right.

 

Is this a memory card issue? it seems too much of a coincidence not to be. Has anyone had any experience of these PNY branded cards?

 

Thanks

Mitch

[TriggerFish]

Have you tried going back to the old card? Or using the new cards in a different camera, and then seeing what the results are?

 

No experience of those cards, but I can remember my old D3100 worked OK with a range of different cards up to 64GB.

[littleade]

Have you formated them? Just had a gopro type camera off the kids for christmas and it said to format the card before using.

[Red Studio]

Thanks for the replies.

 

I tried one of the cards quickly to see that they worked then back to the old which still worked fine. I've only just started using the new card properly and can't be sure it's the one I tested. I've got nearly 80 shots on it and the first faulty one is number 30 a few days ago and then two more today in the low 70s. These last two I only just downloaded to the PC today to see what they look like and one seems to have parts of another image along the bottom edge in landscape format, the second has blocks of colour and parts of either another image or itself (difficult to say as it's woodland) down the right side in portrait format. Effectively it's always the bottom edge of the file.

 

I'm shooting 4608x3072 in JPG Normal setting. The problems haven't been on rapid fire, just single shots.

 

I didn't format the cards. Now I have the shots off there I should clear it and give it a go. I didn't keep the packaging but I don't think it mentioned formatting before use so it didn't even occur to me.

Edited 28 December, 2014 by Red Studio

[Red Studio]

Well I formatted the card and thought that had fixed it. I've been checking every shot after I shoot it in case I needed to take it again but was starting to get more confident as I approached 50 shots then:

 

"This card is damaged and cannot be used" comes up. I switch it off and on again and it has one file that cannot be accessed although it's happy to shoot again. I'm taking the cards back for a refund as soon as I retrieve everything I need from them.

 

Anyone else had any issues with these PNY "High Performance" cards? I don't fancy getting a straight replacement from Currys based on its performance so far.

[JackL]

The only experience I have had with these cards have been on some of the trail cameras we use for wildlife filming. We would get a couple of shots on a card and the next time the camera operated, we got the message 'corrupt file' on the screen.

I tried a number of times to clear the problem by reformatting in the camera but the reliability issue was always a problem - they finished up in the bin! 

[Red Studio]

Yes, they've gone back. Picked up some by Sandisk from another retailer. I've had stuff by them before - memory and mp3 players and they've been incredibly reliable so here's hoping these will be just as good.

[StevesTruck]

I use sd cards at work and we're advised to use Kingston or SanDisk.

[ElectricShepherd]

Or Lexar, they're very good too. I do have a 16Gb PNY card [it came with an RX100 I bought], I've not used it for photographic purposes for some of the reasons touched on above, currently it's loaded in the SD slot of my Columbus!

[JohnMcL7]

PNY are not a DSG company, they're not a huge company as they largely specialise in flash memory.  I've used a couple of their 8GB SDHC cards a while back without issue.

 

I have a Nikon D700 and it is a bit fussy about its compact flash cards, I had a couple of cards which I'd taken thousands of pictures with on an Olympus DSLR without a single error but with the D700 the cards would quickly show a check card error and refuse to take further pictures.  I always format the cards in camera after copying the pictures off as I found previously this helped avoid errors, for the D700 I saw recommendations to format the card in Windows then in the camera which I was dubious about as it seemed pointless but it did help.  The D700 had no trouble with Sandisk cards nor Transcend cards so I stuck with the latter as the last thing you want is a card error mid-shooting.

 

If you've still got the 8GB card, it's worth trying that and see if you get the same error - if not then it's likely not a camera issue and something specific to the memory cards.

 

John

[Red Studio]

Thanks. The Sandisk card seems ok so far but it's early days. Hopefully problem sorted.