How an SD card died here

I've had a couple of SD cards fail over time. Both were off brand cheapo's I picked up on Amazon. The symptoms were different than what you detail though. In my case, after doing a lot of data transfer, the computer was not able to read or reformat them. Thankfully, I had backups and no data was lost.

Since then, I've stayed with San Disk or Kingtson class 5 or higher cards and haven't had any problems. Lesson learned.

Thanks for posting your experience.

Glad it all worked out!

Thanks for your experience describing your SD cards issues.
Having owning several SD cards I only use Sandisk and never had a problem with them. You have to be careful when buying Sandisk Cards since there are many counterfeit Sandisk cards out there especially on Ebay. I have bought Sandisk cards on Ebay only after researching and confirm they are genuine retail cards.

After receiving the cards I register the cards with Sandisk giving them the serial #s. I have yet to discover that I couldn't register them if they they were counterfeit.

I find that buying SD cards higher than class 4 is a waste of money if using ONLY for Garmin GPS's since writing speed is only for maximum speed of class 4 cards. It will read a card even though it may be a class 10 32gb but will only write to it for a class 4 speed.

So very true. I did buy one "Sandisk" SD card on eBay from a Seller across the pond as it was a large capacity card and a super price. I learned a big lesson from this purchase. Many too-good-to-be-true SD cards are either manufacturer defects that someone has bought and resells them as perfect, or they're low capacity cards that have been spoofed to appear as high capacity cards. These cards show as OK with a computer and will store maybe a GB or 2 but when trying to write more they fail. The H2Testw program available on the internet is about the only way to quickly determine counterfeit or defective cards before you put them into use.

I research on the web & try to find the lowest price possible on an item & don't bother at all concerning the sellers reliability.

I then call Best Buy & tell them what I've found at the competitors price & they'll do a price match

Best Buy here in Canada is struggling & if you do your homework they'll definitely want to make the sale & you'll know that the item your getting is authentic.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/help-topics/best-buy-price-matc...

I personally use SanDisk cards & have found them to be extremely reliable & highly recommend them.

Depending on your unit, the maximum capacity does varie but all can be used with a class rating between 2 to 10.

https://support.garmin.com/en-CA/?faq=UsL6MuMMCM8PpgAhUUCqp7

I only buy Class 10 cards, as they are cheap and I can switch them between devices with no performance degradation.

I did buy an 64 gig Samsung endurance card for my dash cam, though. Good for 10,000 re-writes.

The best to make sure your SD Card meets the correct specs and is not a fake.See this program that was brought to our attention by alandb . http://goo.gl/w5NVUL . H2testw is a simple tool that is distributed for free, does not require installation and offers a very simple, easy-to-use interface. The program can be used by anyone who wants to know how their product compares to others, or the amount of errors that can be detected on their device. Subject discussion can be found at http://www.poi-factory.com/node/44938?page=0#comment-403049 .

I forgot to mention I always use the the H2Testw program when testing SD cards as Craig mentioned.
Also, I never buy cards from vendors from China, only buy from US vendors selling retail Genuine Sandisk in unopened package.

Check out this Link:
https://www.ebay.com/gds/How-to-Spot-Fake-SanDisk-SD-Cards-o...

Wow, thanks for the link. Very interesting. The sad part near the end is that eBay won't act upon these frauds and counterfeits unless contacted by the manufacturer of the genuine counterfeited product.

This issue of counterfeit products made in and being shipped by Chinese Sellers is not unique to ebay, to SD cards, and to Chinese Sellers. Amazon's Marketplace Sellers and Amazon's discount sites like Yugster, etc. have the problem as well, the problem occurs for many electronic products including counterfeit or mislabelled products, and some US Sellers buy these products in bulk from China and sell on eBay and Amazon with a US shipping statement and can even include "Fulfilled by Amazon" items.

In addition to all the tips ebay provides in the link, the biggest giveaway of items to avoid at all costs is to see them listed at a too-good-to-be-true price.

buy the good one, that is right.

Very important to use the "Eject [drive letter]" command for writable media (in Windows; don't know re Macs), rather than just physically plucking it out. Not saying it happened here, but surprising how many folks in general think plucking is ok, when doing so can pluck up your media, and/or shorten its useful life.

It was a SanDisk card.... that died... first one ever...

Because I have more than one use for SD cards, and they are both full and small cards, I've switched to small cards and switched to class 10 cards, which works in all of the devices with adapter if needed (One: a Canon HF200, needed a firmware update from factory to use Class 10 cards....)....

Even the best rated cards can fail at times. Always keep a backup.

I forgot about a 32GB SanDisk SD card in my pants pocket and it survived washing & drying machine. I'm still using it today.