Better to have one or two large storage cards or several smaller storage cards?

[Laborous]

I always change the card when I change the battery. Cards are cheap, once in a lifetime shots are priceless!

 

[Deleted member 103366]

p,that little speck of a card is hard to handle,he whined.

and they can ski jump if your nail slips, imaging trying to find that in 6" of snow!

 

[vindibona1]

We learned the HARD (aka expensive way) to not use large cards for multiple shoots.

Back in October 2015 we shot a one-off shoot for a client. We then moved to another project and put those images/video on the card in the aircraft. Then it was lunch time and we took lunch at a local lake that was in full fall BLOOM. While shooting some amazing b-roll footage I got a Battery Critical Error (at approx 70%) followed by a Landing Now message. Unfortunately I was over WATER and could not get it back to land before "Splash down". Drone and DATA from 2 previous shoots were gone. The first shoot was for a marathon that we couldn't' just got back and re-shoot it.

We lost over $1000K in revenue because the whole morning's work was on that one SD card. Since that painful lesson we change the SD card with EVERY battery change unless we are mapping.

I see the benefit and ease of a single large card but that doesn't work for redundancy in UAS operations. Also we empty every card once back in the office and have a confirmed copy on the NAS drive to work with.

The extra space that a large card provides is irrelevant to the situation. It's how you use the space and the cards. There is no rule that says you have to fill up the card every before changing it out. Back in the day with only 24 frames per film back we had to figure out in advance how many shots the next sequence would take, and if in the middle of a film back do a "tactical reload" so that we weren't having to change backs at a critical time. I think it's smart to change cards with every battery change if you feel that's the best procedure and something I hadn't thought about until now (but excellent advice). If you're shooting for pay you have to anticipate ANYTHING that can go wrong because, as you've discovered, it's not if, but when, and how bad.

Also protecting the cards in terms of "chain of custody" is also something to think about. Back in the film days, one of my assistants was assigned to take all the exposed film and keep it in a specific small bag on his person until getting back to the studio. Nothing else went in the side pocket of that bag except for exposed film He wasn't even allowed to put the bag down, even for a second and maintain possession 100% of the time. To me, it didn't matter if the place burned down with all our equipment as long as the exposed film was safe and in our possession. When we switched to digital, we had separate card holders worn on our waists, one for exposed, one for unexposed and even had a procedure for placing the cards into the holders verifying that each and every one was secure.

 

[Crash Pro]

Do you think it's better to have one or two large storage cards or several smaller storage cards? I'm wondering because I'm thinking it might be a nice way to organize shoots. Let's say, you're shooting a wedding, and then later, you go shoot a real estate job. It might be convenient to have each footage from each shoot on different cards to make it easier in editing or just general organization. However, it might be nicer to have one large card and when you get home, you can organize each shoot in separate files on the SD card. What does everyone think? Which is more convenient?

I buy the smaller 128GB cards just in case I loose the drone. Also less risky if you have captured some really nice footage and don’t want to risk losing it, just pull the card and insert a new one.

 

[BigAl07]

The extra space that a large card provides is irrelevant to the situation. It's how you use the space and the cards. There is no rule that says you have to fill up the card every before changing it out. Back in the day with only 24 frames per film back we had to figure out in advance how many shots the next sequence would take, and if in the middle of a film back do a "tactical reload" so that we weren't having to change backs at a critical time. I think it's smart to change cards with every battery change if you feel that's the best procedure and something I hadn't thought about until now (but excellent advice). If you're shooting for pay you have to anticipate ANYTHING that can go wrong because, as you've discovered, it's not if, but when, and how bad.

Also protecting the cards in terms of "chain of custody" is also something to think about. Back in the film days, one of my assistants was assigned to take all the exposed film and keep it in a specific small bag on his person until getting back to the studio. Nothing else went in the side pocket of that bag except for exposed film He wasn't even allowed to put the bag down, even for a second and maintain possession 100% of the time. To me, it didn't matter if the place burned down with all our equipment as long as the exposed film was safe and in our possession. When we switched to digital, we had separate card holders worn on our waists, one for exposed, one for unexposed and even had a procedure for placing the cards into the holders verifying that each and every one was secure.

It's funny you mention a couple of items we also touch on.

Chain-Of-Custody: We shoot for Emergency Services and if an incident turns into a criminal investigation while we are on site, we have to surrender the media. We get it back but it's good to have several spares just in case.

We have a very specific Card Placement in our card wallets so at a glance anyone can tell which cards are Ready to Go vs the ones with Data on them.

