Best SD card and checking SD card write speeds

AMc

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I have an Olympus E-M10ii.

2x16GB cards - 7Dayshop Professional labelled "upto 20MB/s SD-HC" Class 10 (old!)
2x16GB cards - Sandisk Ultra 80MB/s SD-HC I class 10.

The camera is slower to shut down using the older cards because it's still writing to the card. Given the 20MB/s vs. 80MB/s that doesn't surprise me.

The manual mentions using cards "Class 10 or better" which they all are.

and

The following types of SD memory card (commercially available) can be
used with this camera: SD, SDHC, SDXC, and Eye-Fi. For the latest
information, please visit the Olympus website

and

Memory : SD, SDHC, SDXC and Eye-Fi
UHS-II compatible

As the price of SD cards has tumbled since I bought these I was considering buying newer cards to get the best write speed I can.
I don't want to spend more money than I need to get faster cards than the camera can handle as I have no intention of changing body in the foreseeable future. I think that rules out UHS-II but I'm not really up to speed.
I see that 32GB is basically the smallest card you can get with better performance than I have - that's OK as I might do a bit of video if I had the space.

So I have two questions
- Is there a simple utility to check and compare my cards to see what I performance I currently have? If the 7DS cards are really slow then I might retire them entirely.
- What's the fastest card that's worth getting?

I see SanDisk for the Ultra 80MB/s, the Extreme 90MB/s and the Extreme Pro 95MB/s with only £10-14 from one end to the other. Erring towards getting the Extreme Pro but I'm open to suggestions

Cheers :thumbsup:
 
Still works fine for me :)
 
H2testw is still my go to software to test SD cards. I have had many fakes bought off Amazon which have been sent back and also come to the conclusion that not all SD cards of the same Make, model and Specs are equal. They seem to vary quite a lot and often don't live up to the stated specs.
 
h2testw can test the read speed of a card but it can take a while as it's more designed to test the capacity of a card so it fills the entire card then reads it back.

Crystaldiskmark purely does read and write tests so it's a lot quicker to test the speeds and gives more metrics so I'd say it's more useful for testing speeds whereas h2testw is better for testing how genuine a card is.

That is a synthetic benchmark though and the numbers may not always mean much for the camera particularly as there's write speed limits on the camera. With that in mind I quite like the low tech approach of just filling the buffer and timing how long it takes to empty. I've got a Sandisk card which benches fairly well but the in camera performance is atrocious and similarly I've got some ultra fast cards that are no better than my fast cards.
 
I'm unconcerned with read speeds, I don't mind within reason how long downloading to the PC takes. I mainly do that through the camera anyway which I suspect is the bottleneck.

I'm much more interested in write speeds which seem to vary more and are less obvious in card specs.
It would help if Olympus were a bit more explicit about the fastest speeds the camera can support but I'm guessing there are variables like JPEG compression or the complexity of the RAW that affect how much data is compressed and moved as well as the actual bus speed.

This article has at least helped me to understand the differences between various formats.
As the manual suggests "SD, SDHC, SDXC and Eye-Fi UHS-II compatible" I can't buy an incompatible card whish is good! :)
SD/SDHC/SDXC Specifications and Compatibility

Thanks for all the replies, I'll check out h2testw and Crystaldiskmark too. Test my current cards and then make a call.
If anyone has a specific recommendation other than SanDisk I'd be interested.
 
Hmmm that's interesting.

The second link has links to specific cameras.
The E-M10 is rated best with the Sandisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s 32GB at 32.1MB/s in the camera
Olympus E-M10 Card Speed Tests - Fastest memory cards for EM10 - Camera Memory Speed Comparison & Performance tests for SD and CF cards
BUT
They also tested the E-M5ii which is slightly earlier than my E-M10ii
Olympus E-M5 II Memory Card Speed Comparison - Fastest SD Card Write Speed and Continuous Shooting Tests in the Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II - Camera Memory Speed Comparison & Performance tests for SD and CF cards
That shows 70-80MB/s using UHS-II cards

As the E-M10ii is quoted as UHS-II compatible would I be better spending a bit more on a UHS-II card to get almost twice the performance? :confused:

That would be my choice :)
 
For a while I was using the Kingston card on that list above as I probably saw a similar article:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00I3BQJNA/ref=oh_aui_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It's been replaced by a newer one but at the time it offered similar performance to the Sandisk cards at around double the price although looking at the market now, the prices are a lot closer. I bought the Kingston one for my D750 then bought a few more for the high speed Sony's (RX100m4, RX10m2) which are quite fussy over write speeds and they're fine with the Kingston.

