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Do not buy, use or even touch Lexar memory cards!


Teemu
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Hi!

I write short experience from last weekend. We had really long day studio shoots. We had this really huge practical effect build by our special effect guy, 50+ hours of work. Really awsome looking. I shot with my GH5 + my brand new few times tested Lexar 128GB 1000x memory card.

We had shot all we needed and I took out the card. In the beginning of this week I took the card and put it to my computer. It said needs to be formatted. Tried 7 different data rescue softwares, nothing. I went local service where they do data rescue. They inspected it for two hours, nothing. Now I am in the moment we lost everything, and I tried to format the card. Can't do it in any camera body. Not on my computer in any fileformat system (deep or quick format). It is just completely destroyed. I am afraid to cut the card half with scissors or machete, because I think those will brake apart first.

So my experience is now following: do not buy any Lexar cards ever, period.

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25 minutes ago, tweak said:

I use Lexar CF cards and they work great... Maybe you got a fake card, I would send it back for a replacment/ refund.

 

Yeah I did send it back for refund. I will change brand. It's ordered from "official" dealer here in Finland. But who knows witch is fake and witch is not fake...

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23 minutes ago, tweak said:

Indeed, which witch is which? :grin:

Haha. Nice typos I made there :D Well there definetly was some WITCH powers around.

14 minutes ago, JurijTurnsek said:

Anecdotal evidence cannot be a basis of overall brand reputation (I never used Lexar, but also never heard anything good/bad about them). In hindsight, you should've used the dual card slots for their intended purpose. Sorry for your loss, hopefully we can all learn a valuable lesson here.

Yes, should use dual card recording. Expensive lesson learned: Use dual card recording and spit over your left shoulder when you see a Lexar card.

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I have 3 Lexar CF cards and 15 Sandisk SD and CF cards, and two of those Lexar cards have been replaced under warranty while I've not had a single issue with any of my Sandisk cards. It's circumstantial evidence at best, but I only buy Sandisk cards.

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40 minutes ago, Fritz Pierre said:

Yes...your's is not the first bad experience with Alexa....I stick with Sandisk Extreme Pro....both in SD and SSD format...never a single failure....simply to much at stake when you do anything like you described in your opening post...or a wedding or anything professional for that matter!

Yeah that's right. I have one experience in past that one card corrupted on shooting when copied it to laptop. All other people in the crew was horrified and I was calming them down. Got Everything back from that card with data rescue software.

But this time it was strangest case ever. It was corrupted after that long shooting day. We even watched playback about the very last shot of the day via camera. After that everything was just downhill.

The card was corrupted so badly that computer/rescue software's only recognized it as 7,60gb drive... Even that it is 128gb card. Tried to format it with panasonic, canon and sony cameras, nothing. With computer and all formatting methods, nothing. So totally destroyed card. Just rubbish.

And I bought it from local camera store. Well now it is returned and I will switch to Sandisk or Transcend cards. Those haven't failed me.

After all, we have now scheduled re-shoots and recreating the practical effects... And this time even better than last time! So take that Lexar! You can't but us down so easily! :D

If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind material... – Charles Bukowski

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9 hours ago, jhnkng said:

only buy Sandisk cards.

 

7 hours ago, Fritz Pierre said:

stick with Sandisk Extreme Pro

^^ With these guys on this one! Such a solid track record. Over the years I've been through Transcend, Samsung, Lexar, ADATA, Kingston, Integral etc and not one dare touch the solidity that's SanDisk Extreme Pro. Then again, I guess that's why they're for the 'Extreme Pro' after all. :grimace: They've been serving me well since the hacked GH2 days and they were always the ones that allowed spanning and just being reliable.

Also agree with Jurij though, that with every brand, probably even SanDisk has these things happen... just when it happens to you, it's like hitting your toe against a rock... and you're not that eager to experience that again! I totally get that. I've a couple Lexars SDs still lying around, mostly just for multimedia entertainment purposes (like a cheap and super small SSD (adapter with cable -> laptop/tablet/smartphone)), but I wouldn't really trust 'em that much either. Alone the fact that they trick me into buying them by being the manufacturer with the largest number on a card... a self-invented rating standard... :P

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  • Super Members

The advantage with the large capacity cards is also their biggest potential  undoing in that because you can get by without changing them all day then when they do fail you've lost far more.

I prefer to stick with lots of smaller capacity ones and swap them more often to mitigate the risk.

Funnily enough by the way, I've actually just made a multi card DIY Nexto device for just this purpose that can automatically back up a simultaneous combination of 3 sd and micro sd cards and a CF card onto an SSD.

I'll put it up on here so you can have a look once it's in a proper box and not just blutacked together! 

