# High Endurance SD Cards



## Mt Spokane Photography (Apr 30, 2017)

After getting two new surveillance cameras, I popped in some ordinary micro SD cards, but then discovered High Endurance SD cards made for this type of application of continuous video.

They tend to be expensive, have limited warranties (2 years). Does anyone have experience with them? The Sandisk and Lexar cards run about $40 for 64 GB, other brands are higher. There are few id any 128GB cards.

I will likely just wait for my existing cards to die, one camera, high up on a wall (which has me going to the hospital every two weeks for damage to my shins while installing it) has a sandisk 128 GB micro SD. The camera is waterproof, the card insertion requires partially disassembling it because of the water resistant seals. This camera also will get hit by direct sun in 110 degree weather in the summer, and -10F in the winter, so it may go first. The other is on my well covered front porch with protection from direct sun, and gets a little heat from the house in Winter, it has a 32GB card that is easier to change, no ladder needed. 

I should buy at least one backup card. I'm inclined to buy Lexar, but the Sandisk cards are a little cheaper. For som reason, Transend cards are 2X the price.


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## Jopa (Apr 30, 2017)

Had no idea they exist! I don't use cards in the cameras, just dump straight to a surveillance machine. But I was thinking about getting cards just in case something happens to the machine. Thank you for the info.


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## LDS (Apr 30, 2017)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> After getting two new surveillance cameras, I popped in some ordinary micro SD cards, but then discovered High Endurance SD cards made for this type of application of continuous video.
> They tend to be expensive, have limited warranties (2 years). Does anyone have experience with them? The Sandisk and Lexar cards run about $40 for 64 GB, other brands are higher. There are few id any 128GB cards.



I've used some CF Industrial cards that were rated for harsher environments (we made some monitoring devices to be installed in places that could become pretty cold or hot). Besides being rated for higher/lower temperatures, they used SLC memory instead of MLC - more expensive and with less density, but lasting longer. If their higher price was fully justified I don't know, customers never complained about them, but we didn't run tests, we just played on the safer side.

I see SanDisk makes this "high endurance" SD cards and "industrial" ones as well. The latter looks to have higher specs, but the type of memory used is not told - which is what is important to understand how many writing cycles they can withstand. Industrial cars anyway have at least "TeraBytes Written" (TBW) data, while the others don't specify it. How much it's true better specs, and how much is marketing BS, is hard to tell.


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