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

[Fritz Pierre]

Just now, Teemu said:

@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.

Agreed @Teemu...when I think of when film used to be meticulously unloaded inside a dark tent by a 3rd or 4th AC while the crew kept shooting, because it's the setup with the crew, where the real money lies...we do need that same caution with digital....nothing paranoid about that!...anyway...if you haven't sent the card back yet, you may still look for a second opinion among data retrieval experts...the 7 gig capacity when you tried to format the card may be a clue...who knows....

[Davey]

Shot thousands of hours on Sandisk cards and the eldest ones (four years) are as good as new.

[tugela]

11 hours ago, Teemu said:

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.

Are you sure that it is  genuine Lexar card? There are a lot of counterfeits out there.

5 hours ago, Davey said:

I prefer to buy batteries and memory cards from camera stores  - Amazon is awash with inferior copies of small 'everyday' peripheral items.

 

As a general rule of the thumb if it is way cheaper than anywhere else, there may be a good reason for that.

3 hours 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.

The card is electronic, so if you pull it out while it is active you could easily have fried something inside. The same thing could happen with cards from any manufacturer, including Sandisk.

[jhnkng]

I should mention that I still use my 3 Lexar cards, but only for stills and I always shoot dual card backup -- which is why I have so many cards in regular rotation! Those three Lexar cards are still going strong, no issues at all, but I feel like Lexar has more sample variation than Sandisk. Again, it is anecdotal, YMMV etc etc

(Also, I always, always, always buy media at reputable local retail stores, or I get them from B&H. Some things are worth paying for!)

[Teemu]

8 hours ago, tugela said:

Are you sure that it is  genuine Lexar card? There are a lot of counterfeits out there.

Well I have bought it from reputable local retail store. And I lnow they buy items from official Lexar dealer from Finland. But how could I ever know where they buy the cards...

More likely I think I burned and completely destroyed the card when it was making some "last markings" when shutting down. It's the only logic way how it got destroyed so badly.

[tomekk]

 

1 hour ago, Teemu said:

(...) when it was making some "last markings" when shutting down. It's the only logic way how it got destroyed so badly.

If this happened your data prior to this event would still be there. It's just a sequence of 0s and 1s written to the card. Interrupting writing process, aside from losing latest data being saved can corrupt information on how to interpret those 0s and 1s but it doesn't wipes out all the data that had previously been saved. Proper recovery software/company can dump 0s and 1s from the card and reinterpret them for you. 

[jonpais]

I just want to know why the OP failed to mention that he removed the card from the camera as it was still writing before slamming Lexar. 

[Orangenz]

The local store sells Lexar and Sandisk (and those lovely Panasonic ones I took a picture of). Their main gripe is their very slow min write speed and recommend against them for 4k recording or in Sony cameras at all. Bit of a "I said they said" kind of post from me sorry  

[jonpais]

20 minutes ago, Orangenz said:

The local store sells Lexar and Sandisk (and those lovely Panasonic ones I took a picture of). Their main gripe is their very slow min write speed and recommend against them for 4k recording or in Sony cameras at all. Bit of a "I said they said" kind of post from me sorry  

Whose main gripe? You mean the $800 Panasonic cards aren't suitable for 4K?

[Orangenz]

4 minutes ago, jonpais said:

Whose main gripe? You mean the $800 Panasonic cards aren't suitable for 4K?

No, I mean the store opinion of the Lexar cards, that I was passing along. If someone wants to buy me an NZ$800 panasonic card they are more than welcome!

[jonpais]

Just now, Orangenz said:

No, I mean the store opinion of the Lexar cards, that I was passing along. If someone wants to buy me an NZ$800 panasonic card they are more that welcome!

Once my check to Webrunner clears, it'll be on its way!  

[Samin]

I have the very same card (128GB 1000x) and I had absolutely no issues with it ( Knock to wood). Most probably something else has messed up in the process of recording. I didn't see if you mentioned but did you try to see if GH5 can read or reformat it as well? Did you check your footage in the camera before taking the card out?

P.S: Lexar is owned by Micron Technology among worlds top memory producers. 

