Customer Reviews

SanDisk 256MB Secure Digital Memory Card (SDSDB256800)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I purchased a SanDisk 256MB SD card for my Palm device due to my satisfaction with past SanDisk products. I immediately noticed that the card read/write speeds were extremely slow, and caused most multimedia applications to skip because they couldn't read the data fast enough. After about a week, I started getting corrupted files on the card, until it was completely unreadable.

I had it replaced by SanDisk, and the new one only lasted two days before failing in the same manner. I did some research on the web, and found numerous sites reporting hundreds of failures in these cards. It seems that many of the Chinese made SD cards out there are susceptable to failing. Panasonic and a few other Japanese manufacturers seems to be the only makers who are making a reliable card. I am throwing this useless card away and purchasing a Panasonic. My data is more important to me than saving a few dollars at this point.

I would recommend staying away from SanDisk SD cards until they have solved these problems. Amazon sells Panasonic as well as Simple Technology cards, which seem to be sourced from a reliable manufacturer.

I've got a Kodak 4330 Digital Camera and bought this card with it at the same time. Since then, I've lost a few images and videos from using the card. I had the same issues as another person here, after taking videos and photo, my camera would slow down intolerably, so much that whenever I tried to copy the images onto my PC, it timed out. At first I thought it was the batteries running out but after charging them I still had the same issue. Eventually, I found that if I removed the memory card, the camera worked fine.

I mucked around with it some more and found the problem. If you take photo's too fast, you can stuff the card. I did a few run-throughs clicking madly and consistently got the problem occuring (I had to format the card to get it working again). I found that especially when taking video, if you stop recording and start another recording just a *bit* too quickly, you basically can't take any more photo's or recordings as they all become unreadable.

What this boils down to is: Don't work too quickly. You have to take photo/video, wait 3-5 seconds. Take photo/video, wait 3-5 seconds and so on (and you REALLY have to wait 3-5 seconds). Unfortunately for me, there are times when I do hit the button just a bit too quickly and BAM, I've instantly ruined everything I've just taken. So, if you work slow and steady you should be fine. It's a decent card, but if you've got the money, I'd suggest looking at a card that works a bit faster.

Actually, if you check www.sandisk.com they tell you this about the card:

Why is my card not accessible or my pictures and files can't be opened?
- Taking pictures too fast so the camera cannot finish writing them before the next one is taken.
- Turning off the camera while it is still saving information.
- Removing the card while the camera is still saving data to it.
- Taking pictures with weak batteries.
- Large static charges to the card.
- Airport x-ray machines (we recommend carrying cards on your person).
- Sitting the cards on or near strong magnetic sources.
- Removing the card from the reader while you have files that are on the card open.
- Removing the card from the reader while it is still copying files to the hard drive.
- On a Mac, removing the card without first trashing the icon.
- On NT, removing the card without first running safe swap.
- On ME and win 2000, removing the card without first stopping it.
- File corruption is caused by many things and our memory cards are less susceptible than regular hard drives or other media with moving parts.

To recover the pictures you can try the following:
1. File recovery software will work in some cases (query on the internet for file recovery).
2. Locate a disk recovery service in your area (Try DriveSavers on the web at www.drivesavers.com or by phone at 1-800-440-1904. You may also try a search on the internet for data or disk recovery.)
3. Run Scandisk against the card.

As I said, it's a decent card and other than this, I haven't had any other problems with it. Just remember to work slowly.

How many pictures will it store? It is the most commonly asked question from digital camera enthusiast but usually the question that is the most difficult to get a straight answer about. Well, considering I worked in the memory industry for over 7 years I can help clarify this perplexing question and do so unbiased as I have since changed industries.

The SanDisk 256MB Secure Digital Memory Card, like most 256MB cards, will store on average 284 pictures when used with a 2 megapixel camera, 213 images when used with a 3 megapixel camera, 128 pictures when used with a 4 megapixel camera, 102 images when used with a 5 megapixel camera, and 80 pictures when used with a 6 megapixel camera. These numbers are based off the assumption that you are going to shoot your images at the highest quality JPEG setting available for the camera and understand that they are estimates and may be off by as much as 10 percent due to numerous factors including the complexity of the scene being shot and the compression algorithm used by your specific camera.

I truly hope this review was helpful to you in determining whether this card is the right capacity for your specific needs.

I used this memory card for my digital camera, and lost ALL the photos of my little baby's first Christmas!

I'd used it for a couple of months with no problem, downloading pics to my computer time and time again. Then Christmas morning I go to turn on the camera, and WHAM! All pics lost! The card is now useless in all devices.

I'm trying another brand. Please do not make the same mistake I did.

Like some of the reviewers here I replaced the original card but still had the same problem of 'corrupted data' after taking about 40 pictures with my canon digital camera. The pictures either got lost or distorted after this happnened and I could no longer take any more pictures.

This ruined my very expensive vacation in Italy where I lost 40-50 pictures taken there and could no longer shoot any!

Both cards had "China" on the back and I heard from somewhere to esecially look out for Sandisk made in China.

I strongly suggest that you stay away from Sandisk if you don't want to lose data or expensive pictures like me.

Short short review:
Sandisk 256MB SD Card lifespan: 3 days.
Replacement Simpletech 256MB SD Card lifespan: over a month and counting.
It's your call.

Bought for Florida vacation; lost about 200 pictures. I did not buy it from Amazon though.

As noted on several websites (with which I have no affiliation), SanDisk SD/MMC cards work slower than SimpleTech or Lexar when plugged into Palm Devices. This is especially true of writes on my Palm Tunsten T.

Note that if you remove a SanDisk from a Palm and modify its contents thru an external SD "reader", you will see read/write performance that is similar to its competition.

The problem appears to be unique to Palm devices, if you aren't using this for a Palm device, I am not aware of a reason to avoid this product.

Worked great for a couple months, pulled it out one day and it corrupted all of the data on the disk. All the JPGs and MP3s were garbled and unusable. Now that seems to happen at least once every couple days.

It worked fine for a month, and i've read many reports of other users now who have had corrpution problems with the Sd disks. In it's current condition for me, it's unusable.

I was trying to put mp3 files on this SanDisk 256mb SD disk, however, I got several delay write error/warning and then my card becomes unreadable. I can't format it, I can't read it. It's DEAD!! This is the second time that I have problem with the card. I am getting it replaced again!!

This card is easily break, not very stable. Don't waste your money.