5 new 64gb SD cards: Incoming inspection?

[MareLuce]

I just purchased 10 new 64gb Sandisk SD cards from Adorama for an upcoming cruise and DIY land tour in Alaska.

What should I do re: incoming inspection on these cards?

- Format them in my cameras?
(a DJI Osmo Action, a Panasonic Lumix ZS200, a FujiFilm waterproof XP140)

- Run speed tests to verify they are the legit fast kind to support 4k video?
(I bought them from BH Photo after reading on Wirecutter and hearing on podcasts that many of the Sandisk cards on Amazon are professional fakes - swapped with lower speed memory cards but still bearing the Extreme packaging.)

What would you do?

 

[mollyc]

I would format them in camera then use them.

 

[MareLuce]

Is there such a thing as "dead sectors" on SD cards, and does a camera format take care of that?

 

[mofunk]

Always try to purchase your camera gear from an authorized dealer.

10 64GB wow

 

[MareLuce]

Always try to purchase your camera gear from an authorized dealer.

10 64GB wow

Yep.

Apparently Alaska is like Disney World for adults. I normally prefer exploring cities on vacations, much more than nature. Then, on a flight back from a work trip to Hong Kong, I met a Chinese woman traveling with her church group. They were all going to Alaska. She couldn't believe I've never been to Alaska yet I was an American .

She raved about it and we shared a Pomelo, the most delicious citrus fruit I discovered in Hong Kong. After returning I started surfing TripAdvisor activities and was hooked.

Someone wrote, "I took more pictures in Alaska than on the past 5 vacations combined." He bought 9 64gb cards and used 7.

I hope to use the DJI Action mounted somewhere with a GorillaPod for continuous filming while on small boat tours of the Alaska coastline and glaciers like this one by Major Marine. https://majormarine.com/all-cruises/

 

[killawat]

What would you do?

I use the SD Association SD Card Formatter app to format all my cards and overwrite occasionally even compared to using something like disk utility. Do a full overwrite and make sure the output should tell you if anything is wrong or you can inspect manually to see if the size is way off.

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/

 

[MareLuce]

I use the SD Association SD Card Formatter app to format all my cards and overwrite occasionally even compared to using something like disk utility. Do a full overwrite and make sure the output should tell you if anything is wrong or you can inspect manually to see if the size is way off.

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/

Thank you!

Do you have a preferred utility for testing speed?

 

[killawat]

Do you have a preferred utility for testing speed?

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blackmagic-disk-speed-test/id425264550?mt=12
Of course YMMV as you'll need a decent card reader on your machine to test at the card limits.

I don't think you'll have any issues with the SanDisk Extremes but I use Extreme Pro with no problems.

 

[MareLuce]

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blackmagic-disk-speed-test/id425264550?mt=12
Of course YMMV as you'll need a decent card reader on your machine to test at the card limits.

Thank you!

I don't think you'll have any issues with the SanDisk Extremes but I use Extreme Pro with no problems.

The SD cards I bought for my big cameras were Extreme Pro's.

I couldn't find microSD Sandisk Extreme Pro cards for the DJI Action camera when looking at Adorama or BH Photo. On Adorama it said "discontinued". So I have the 64gb Extreme Plus for the DJI Action / Go Pro.

I wanted to buy bigger, but I read of GoPros having overheating problems with 256 gb cards. So even though I went with a different brand, I went smaller.

 

[steveash]

I have had one card failure in 20 years and this was from an Amazon reseller. Since then I have always gone for Sandisk authorised dealers and never had a problem. Running speed tests would make sense but if a card is going to fail there may not be any warning signs.