New MicroSD Card Option (Western Digital)

[TCK81]

It looks like there's another option for microSD cards geared towards surveillance. Western Digital now has WD Purple microSD Cards.

 

[Gazwould]

MLC Nand ?

 

[TCK81]

MLC Nand ?

I couldn't find any information about the nand. I would hope so based upon the retail price.

 

[Nigel]

WD Purple™ microSD cards feature exceptional endurance to ensure continuous recording for up to 2 years (For 64GB capacity based on recording 1080p @ 8Mbps)

Current good quality 1080 cameras record at 20Mbps/channel, I'm using 2 channel cameras so that is 40Mbps.
40 / 8 = 5
2 years / 5 = 4.8 months of continuous recording = not exceptional endurance...

Western Digital owns SanDisk.

 

[reverend]

I think it's the first time I've seen health statistics being made available outside of industrial microSD cards - essentially SMART data for microSD cards.

It would be great news if that is coming over to consumer products as would mean newer dashcams when paired with these newer cards could proactively warn the user when there is a card issue before it goes tits up and causes most people to think the camera is faulty

The endurance is rated for 1000 full write cycles of the card and adding the SMART type info you can guarantee they'll be logging how long the card has been in service and how much it has written. An easy get out of jail card for warranty.

So say 9.7 hours of video on a 64GB card when using 15Mbps bitrate.
9.7 * 1000 = 9700 hours.
9700 / 24 = 404.17 days of continuous recording - half that for a camera writing two 15Mbps streams.

Dashcams with timelapse parking modes etc will take a long time to get to that figure but I'm guessing these are more designed for CCTV cameras which record 24*7, albeit usually at a lower bitrate of around 6Mbps.

So for CCTV a quick calculation would be:
24.3 * 1000 = 24,300 hours
24300 / 24 = 1012.5 days so almost 3 years.

I've got a 128GB Toshiba M302 in a Dahua CCTV camera which is currently at around 450 days and counting although as it's twice the size it may not last that number of full write cycles).

 

[Nigel]

I see that it is warranteed for 2 years or the 1000 write cycles, whichever comes first.

Still, 1000 write cycles is what we were getting from basic TLC cards a few years ago, the 3D NAND we get now from Samsung etc. is supposed to be much better, and MLC should be 2.5x more.

 

[TCK81]

I emailed WD for more clarification and brought up other competitor cards specs compared to their new Purple card. Here's the reply:

In regards to which type of NAND the memory has, it’s MLC.

In regards to performance, the 1080p @ 26Mbps can include 2 ch-stereo, lots of motion and 60FPS is good for more consumer based video surveillance systems.

The endurance of the WD Purple microSD card is sufficient for surveillance video, which typically has lower bitrates due to less motion, lower frame rates, and lack of audio which is good for OEM type video systems.

8 Mbps is more typical for 1080p @ 30fps in the surveillance world. Therefore, when the total hours are calculated using the 1K P/E cycles, it comes to over 17,700 hours (or over two years) of video on a 64GB WD Purple microSD card.

 

[Indian]

Today I went and bought a SanDisk High Endurance 64GB card. All the pixels in the sky are gone and it works fine. This is a MLC card for surveillance cameras and dashcams. The video footage is smooth and colours very nice. I must add that I have also a polarising filter on the Blackvue.

 

[kamkar]

Kingston too.

http://hexus.net/tech/news/storage/...flash-memory-cards-target-three-use-profiles/