128GB storage possible for ITB100 series?

H-R

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Melbourne
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Australia
Dash Cam
IBT100-HD, ITB100-SPW
Hi all,

The quality and longevity of memory cards is hugely important for dash cams, much more than for regular digital camera products. Not only for the maximum writing speed (reading speed is hardly an issue with most available SD cards these days), but even more so their durability in terms of getting constantly overwritten.

There is an interesting article to this topic here:
https://www.carcamcentral.com/guide/recommended-sd-cards-avoid-sandisk-ultra-cards

I myself have been using 64GB SD cards for the past few years without any problems with ITB100-HD and more recently with ITB100-SPW. It is a known fact that using larger capacity storage cards actually reduces wear and tear of the storage cells (less overwrites). Many other dash cam brands publicise a max. of 64GB for their products but often some users have found out that it actually also works with 128GB or more.

For the above mentioned reasons I would like to use 128GB cards for my ITB100 also. Has anybody some deeper knowledge of the existing firmware and whether is has a hard coded limit, or whether indeed the internal memory addressing hardware is limited to 64GB?
 
After having purchased a VERBATIM PRO+ 128GB SD card, I am answering my own question here: YES and NO!

YES - because the camera will actually use all that space of 128 GB to store recordings, and properly loop around once the 128 GB capacity is used up.

NO - because the boot up time becomes excessively slow when the card has that many recordings stored. From a freshly formatted card it was 50 seconds, with the card written full to its capacity (some 3062 files) the boot time increased to 200+ seconds.

That means over 3 minutes of non-recording whenever the car is started, which could be an issue for someone who does many small trips. However, on a lengthy journey it would be acceptable, giving over 50 hours worth of recording (on HD setting with 30 fps) before looping takes place.

I am in two minds about this - missing recording time at every start of a trip vs more stored recordings before looping overwrites older files. Which option is better?
 
just an unfortunate side effect of the chipset used with the slow boot up, my camera boots and starts recording in the same amount of time with a 200gb card as it does with a 32gb card, around 7 seconds, different processor and operating system though
 
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One of the reasons why I have been interested in using larger capacity memory is, that if for example you get hit with a speed infringement notice, which might be several weeks after the actual incident, the memory card would most likely be overwritten by that time, and any evidence to the contrary being lost. Of course, one could backup the SD card regularly to a PC, but this would add up over time to quite large storage requirements if one archives, say 6 months worth of recordings, and as such is just an added burden to me.

The other quite signifcant advantage of using a larger memory card is that it will increase the durability substantially, as less overwriting will occur. It is a well known fact that SD cards have finite life cycle (write cycle), so in this context it does make a lot of sense to go for the largest memory card possible.
 
Agreed, Lexar is a good brand to go for but I wouldn't go for budget SD cards. It is a well known fact that security cameras and dashcams dish out the hardest punishment to SD cards, due to their constant memory (over-)writes. Therefore I use only 'high endurance' type memory cards with MLC technology, like the Lexar Professional 633x or similar cards from other brands. They are specifically suited for dashcams, and since I want to be sure that the recording is not corrupted when I need it the most, I am happy to spend a bit more on this as I see it as a relative cheap extension to my expensive car insurance.
 
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