I've used Lexar cards as well but I think they've gone bust since then, I used to be a fan of Transcend cards as they were fast and cheap but they seem to have died off in the UK.

I find speed is important for video work where too slow a card means it can't record the video properly which is an issue with ultra high speed video or 360 degree cameras but for a stills camera I wouldn't fork out a large premium to get a super fast card unless it's one you're constantly hammering the buffer on.

John
 
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First it not just about the flash card/ SD card. Cards are designed to be backward compatible. But that is fall back to a older standard to be compatible. What you need is to fully understand the card interface in your Camera. That and Camera firmware, are what really control you maximum read, write speed. If your Camera does not support the modern feature, then it can not use that feature of the modern card. If you use a micro flash/SD card in a full card slot then also the micro to full card adaptor needs to support the modern require feature or high read, write speeds too.

4K video, get a card with V30 rating or faster if the camera, video recorder supports the V standard.

For HD I use Lexar 633x micro SDHC US-1, V10, A1, u1, class 10, 32GB. Only 20MB/s write 95 MB/s read
 
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Hmmm

This was what I was considering buying
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07F9R1...ics-accessories&ie=UTF8&qid=1548327937&sr=1-2

Reviews are OK though a couple of complaints about Fakes that are also listed as Verified.
And a couple of reports of data loss. Much more worrying.

Lexar appear to be alive
Memory Cards - Lexar

Still pondering - I can afford to write off £25 but I don't want to lose any pictures :(

I f worried about fakes then the h2testw app will test the capacity as well as the read/writeability and performance ..... Or have fakes of the correct size been reported?
 
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Hmmm

This was what I was considering buying
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07F9R1...ics-accessories&ie=UTF8&qid=1548327937&sr=1-2

Reviews are OK though a couple of complaints about Fakes that are also listed as Verified.
And a couple of reports of data loss. Much more worrying.

Lexar appear to be alive
Memory Cards - Lexar

Still pondering - I can afford to write off £25 but I don't want to lose any pictures :(

That's not actually Lexar, Micron shut them down and a Chinese based company called Longsys bought the Lexar brand. As far as I'm aware, these cards are not actually anything to do with Lexar apart from the name. I have read comments about them being unreliable but it's hard to tell without better data as I've had genuine Sandisk and Samsung cards fail straight out the packet.

John
 
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I f worried about fakes then the h2testw app will test the capacity as well as the read/writeability and performance ..... Or have fakes of the correct size been reported?

Dunno - A couple of users moaning they have fakes, a couple more complaining they've had failures.
Unfortunately I know from bitter experience that Amazon cheerfully cross link reviews from one listing to another. So a dodgy listing from the MarketPlace and one from Amazon themselves can share the same good and bad reviews inc the Verified status.
Someone from Lexar Support has responded to all the 1 star reviews and it's sold by Amazon direct so I'm reasonably confident
I've punted £26 on it and I'll see how it works out :)
That was less than my budget for 2 x 16GB cards.

That's not actually Lexar, Micron shut them down and a Chinese based company called Longsys bought the Lexar brand. As far as I'm aware, these cards are not actually anything to do with Lexar apart from the name. I have read comments about them being unreliable but it's hard to tell without better data as I've had genuine Sandisk and Samsung cards fail straight out the packet.

John

That's the problem isn't it? The larger the card the more possibility there is for you to lose a lot of data. As a general rule I transfer and back up pretty regularly.
On holiday I do it every day and usually after any single day shoot.
On hols I tend to copy everything to the laptop each evening and once a card is full I leave it behind as a second copy.

I'll run a few tests on the card when it arrives, if it's shady then it'll go back. If not I'll treat it with some caution for a bit.

Thanks for all the help and advice - I'll let you know how I get on :thumbsup:
 
Shame they are now out of stock.....

Lexar Professional SD Card SDHC Class 10 UHS-II 32GB | 7dayshop

But this is a great deal IMO

Lexar Professional SD Card SDHC Class 10 UHS-I 64GB | 7dayshop


Dunno - A couple of users moaning they have fakes, a couple more complaining they've had failures.
Unfortunately I know from bitter experience that Amazon cheerfully cross link reviews from one listing to another. So a dodgy listing from the MarketPlace and one from Amazon themselves can share the same good and bad reviews inc the Verified status.
Someone from Lexar Support has responded to all the 1 star reviews and it's sold by Amazon direct so I'm reasonably confident
I've punted £26 on it and I'll see how it works out :)
That was less than my budget for 2 x 16GB cards.



