Memory card problems (Transcend High Endurance 64GB)

[NicholasOakenscowl]

Hey all!

I've had an iTracker A119S since 2017. When I bought it, I also bought a Transcend High Endurance MicroSD card, 64 GB size (A). In February 2019, I bought another seemingly identical card (B), and started alternating between the two; once every 5 days or so I'd swap cards and check the videos on the card that was in the camera.

In May 2019, the older card (A) began corrupting files. I contacted the seller and sent it back, as it was still within the 2 year warranty. They sent me a new card (C), again seemingly identical, though this one was coloured black and gold rather than silver. Within the last week, card C began corrupting files. It has occurred twice now. Card B has not caused any problems so far.

Is this an A119S issue, or am I just having bad luck with the cards? It seems a bit weird, since these are supposedly "high endurance" cards, while my father has had a single standard Transcend 64GB SD (not micro) card in his old 1080P dashcam since 2014 or so, and as far as I'm aware he has never encountered file corruption...

EDIT: additional info!

I record 3 minute clips. First corrupted file was the 2nd clip recorded after startup, second corrupted file was a first clip recorded after startup.

Camera has the GPS mount, which appears to be the V2 type, and I've added the supplied 3M sticker for a tighter fit.

Camera is powered by a hardwiring kit, with a fuse tap. Before fitting hardwiring kit I used a USB charger, and if I fast-charged my phone from the same charger, the camera would start restarting every now and then, making sub-3 minute clips. This has never happened with the hardwiring kit.

 

[jokiin]

Camera is powered by a hardwiring kit

which one?

 

[NicholasOakenscowl]

which one?

Nextbase, specifically this product. I've used it with my A119S from the beginning, first in my previous car, then in my current car.

EDIT:
Another thing I neglected to mention; the last batch of files I got from card C looked like this:
2020_0102_065000_062.MP4
2020_0102_065258_063.MP4
2020_0102_065558_064.MP4
2020_0102_150921_057.MP4
2020_0102_151222_058.MP4
2020_0102_151523_059.MP4

When the camera started up, it started numbering the files again from 057 up, despite already having files numbered 001-064 (of which 010 was a corrupted file). The new 057 and those after it play normally.

 

[jokiin]

not a power supply I would use with a Viofo camera

 

[NicholasOakenscowl]

Care to elaborate on that? It should provide 50% more current that the A119S requires.

 

[jokiin]

stable output voltage is important, not just the amp rating printed on the label

 

[NicholasOakenscowl]

So is the Nextbase known to be of poor quality or something? I could find nothing about that. It has worked nearly perfectly for more than 2 years. I'm not yet convinced this is a power issue, because the camera did not restart when the corrupted files were created; I could recover them, albeit with some loss of quality, and there appear to be no gaps in the recordings whatsoever.

Is there some specific power supply you would recommend for use with Viofos?

 

[jokiin]

Use the viofo power supply, they've recently revised them to improve the performance

 

[SawMaster]

These cams are known to not always function properly unless you use the supplied PS's. Those provide higher amperage versus the usual ones (1.5A vs the usual 1A rating)

Also the silver colored Transcend endurance cards are known to not always work well with dashcams- not sure about the black/gold ones. The old Transcend cards were my favorite but they changed something in production and aren't recommended for dashcams anymore Sandisk used to be a bad choice but now their "A1" marked cards are one of the best for dashcams. Kind of crazy but just how things are!

Phil

See Jokiin's post below.

 

[jokiin]

Also the silver colored Transcend endurance cards

The endurance models are fine, there's another model (non endurance that replaced the 400x series cards) which is silver in colour which are guaranteed to fail in dashcams

 

[NicholasOakenscowl]

I'll look into it. Replacing the hardwiring kit in my car is a bit of a PITA, but if the problems persist, I don't suppose I have much choice. Still waiting to see whether I ever get corrupted files on card B.

My camera had on it the latest iTracker firmware, but having read that it is compatible with Viofo firmware, I put on it the modified firmware (4Vk). The difference in image detail is huge. We shall see if the firmware improves the corruption issue, too.

Interesting, SawMaster. I see the A1 cards are recommended online, I guess I might get a 128 GB one to try out.

EDIT: moved to A1 cards, haven't had file corruption issues since.