Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(47)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(29)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I have a Kodak DX4330 and at
Best quality 3.1MP, this gives me 203 pictures,
Better quality gives me 366 pictures
Good quality gives me 740 pictures

Other cameras due to compression and quality variations will be different.

Just in case the other readers don't know, the MMC and SD card are the same format. The only difference is two things. The SD card is a little thicker (still seems to fit everywhere an MMC card does) and the SD card has an extra. It has a little slider that allows the user to keep from accidentally deleting or changing items on a card. This also keeps you from taking pictures on the card if you forget to switch it back. But then most cameras or other devices should remind you of this.

The SD aspect to this MMC card also allows me to ensure the safety of my untransferred pictures as well. If I'm passing around my camera at a family gathering, first I slide the securing switch to the "lock" position to be sure no pictures can be deleted. Then I can be sure no one can accidentally delete my pictures. Unless others are aware of this feature, they would find it difficult to delete them unless they knew about this.

The only tough thing about doing this, is remembering to slide the switch back off before I take new pictures. But then my Kodak camera would remind me to do this anyway, if I was not in Review.

Great card, excellent value.

I bought this card for my KODAK CX6330 3.1MP digital camera. On this camera, at best resolution, I can take 306 pictures and/or 16 minutes of video. After a lot of use, it hasn't failed or gave me any problems. In fact, it's at least 3x faster than the internal memory when taking, deleting and viewing/thumbing through pictures. Video taking is very nice and fast as well, no problems there, it looks great when watched on TV with friends/family. Approximate download times through cable provided with my camera are about 3 minutes for 50megs of data. Mine is manufactured in China. I would recommend it for use in digital cameras. I'm considering buying another card of 256 or 512meg for making longer videos and to have even more shots when on vacation.

I just got a Toshiba e310 and although 32MB is a big step up from my old 8MB Handspring I need more. This 256MB SD card is great. I keep all my mp3s and files on here. I've had no problems with it at all. I would be nice if it had a larger capacity like the compact flash cards, but it doesn't put nearly as much strain on my batteries so its worth it. For anyone with a Pocket PC, this is a must have!

I plugged it in, opened the Rio software (Rio S10 MP3 player), hit "format" on the card and it worked like a champ. The S10 already had a 64 Meg card in it and I can swap back and forth from card to card on the fly with no hesitation from the player.

I couldn't be happier.

Reading the previous reviews, one might be led to believe that SanDisk makes shoddy products. My experience has been quite the opposite. My Kodak camera came with a 32 MB SanDisk SD card, and we bought a 128MB SanDisk card to go along with it. Then when prices came down a bit, we went for the SanDisk 256MB. We have had ZERO problems with any of these cards. I use the 128 MB with my PNY card reader to shuttle photos, mp3s, etc, among my 3 computers; no problems whatsoever. I would not hesitate to buy more SD cards from SanDisk.

There is a reason why the Sandisk 256 mb card is the cheapest, it has problems. I first purchased it to use in my Dell Axim (Pocket PC). I kept losing the data and having to reformat the card. It seems to have the most problems storing or deleting large files (MP3s, video, ebooks, etc.).

I recently bought a new Kodak Digital Camera (DX6340). It uses SD, so thinking maybe the problem with the Sandisk was related to my Axim, I started to use it in my camera. And the same problem happened the first time I used it. I even tried the fancy software to format the card and it doesn't help either.

Needless to say, I am very disappointed. I have learned a difficult lesson, do your homework before purchasing. I researched my digital camera (btw, which I love.... highly recommend the DX6340) and my Pocket PC (ditto on the Axim), I didn't think about memory. I replaced the Sandisk with a Lexar 256 mb SD and it works great in the digital camera and PocketPC. Do some research in user forums on line and you will see that the Sandisk has problems in many devices, especially in PocketPC devices (Ipaq, Toshiba, Palm, Dell Axim, etc.) Based on this, SanDisk should recall this memory and fix the problem.

I have had no problems with this card in my Minolta Dimage. Great pictures, great MPEG movies, great transfer rate. However, many other people have had issues with this card, expecially on Pocket PC devices, so I give it only four stars...