 

[diesel97]

PSA I just ordered one of these for $16
130mbs instead of 100mbs 128GB

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09B1JFY24/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[gajman]

Do you think it's better to have one or two large storage cards or several smaller storage cards? I'm wondering because I'm thinking it might be a nice way to organize shoots. Let's say, you're shooting a wedding, and then later, you go shoot a real estate job. It might be convenient to have each footage from each shoot on different cards to make it easier in editing or just general organization. However, it might be nicer to have one large card and when you get home, you can organize each shoot in separate files on the SD card. What does everyone think? Which is more convenient?

I have both. Storage is mission dependent. If I had to choose one or the other, I would go with several medium sized storage cards 128 or 256Gb. I really don’t like having an entire shoot on one card. Happy to change cards like batteries, but you need a system. I would rather have two in the bag than one in the bush.

 

[Maviac]

Agree with everyone's thought's here that having multiple cards, regardless of size, is the best approach. 128 and 256GB cards are getting cheap enough that if you're using them for other uses too its not a bad idea to use those (I ordered a 256GB one off Amazon a while back and they accidentally sent 8; I called customer service to report it and they just told me to keep them).

I do question this in the original poster's message:

"However, it might be nicer to have one large card and when you get home, you can organize each shoot in separate files on the SD card."

I can't really imagine a situation where organizing and preserving files on an SD card rather than transferring them to permanent storage is a good idea. They're too easy to lose/misplace, and while fairly rare, they do fail. I transfer everything to an SSD, which is also backed up on Dropbox, since SSDs fail too, but are harder to lose (and in my experience their failure rate is less than SDs)! A relative saved all her family's pics on an SD card, which I repeatedly said was a bad idea, but she was convinced they'd be safe. Of course, it got full and she got a new one, and she lost the original with many thousands of pics shortly afterward (and this was a full size, not micro, SD).

 

[Pixeldawg]

Do you think it's better to have one or two large storage cards or several smaller storage cards? I'm wondering because I'm thinking it might be a nice way to organize shoots. Let's say, you're shooting a wedding, and then later, you go shoot a real estate job. It might be convenient to have each footage from each shoot on different cards to make it easier in editing or just general organization. However, it might be nicer to have one large card and when you get home, you can organize each shoot in separate files on the SD card. What does everyone think? Which is more convenient?

Personal preference here... I was a photojournalist and specifically a sports photographer for many years, and when I shot things like football, with each change of downs or time out, I would change my card out. I had about 30 of them at one point because my philosophy is to not put all of my eggs in one basket. I started doing this after watching a friend of mine lose all of his images during the SEC Championship game one year. Game was over and too late to go out and reshoot. Don't put all of your eggs in one basket.

Hope this helps.

Cordially,

Mark

 

[vindibona1]

PSA I just ordered one of these for $16
130mbs instead of 100mbs 128GB

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09B1JFY24/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Great catch... At these prices why would anyone even consider buying anything smaller than 128GB? 130mbps. I have the older version (green) at 100mbs and they have worked flawlessly. I've got one in my shopping cart looking to see if I have any more purchases so I can get it today.

BTW... These cards can be used for more than just your drones. With a SD card reader you can use them in place of a USB drive, in your DSLR or just an extra (slow) drive in your PC. My UHS1 micro SD cards now service my DSLR which doesn't require anything faster.

 

[vindibona1]

I have 5 64g cards in each of my drone cases. When I change the battery, I change the card.

The benefit to changing cards with every battery is that you insure that you don't lose what's been shot in the session. Additionally, on the rare occasion that you have a faulty card or momentary failure to record then you've got partial protection. The down side to that is that you have to manage more cards, which may slow down battery changes unless you have crew on hand to handle the cards and you run the risk of losing a card or two or several if not protected and tended to after removing them.

In general I prefer to be a bit less **** than changing cards every battery change, but tend to like larger cards (128GB) because I don't want to be handling cards, at least without a crew member to do that specifically. I will go home and download my cards immediately and on important stuff back up on a separate drive before formatting a card.

Also as a habit, though perhaps not as critical these days, is that I typically format cards rather than erase files. It's a habit formed in the old days where it was more or less understood that erasing files could create sector errors. I think that all came out of when we used micro discs in our DLSR's which were in fact drive discs that spun in the tiny enclosures.

 

[Marko-7]

Assess the risk. If you are doodling around not changing the card can work. If you are shooting commercially, NOT changing the card every time you bring the aircraft home is almost negligent practice. I was shooting for a client from a 20'boat on a hot day. My inspire threw a critical battery alert started to land in the middle of Raritan bay. I fought it back into the boat with a semi ungracious landing. The card in use had a number of shots from previous flights that would have gone down the drain had I not been successful.