SanDisk SDSDB-256-A10 256 MB Secure Digital Card (Retail Package)

by SanDisk

Product Details

Product Manual [752kb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 5 x 1.2 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00006HXF4
• Item model number: SDSDB-256-A10
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (102 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #77 in Electronics > Camera & Photo > Accessories > Digital Camera Accessories > Memory Cards > CompactFlash Cards
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 27, 2002

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

SanDisk's 256 MB Secure Digital (SD) memory card includes a high-performance, 9-pin SD interface that enables data transfer rates of up to 10 MBps. Its proprietary interface commands facilitate the secure exchange of content between host devices, such as PCs and music servers, and the card itself. The security level provided in the SD memory card has been designed to comply with current and projected SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative) portable device requirements.

Product Description

The SD Card is a highly secure stamp-sized flash memory card. Jointly developed by Matsushita Electronic (best known for its Panasonic brand name products), SanDisk and Toshiba, the SD Card weighs approximately two grams. The SD Card can be used in a variety of digital products; digital music players, cellular phones, handheld PCs (HPCs), digital cameras, digital video camcorders, smart phones, car navigation systems and electronic books.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not all digital devices work with all SD cards, August 18, 2005

By 

Timothy B. Dereg (Redmond, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: SanDisk SDSDB-256-A10 256 MB Secure Digital Card (Retail Package) (Personal Computers)

There are a number of people leaving reviews here that bash SanDisk, and I'm sure that their experience justifies their opinions. But let me relate my own experience.

I bought a couple of motion-activated trail cameras and bought several Kingston 256MB SD cards for them. I decided on Kingston based on so many favorable reviews of their SD cards on Amazon. But the cameras were not compatible at all with the Kingston cards. The cameras wouldn't power up in the manner that the user manual said they would, I couldn't access the menu screen, none of the set-up buttons worked, and the LCD screens showed things never discussed in the user manual. Things were just generally screwed up, and I wondered if I had received a defective unit.

I called the camera manufacturer and they said that they also had experienced trouble with certain "offbrand" makes of SD cards, but that they hadn't had any trouble with SanDisk. I had never heard that Kingston was considered an offbrand, but I decided to experiment using another manufacturer's SD card. I inserted a SanDisk SD card, and the camera worked beautifully. Perhaps SanDisk adheres more closely to guidelines for cross-compatibility between digital devices, but that was a lesson for me.

Contrary to the experiences of some, I have never had problems with a SanDisk memory card - CF or SD - whereas this is the second time I've had problems with a Kingston memory card - one time it was a 512MB CF card that suddenly went belly-up after not much use, and now their 256MB SD card was having compatibity issues. I'm sticking with Sandisk or Lexar.

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Get a Lexar, April 1, 2003

By 

Gadgester "No Time, No Money" (Mother Earth) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: SanDisk SDSDB-256-A10 256 MB Secure Digital Card (Retail Package) (Personal Computers)

If you search around on the Web (e.g., brighthand, pocketpc thoughts...) you'll see that quite a number of users have problems with Sandisk memory cards. They used to be the cheapest, but not any more. For the same price (or even lower), you can get much-better-quality memory cards from Lexar. I highly recommend Lexar for reliability, speed, and lower power consumption.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exelent card, but does not come formatted., June 7, 2003

By 

"esd261" (Lima, OH United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: SanDisk SDSDB-256-A10 256 MB Secure Digital Card (Retail Package) (Personal Computers)

I use the one of this size and brand card that was included with my SanDisk cruzer reader. The card is extremely fast, and is extremely reliable. I also noticed that the SanDisk Cruzer worked a lot faster than my digital camera, so it's a good buy for a few extra bucks if you want to get that.

There are two reasons many people have had trouble with Sandisk SD cards.

First, the obvious, like any storage device, it must be formatted before use.

The reason SanDisk does not format the card in the factory, is likely due to the fact that it takes longer to manufacture that way. Second is that some items, such as some digital cameras, must reformat cards. There are also the issues of FAT16, FAT32, or VFAT (FAT32 with long filenames, etc.) Most PDAs would want VFAT, but many digital cameras can't handle it, and some even require the older DOS FAT16 format, as it is much easier to handle with small processors.

Additionally the SD card standard is designed that some devices will accept a maximum size, or only a certain size. Many earlier Palm PDAs only supported 64MB, but most newer ones support more.