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Micro SD Card failure

sarniac

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I have been using a SanDisk Extreme 64GB SD card in my Mavic Pro. Twice within the last two weeks, the video file has been corrupt and wouldn't play. Very frustrating when you wait all week for a day above freezing so you can fly for a few minutes. I have performed a full format of the card (not the quick scan) on my computer and always format the card in the Mavic before I fly. The card is less than a year old and has, I would guess less than 50 video records. I picked SanDisk because it was predominant on the MavicHelp memory card list.

I would like to know from the group if this is normal and the Brand of SD card users have success with.
 
All of my cards are Sandisk, I have 16 and haven't had any problem with any of them as far as recording content. I have had an issue on my Spark where the card was causing issues that stopped the drone from flying. Once formatted (within the Spark) it was fine.

I never format my cards in my Macs, always in the equipment they're being used in.
 
All of my cards are Sandisk, I have 16 and haven't had any problem with any of them as far as recording content. I have had an issue on my Spark where the card was causing issues that stopped the drone from flying. Once formatted (within the Spark) it was fine.

I never format my cards in my Macs, always in the equipment they're being used in.
I formatted the card in my desktop to see if that would flag a bad sector, etc. I always format in Mavic before using it to record.

Thank you for the info on your SanDisk cards.
 
When you formatted the card with your desktop may have caused a capability issue within the drone. Its recommended that once you use the SD card in the drone never format with computer, only format with drone. Now for me, I never keep files on my cards, the day I fly I transfer those flies over to my PC and DELETE (not format) the files off the SD card and return the card to the drone.
 
Sandisk is the most well known brand, and thus also the most counterfeited one. If you didn't buy it from a reputable seller, or got a particularly good deal it might be a fake.
 
When you formatted the card with your desktop may have caused a capability issue within the drone. Its recommended that once you use the SD card in the drone never format with computer, only format with drone. Now for me, I never keep files on my cards, the day I fly I transfer those flies over to my PC and DELETE (not format) the files off the SD card and return the card to the drone.
I formatted SD card on desktop computer after receiving error message that file was corrupted. Prior to that, I would format in Mavic.
 
I had a similar thing happen with my P3 Standard. Turns out I hadn't stopped recording before I turned the drone off, so the video file hadn't had a chance to close properly. Once I popped the card back in the drone and turned the drone on it closed the video file and I was able to view it on my computer without issue. No clue if the MPro acts the same way, but it might be worth looking into.
 
Failure to close the file is a consistent problem with all video cameras, whether on a drone or camcorder. Image capture is done to a very high speed memory buffer, while a separate software process writes these files more slowly to the sd card which is much slower (and cheaper). It also, when the shot is terminated, writes various metadata records to the file which allows it to be read. If you shut off power to the drone before this process finishes, you may loose something frames and the metadata. This will make the file unreadable on a PC.

The length of time required for this finishing off process varies depending on the size of the high speed buffer and the speed of the SD card. Generally, 15-30 seconds is long enough.

This is the same process that causes slow writing SD cards to fail strangely. They can never keep up with the buffer memory, and eventually it fills up and drops data.
 
I had a similar thing happen with my P3 Standard. Turns out I hadn't stopped recording before I turned the drone off, so the video file hadn't had a chance to close properly. Once I popped the card back in the drone and turned the drone on it closed the video file and I was able to view it on my computer without issue. No clue if the MPro acts the same way, but it might be worth looking into.

I had the same issue with my M2P. Found a file that wouldn’t play, popped the card back into the drone, switched on and off and found it was “fixed” and plays fine.
 
Based on #9 - #11, I believe I may be the problem.

I didn't realize recording should be stopped with drone powered on. Pretty sure I have powered off drone without first stopping the recording session. It makes sense that an orderly process should be followed - stop recording and then power off the drone. I will be more careful in the future.

Thank you for explaining this.
 
Sandisk is the most well known brand, and thus also the most counterfeited one. If you didn't buy it from a reputable seller, or got a particularly good deal it might be a fake.
I have had two cards fail, a Sandisk and a Sony. San disk replaced it. Sony wanted me to jump through ridiculous hoops to have it replaced. I just bought a new Sandisk instead.
 
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you can get issues as well when you go from video to pics while flying, and then back to video, it is best when you change over from one to the other to use the icon on the screen, this gives the system time to set up the different parameters for either video or pics, if you are videoing and just press the camera shutter then it will sometimes not let you take a pic, and when you press the picture button on the controller you don't get the shutter sound also this can cause issues when you come to play back the SD card in the computer
 
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I have often heard that one should always format an SD card in the device that it will be used in, and for the most part, I do that. As noted by sarniac, when using in a camera or computer, there is usually a setting that allows a "Full Format", which I believe resets every bit on the SD card, vs a quick format which I believe just deletes the directory sectors. I have been in the habit of doing full formats as well as my understanding is that it is better and more reliable to do so, but not sure that is really true. All that said, there does not seem to be a 'full format' vs 'quick format' option on the Mavic 2 drones. Does anyone know which of these two types of formats are performed? Need I be concerned either way?
 
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I have often heard that one should always format an SD card in the device that it will be used in, and for the most part, I do that. As noted by sarniac, when using in a camera or computer, there is usually a setting that allows a "Full Format", which I believe resets every bit on the SD card, vs a quick format which I believe just deletes the directory sectors. I have been in the habit of doing full formats as well as my understanding is that it is better and more reliable to do so, but not sure that is really true. All that said, there does not seem to be a 'full format' vs 'quick format' option on the Mavic 2 drones. Does anyone know which of these two types of formats are performed? Need I be concerned either way?
I just do a quick format on my PC after making sure the files have copied OK to my NAS. Never had a problem. Never formatted in my Mavic.
 
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