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Nice! Yeah, I tend to stick to a bunch of 64GB as well. Also the buck per GB hasn't completely been pushed into the advantage of higher capacity. Usually the higher volume you get, the cheaper you get each. SSDs are starting to get that way now too. I guess it's just harder to get done for SDs because the microsizing is providing a challenge.

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Well the anecdotal bad evidence against can Lexar can be matched with my opposite, good experience. I've been rolling with two 64 GB Lexar 2000x UHS-II cards for 2+ years now without a single issue. Sorry you lost your footage though, that sucks man. 

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1 hour ago, Teemu said:

Yeah that's right. I have one experience in past that one card corrupted on shooting when copied it to laptop. All other people in the crew was horrified and I was calming them down. Got Everything back from that card with data rescue software.

But this time it was strangest case ever. It was corrupted after that long shooting day. We even watched playback about the very last shot of the day via camera. After that everything was just downhill.

The card was corrupted so badly that computer/rescue software's only recognized it as 7,60gb drive... Even that it is 128gb card. Tried to format it with panasonic, canon and sony cameras, nothing. With computer and all formatting methods, nothing. So totally destroyed card. Just rubbish.

And I bought it from local camera store. Well now it is returned and I will switch to Sandisk or Transcend cards. Those haven't failed me.

After all, we have now scheduled re-shoots and recreating the practical effects... And this time even better than last time! So take that Lexar! You can't but us down so easily! :D

If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind material... – Charles Bukowski

Sorry I meant to type Lexar....that is bizarre as in order to allow you to preview your dailies in the camera, the info clearly was in the card...the question is then what happened to it...I've only heard of problems related to the Lexars related to the GH5 but in fairness I tend to pay attention to the Pannys...and less so to issues with Canons or Sonys

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1 minute ago, Fritz Pierre said:

Sorry I meant to type Lexar....that is bizarre as in order to allow you to preview your dailies in the camera, the info clearly was in the card...the question is then what happened to it...I've only heard of problems related to the Lexars related to the GH5 but in fairness I tend to pay attention to the Pannys...and less so to issues with Canons or Sonys

Yeah. Well only thing that pops up to my mind is that I turned off my GH5 and took out the card too early = was still "writing" or marking something on the card when shutting down. Or I took it out when the camera was on (not recording) and it was doing something with the card...

But for sure I can tell we played back shots all day long via camera play mode. Everything was playing back just fine. I remember saying to my friend just before popping out the card "oh, I should remember to take this with me. Don't want to lose this material..." Maybe that was the last bit for the card!

So I think it must be a human error. Me popping out the card just one second too early or something.

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But there is a learnable moment in this for all...although cameras and media are ridiculously cheap compared to the "old days" an additional expense that should, though probably rarely is factored in, should be a robust RAID /system on any set as is the case in @Teemu's experience...allowing for smaller cards to be used and captured on set, so one may lose 20 min of data on a card but not the whole day...that's what makes the GH5's dual card system so invaluable.

23 minutes ago, Teemu said:

Yeah. Well only thing that pops up to my mind is that I turned off my GH5 and took out the card too early = was still "writing" or marking something on the card when shutting down. Or I took it out when the camera was on (not recording) and it was doing something with the card...

But for sure I can tell we played back shots all day long via camera play mode. Everything was playing back just fine. I remember saying to my friend just before popping out the card "oh, I should remember to take this with me. Don't want to lose this material..." Maybe that was the last bit for the card!

So I think it must be a human error. Me popping out the card just one second too early or something.

I know I've read about this same thing on another forum...once you've viewed it the info is there....though of little consolation, the cards write in real time...period...this is not something you did...except possibly popping the card out with the camera on, corrupted the file in that instant...I don't have experience with that, but I don't even remove a lens or an HDMI cable with my cameras powered on...the mystery is you probably had over a 100 gigs of info on the card....and as this is not my area of expertease (vast understatement here)....could it be reading the card/ drive as 7 something gigs capacity as the rest is filled up!...that may mean that data is still on the card??

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9 minutes ago, Fritz Pierre said:

But there is a learnable moment in this for all...although cameras and media are ridiculously cheap compared to the "old days" an additional expense that should, though probably rarely is factored in, should be a robust RAID /system on any set as is the case in @Teemu's experience...allowing for smaller cards to be used and captured on set, so one may lose 20 min of data on a card but not the whole day...that's what makes the GH5's dual card system so invaluable.

@Fritz Pierre, Well said. There is definitely learning for everybody.

Backup, backup and backup = even to the level where others think you are paranoid with backup's.

OR 

Re-shoot, re-shoot and re-shoot = you will have stomach ulcer thanks to the stress and lowered lifetime expectation.

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