I need to get a new MicroSD card for my dashcam because my current one is giving up after 5 years. A lot of people are recommending SanDisk High Endurance and Samsung Pro Endurance and it makes sense what they offer, but are they really necessary though? I am thinking my standard £10 card lasted almost 5 years, so is the extra life really worth it? High endurance cards are two-three times more expensive than a regular one.
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sorted bySandisk advertises theirs does 10,000 hours of constant recording, Samsung one does 40,000 hours according to their spec. What I haven't seen though is what a standard "non-endurance" card can do in comparison. They are also meant to stand up better to cold and hot weather but that might as well just be a marketing gimmick too...
In solid state memory there's the concept of "TBW" total bytes written.
So when you buy an ssd, there's a time and TBW number.
And which ever one happens sooner is the end of the warranty period.
But the thing to really understand about flash memory is that it's all about probabilities.
You can buy something super cheap and it could work for many years.
When a manufacturer makes a product they need to create a graph of Mean time between failures (MTBF).
And by determining the percentage of units they predict will fail in 1/2/5 etc years they can then decide on what warranty to apply to the product.
I looked up the Samsung PRO Endurance and it has this about the warranty:
Which is a result of a factor SSDs that isn't often clearly explained to people.
Which is that an SSD is made of memory chips and a memory controller.
The memory controller is what makes it appear as a disk drive to the PC.
A memory chip is made up of cells.
Each cell has a lifespan, every time you write to it, it gets worn out.
The memory controller tries to split the data up so that the cells get an even wear levelling.
So your file may be in 20 pieces and the controller has a table that says your file is x big and made up of 20 parts at these locations.
With SSDs the memory will be slightly larger than the disk capacity you can use.
Like imagine if you had a 1gb SSD and then maybe it'll actually be 1.1gb.
The extra 128mb would be used so that if a cell in use stops working, then one of those can be allocated to replace it.
Usually you get more of this spare capacity on larger drives so you get a better warranty.
There are algorithms for error correction that mean that you wouldn't loose data if that happened in a lot of cases.
Think of it like Sudoku. As long as not too many cells stop functioning at the same time, you can calculate what the missing data is.
In terms of weather conditions. I would say concern would be required for the extreme cold or heat.
Which are both completely foreign to the UK.
Heat is often a tricky one because inside a car can be hotter but also sunlight can heat a dashcam.
But it probably could be argued that the device will break before the sd card.
btw, I realised I used SSH and SD interchangeably.
SSD is a Solid State Drive.
Which means chip based storage.
SD is Secure Digital which is like an implementation of an SSD.
So as a consumer. What do you do?
Well you factor in a few things.
- What's the cost of replacement?
- How reliable do you need it?
If you've got a dashcam, anything you'd want to look at again, you'd likely almost immediately copy onto another device.
So it really needs to last until the point you take the data off the device.
It is unlikely that you'd have an accident and also have an SD card failure on the same day.
But the only way to realistically protect against that is to have two dashcams or a dashcam that simultaneously writes to two sd cards.
SD Cards don't have (or at least if some do, your dashcam isn't going to alert you) things like S.M.A.R.T. which is a mechanism to see the failure counts for a drive. So you could proactively replace it.
Personally if I was worried, I'd probably just keep a spare sd card in the glove box and continue using standard ones.
Especially if they're 3x the price.
Anyway, I stumbled upon your post and wrote a pretty long reply. Hopefully that has answered your question (edited)
Currently using Integral and Transcend high endurance MLC NAND cards which haven't failed on me so far.
Then had one fail and replaced them with SanDisk HIGH ENDURANCE, not much more money.
I've got a couple of CCTV cameras that take microSD cards, one's had the same card in it for about 4 years, a different (cheaper) make of microSD card in the other failed after just one year.
I've never bought endurance cards, I'd sooner buy a reliable make of standard one and change them after a few years while they are still working. (edited)
What's the guarantee that a high endurance card won't fail though? Like people have said above, some normal cards last years, some fail a couple months in. I think the same may happen to the endurance cards too...
With so many fake cards on the market those that have failed are probably fakes, the guarantee is the manufacturer guarantee you get with the product
Then we're back to the original point... if a standard £10 card lasted almost 5 years for me, what's the point of spending extra? I don't even expect the new dash cam to last that long to be honest and who knows what technology will be available in 5 years and if that endurance card will even be up to the task then.
It seems you’ve already made your mind up on the subject so do what you going to do anyway.
I haven't, I'm open to arguments but so far I haven't heard any factual or logical reasons to buy the more expensive stuff. If anyone has any then I might be convinced.
Also, how do I avoid fakes? Any trusted retailers? I don't really trust Amazon, the reviews on the cards there scream "fake" from a mile away.
Short of buying directly from the manufacturer you can’t avoid fakes, they have ended up everywhere even in so called trusted retailers
I'm also warry about buying them from amazon direct, and doubly so from Amazon traders. I prefer to use places like mymemory, pitstop, 7dayshop, ebuyer and sometimes even retailers like currys on the very rare occasions they actually have a good clearance offer.
If you inspect the packaging and test the card's read and write speed and actual capacity (h2testw or similar) and they match what would be expected from that card, I would think it is pretty likely it is genuine.
It best to read up on which brands are more reliable, or stick with ones you've found to be good. I think some brands just use better, faster, more durable flash memory than others, and it is not always reflected in their relative prices.