That's the problem isn't it? The larger the card the more possibility there is for you to lose a lot of data. As a general rule I transfer and back up pretty regularly.
On holiday I do it every day and usually after any single day shoot.
On hols I tend to copy everything to the laptop each evening and once a card is full I leave it behind as a second copy.

I'll run a few tests on the card when it arrives, if it's shady then it'll go back. If not I'll treat it with some caution for a bit.

Thanks for all the help and advice - I'll let you know how I get on :thumbsup:
 
I can fully appreciate the point about relying on a card as I tend to stick with a limited number of cards, when I found the Kingstons worked well I bought a few more to use in all my cameras. Recently I've bought a few Sandisk Extremes which work well so I'm sticking with them for now.

I do find SD cards are very reliable and I think in all the years I've used them I can only think of one that failed and that was a physical failure as the side had sheared off the casing on a MyMemory branded card. Possibly had a single 8GB card as well but it's that long ago I can't remember which is not bad given all those I've used.

With microsd cards though I find them a lot more delicate and I've had a lot of failures, definitely genuine cards so I don't know if it's just the way the way the memory is tightly packed in makes them less reliable.
 

Yup that's a cracking deal on the UHS-II Card. I added an "email when you have stock" alert yesterday in case it comes back in but I doubt it.
The 64GB card is brilliant value but I'd sooner have the speed than the capacity.
Last big trip to Japan I filled 3x16GB cards in 2 weeks so I don't really need 64GB.


A decent deal too but slower than the 32GB card and lower capacity than the 64GB Lexar Shotokan suggested. I don't mind paying a bit more for the faster card.

I can fully appreciate the point about relying on a card as I tend to stick with a limited number of cards, when I found the Kingstons worked well I bought a few more to use in all my cameras. Recently I've bought a few Sandisk Extremes which work well so I'm sticking with them for now.

I do find SD cards are very reliable and I think in all the years I've used them I can only think of one that failed and that was a physical failure as the side had sheared off the casing on a MyMemory branded card. Possibly had a single 8GB card as well but it's that long ago I can't remember which is not bad given all those I've used.

With microsd cards though I find them a lot more delicate and I've had a lot of failures, definitely genuine cards so I don't know if it's just the way the way the memory is tightly packed in makes them less reliable.

I've had two serious card problems in all the time I've been shooting (crosses fingers).
One was a 16GB card in my Olympus E-PL5. I formatted the card in my PC then set off on a trip. All looked to be good, taking pictures and previewing OK but when I downloaded there were lots of corrupted images. I suspect I formatted in the wrong format and it started corrupting the file structure when it hit a byte limit somewhere. User error but very sad as we were on a once in a lifetime month long trip down the Western USA. I didn't lose everything but enough to be disappointment.
Second one was a carelessly ejected SD card - a Class 6 16GB card. I pinged off the lock switch so I didn't lose any images but the card is useless now as there is no reliable way to disable write protect and use it again. Not keen on having bits of tape, superglue etc. floating around in the cameras - it's an old, cheap card so no great loss.

Once thing that this whole exercise has shown is there is a lot more to an SD Card than just and SD Card shape! I now know more than I wanted to about SD, SD-XC, SD UHS-I and UHS-II
 
Card arrived on Sunday - just run this test which shows the card is the correct capacity... and my card reader is very slow :)

Warning: Only 29922 of 29923 MByte tested.
Test finished without errors.
You can now delete the test files *.h2w or verify them again.
Writing speed: 19.3 MByte/s
Reading speed: 19.3 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

My laptop verified the data at 25 MByte/s (read speed)

Downloading from the camera direct over my USB3 port only gave me 15MBytes/s

Just out of curiousity I checked the new card in the camera as a USB drive - same speed over my rubbish old USB hub or direct to the USB 3 port so it's definitely the camera that's the bottleneck.

Warning: Only 2000 of 29923 MByte tested.
Test finished without errors.
You can now delete the test files *.h2w or verify them again.
Writing speed: 4.70 MByte/s
Reading speed: 13.8 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

I did a quick burst check on the camera. I got 30 JPG Super Fine+RAW shots in 10 seconds. The first burst is very quick as it fills the buffer then it slows noticeably as you would expect.
At some point when I've cleaned all my cards and backed all my images up I'll do it again.

I did another quick test - take a picture then immediately turn off the camera.
With the 80MB/s card it took a count of 5 (seconds) to stop flashing the card icon and retract the lens.
With the 150MB/s card it took just over 1.
Not very scientific but it does a bit to validate there was a point to buying the quicker interface ;)
 

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