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Old Jun 26, 2011 | 4:31 am
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Sturdy SD card

I bought a Sandisk 32GB SD card from Amazon, and it fell apart after about 4 or 5 insertions.

Any better products?
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Old Jun 26, 2011 | 7:08 am
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That's probably just bad luck.

Overall though - apart from issues of poor build which are quite rare - I would look for SD cards that use SLD memory and not MLC.

SLC is much more durable (SLC has 100,000+ erase/write cycles vs. only 10,000 erase/write cycles for MLC). The only problem is that SLC mem is more... expensive.

Unfortunately the Sandisk cards I've seen all use MLC...

For SLC-based CD cards I recall seeing a top-end Pretec model as well as Goodram's range of Class 10 SDHC cards.
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Old Jun 26, 2011 | 5:09 pm
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I imagine that I will lose my SD card before 10,000 write-erase cycles, or discard it in favor of the 128 TB model that will be selling for $5.95 by then.

I agree that the OP's falling-apart issue is just bad luck...I've had lots of SD cards and never had one fall apart.
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Old Jun 27, 2011 | 6:41 am
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Those are of course averages, but if reliability is absolutely vital then I'd go for SLC-type mem anyway.
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Old Jun 27, 2011 | 7:56 am
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I buy whatever is the least expensive for the size and speed I want. I figure that I'll lose it or leave it in a pocket and wash it or the cat till scurry away with it long before it wears out.

It sounds like you got a bad one or one that was abused and returned and sold as new or something, some of my oldest cards are sandisk. I'm betting either sandisk or amazon will replace it for you without any issues.
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Old Jun 27, 2011 | 6:38 pm
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I always have good luck with Kingston and Transcend cards. They are cheaper than SanDisk too.

I'm sure Amazon will replace or refund the faulty SanDisk card as the last person mentioned.

Must have been a fluke since SanDisk is known as one of the highest quality memory card manufacturers.
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Old Jun 27, 2011 | 7:02 pm
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I've never had any issues with dozens of name-brand cards - SD, CF, MMC, etc.

But if you're really concerned about ruggedness, I'd suggest the Hoodman RAW Steel SD cards. Steel plated, ruggedized, and waterproof
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Old Jun 28, 2011 | 4:49 pm
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Its not 32gb but they have different sizes.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...SIN=B00200K1SO
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Old Jun 30, 2011 | 10:19 am
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Originally Posted by meester69
I bought a Sandisk 32GB SD card from Amazon, and it fell apart after about 4 or 5 insertions.

Any better products?
Did you smash it with a hammer or something?

I have NEVER had a SD card fall apart, even after 100 or 500 insertions...
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Old Jun 30, 2011 | 10:05 pm
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It could also be a fake. Fake Sandisks are rampant.
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Old Jul 2, 2011 | 1:14 am
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Originally Posted by pWei
It could also be a fake. Fake Sandisks are rampant.
Was this sold directly by Amazon, or by some heavily-discounted vendor via Amazon? I'm increasingly thinking the latter are basically a new version of eBay, and the quality and authenticity of several things I've gotten through third-party vendors has been suspect.
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Old Jul 2, 2011 | 5:39 pm
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+1 for what others are saying.
I've a 7 year old Sandisk SD card that has seen over 1,000 remove/inserts and no signs of falling apart. Same for a cheap no name microSD card.
I've seen a fake Transcend and Sandisk from ebay, both labled 32gb and crapped out at 2gb. There is some neat hax they do to make it show a 32gb cap but its only 2gb in reality. That person was pissed when I showed them the links about it.
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Old Jul 5, 2011 | 3:24 am
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Originally Posted by pWei
It could also be a fake. Fake Sandisks are rampant.
Unfortunately, this is completely true. And it's not just constrained to Sandisk branded cards.

Andrew "bunnie" Huang, hardware lead for Chumby Industries (they make cool alarm clocks) and hacker of the original Xbox, has a really great writeup on his blog about fake SD cards. It might be a little technical if you're not an electrical engineer, but the investigation is fascinating:

http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=918

One of my favorite parts, referring to shopping for SD Cards in a Shenzhen market:
Second, the small vendors are entirely brazen about selling you well-crafted fakes. Typically, the bare cards are just sitting loose in trays in the display case; once you agree on the price and commit to buying the card, the vendor will toss the loose card into a real Kingston retail package, and then miraculously pull out a certificate, complete with hologram, serial numbers, and a kingston.com URL you can visit to validate your purchase, and slap it on the back of the retail package right in front of your eyes.
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Old Jul 6, 2011 | 5:42 pm
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Originally Posted by nkedel
Was this sold directly by Amazon, or by some heavily-discounted vendor via Amazon? I'm increasingly thinking the latter are basically a new version of eBay, and the quality and authenticity of several things I've gotten through third-party vendors has been suspect.
Sold directly from Amazon in their 'hassle-free packaging'.

I bought fake goods from them before via a third-party vendor, it was a Canon battery, reported it to Canon but nothing got done.
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