Checking your old SD cards for Read/Write Speed

[Omega-TI]

Have you ever purchased an SD card that just did not seem to work properly? Cameras, camcorders and yes even modern dashcams need faster write times, or you will be disappointed. Sometimes finding old SD cards laying around the house are only suitable for data, no high resolution photos or video.

Well, you can check the speed of your older cards, or see if you've been ripped-off with a mislabeled fake SD card. I recently tested a couple of my older cards, and as you can see below, it's not suitable for video. The program to check is attached. Have fun.

 

[reverend]

There's nothing wrong with the speeds in that picture.

Sent from my VOG-L09 using Tapatalk

 

[kamkar]

I dont think i have a dashcam that write 24 MB/s, but for some reason dashcams and other things too for that matter seem to like a lot of overhead.

But one thing is as sure as Amen in the church, and that is, if you have camera issues the first thing you should do it try another memory card, or if you dont have any suitable, test the one you have been using to see if its R & W parameters are about what the maker claim they should be.
And i am sorry to say even if a memory card test out okay, it might still not be good enough for that particular camera, i have tried that 2 times now myself.
First time the card dident want to play ball with my camera, but if i put it in any other of my cameras it was just fine, and the worst thing is if i put another but similar memory card in that first camera, well that worked too
And i have just had a Samsung card go strange in my K2S system, or rather make the system go strange, but upon testing the card it appear to be just fine in any way, and when i put in another card the camera snapped back to working just as it should.

And even if you are forced to buy a #2 memory card that you might not need after all, well having a backup are always a good idea not least if your card have already show signs of problems, so that new card might soon come in handy after all.

 

[DT MI]

It's not just older cards that may have an issue. Not too long ago I bought a new 512GB Samsung card that from the factory caused problems with the camera. Card checked out OK, passing all read/write tests, however it turned out that it was writing extremely slow - see below.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 85.084 MB/s
Sequential Write : 1.862 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 76.900 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1.864 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 10.394 MB/s [ 2537.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.961 MB/s [ 234.6 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 10.901 MB/s [ 2661.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 1.011 MB/s [ 246.9 IOPS

After doing a low level format with SDFormatter write speeds were up to where they should have been.

I have no idea what the root cause of the slow writes was initially but the card's been fine ever since.

 

[kamkar]

Dident you have to run it thru SD formatter 2 times before the speeds was back up ?

H2testw - crystalmark - SDformatter, 3 tools to deploy ( well at least 2 of them ) in case of a camera acting strange all of a sudden.

regarding new cards, i have had 2 of them ( both U3 cards and very expensive 3 years ago ) die on me almost at once, the 1 card i tested brand new with H2testw, then put it in a camera and it whent into read only mode before it filled up just 1 time.
The second card i put in a camera, and it cant have filled up more then 2 times or so before it also whent into read only mode.

This was high end Transcend and PNY cards, and both was replaced with no problem via Amazon or the seller on Amazon.

 

[DT MI]

Dident you have to run it thru SD formatter 2 times before the speeds was back up ?

You remember well - yes I did.