Physical reliability of mini-SD cards in a SD-carrier?
 

Steve wrote:
I have a 2GB mini SD card for my mobile phone that would be handy as
temporary storage with other devices I use. How reliable are the
full-size SD-carrier/adapters that would allow me to use it
occasionally in my camera or as data backup for my laptop while out
and about? Has anyone had a failure with such a combination?

I've used the adapter and card for data and photos for years with no
loss of data due to the adapter. The adapter is just a signal
pass-through with no electronics:
http://www.camerahacker.com/Digital/..._Adapter.shtml

In other words, are the contacts reliable after repeated insertion of
the card in the carrier/adapter? With the plummeting price of flash
memory is it false economy to share cards between consumer products?
Another £25 or so against losing an unrepeatable photo opportunity is
probably trivial - yes?

It is probably a false economy if you never have to share a single card
with two or more devices. If you have two mobile devices that must
share data, then you don't have much choice.

As a supplementary, I recently bought a USB card reader rather than
download pictures using the camera's (slower) USB umbilical interface.
Is there a conclusive opinion on the robustness of reconnecting a mini
USB cable to a camera rather than removing from, and re-inserting the
SD card into the camera? It just strikes me that cables and sockets
have better mechanical design than cards and card slots - and that the
cable, if damaged, would be far simpler and cheaper to replace.

I have tens of cards and several digital cameras, mobile devices, and
computers. I have seen no failure with cables and card slots. I insert
and remove cards all the time. I do have a few cards that just plainly
died. So I've developed a philosophy to store photos and data on
multiple cards, not just a single card:
http://www.camerahacker.com/Digital/Eggs.shtml

Chieh

Physical reliability of mini-SD cards in a SD-carrier?
 

On Tue, 05 Sep 2006 21:07:30 +0100, Steve wrote:

Good advice - I already backup my card(s) to a laptop on holidays
where I can take it with me. What I want to do in addition is use a
large SD card as second backup of the JPGs on the laptop when the card
in the camera gets too full and I wipe that ready for more picture
taking, if you follow me. The alternative is a stack of CD-Rs as my
laptop can't burn DVDs.

There a number of cameras (P&S and DSLR) that use two cards,
usually one CF and one SD. When the just announced 8GB SD cards are
available you could have a camera able to hold 16GB worth of
pictures. They would hold as much as a stack of CD-Rs (two dozen)
or about 3 1/2 DVDs. Some DSLRs can simultaneously store a RAW file
on one card and a JPG on the other card. Because of file
duplication you wouldn't be able to save as many unique images, but
the card with the JPG files would be useful for quickly viewing
images and also act as 'insurance' in case the main card used for
the RAW files was damaged (in or out of the camera), lost or stolen.

Physical reliability of mini-SD cards in a SD-carrier?
 

ASAAR writes:
There a number of cameras (P&S and DSLR) that use two cards,
usually one CF and one SD. When the just announced 8GB SD cards are
available you could have a camera able to hold 16GB worth of
pictures.

Actually 24gb, you can get 16gb CF cards now.

Physical reliability of mini-SD cards in a SD-carrier?
 

On 06 Sep 2006 01:55:30 -0700, Paul Rubin
wrote:

There a number of cameras (P&S and DSLR) that use two cards,
usually one CF and one SD. When the just announced 8GB SD cards are
available you could have a camera able to hold 16GB worth of
pictures.

Actually 24gb, you can get 16gb CF cards now.

Neat! That helps equalize the number of shots each card can hold,
assuming that RAW files saved on the CF card would be much larger
than the JPG files saved on the SD card. I still like the idea of
someday being able to use an SD card carrier that would allow a DSLR
to hold 4, 6 or 8 SD cards. Not so much for the greater capacity,
as for the much greater writing speed that could be possible using
interleaved/simultaneous writes. This would be especially useful
for nature or sports photography, where you could get long bursts of
full resolution shots at video frame rates. Better have a good,
fast, rugged, long lasting shutter though. :)