[joema]

20 hours ago, Teemu said:

...We even watched playback about the very last shot of the day via camera. After that everything was just downhill...

So it appears the data was OK when played from the camera, but the problem happened when or after the card was removed. Then it appears you tried recovery software. The moment you first see a problem, it's best to re-insert the card in the camera and try to view it again. If it works you can transfer the data via cable. There's no guarantee that would have worked, but the moment you start manipulating the card outside the camera with recovery software, you never know what that will do. However the fact the card could not be formatted indicates it totally failed or was somehow damaged.

My documentary team has many Sandisk 128GB and 256GB cards plus similar Sandisk cards. Over seven years after shooting many terabytes, we've had one Sandisk card fail in the field which was recoverable, and one Lexar 128GB card fail during initial testing, but never any in the field.

While genuine Lexar and Sandisk cards are generally very reliable, any card (or camera) can fail. The GH5 supports dual card recording for video, which helps in some cases. However the camera can be lost, stolen or have a firmware issue that corrupts data on both cards. For critically important shooting, we download and duplicate (on site) the data from all cards twice per day, and keep the two backup drives in separate locations. When traveling home we carry the two drives in separate vehicles.

[scotchtape]

Sigh.  I haven't had any issues with this card (EXCEPT with Panasonic  cameras)- this lineup is great for the price, speed and capacity.  I get 90mb/s read which is twice as fast as the SanDisk extreme that is the same price.  Of course the Lexar is uhs-ii vs SanDisk extreme uhs-i.

That being said I have posted here and there is another blog post (not mine) that says Lexar cards and Panasonic GH line do not play well together.  It makes my camera laggy and on my g7 it once ended a recording. On my gh5 I wrote about the lag issues and my findings.  There is even a YouTube video that shows the Lexar 128gb 1000x lag issue on the GH5 (I had the same issue).

Also... You ejected the card while it was being written to and blame the card???

I love the read speed but due to the Lexar / Panasonic incompatibility I am using the slower SanDisk extreme until uhs-ii prcies come down to the Lexar level.... However in my time using the Lexars in the gh5 dual slots, besides the lag all the files were fine.  

I have 6 Lexar 1000x cards and they have worked great for me, bought from Amazon official.  Everyone can make a bad card, but no one can save you if you pull a card while it's being written to...

[hmcindie]

I had a transcend card fail and all of my Lexar cards still work. Don't take out the card when the camera writes on it, jesus...

p.s what's the name of this local store?

[AaronChicago]

I've had a Lexar CFast 2.0 card fail on location. I have 4 total, and the one that failed was one that I ordered on eBay from China. I was suspicious - although it might've been a coincidence. Lexar replaced it anyway.

I'm thinking about jumping to Sandisk CFast 2.0 cards. I've had a near perfect track record with their SD cards.

[Ken Ross]

3 hours ago, Orangenz said:

The local store sells Lexar and Sandisk (and those lovely Panasonic ones I took a picture of). Their main gripe is their very slow min write speed and recommend against them for 4k recording or in Sony cameras at all. Bit of a "I said they said" kind of post from me sorry  

I am currently using the Lexar Pro 1000x, UHS-II Class 10 cards. Although I have no problems with them and have had no issues recording 4K, they are slow to write. So if you need to do some fast run N gun, upon ending your last clip, you may not be able to record your next clip for several seconds. That's the biggest difference I've found relative to my SanDisk. But I'll say this, it's enough of a difference that next time I'd get the SanDisk.

[majoraxis]

I bought 2 pack of the 128 Lexar UHS-II cards a year ago and one die, the other one works without an issue. I would not buy them again. I also have 4-5 San Disks cards and have used the much more and none of failed yet and a few are a few years old...

[tugela]

13 hours ago, tomekk said:

 

If this happened your data prior to this event would still be there. It's just a sequence of 0s and 1s written to the card. Interrupting writing process, aside from losing latest data being saved can corrupt information on how to interpret those 0s and 1s but it doesn't wipes out all the data that had previously been saved. Proper recovery software/company can dump 0s and 1s from the card and reinterpret them for you. 

Not if it damages the controller. The data might still be there in memory but it can't be accessed.

[tugela]

1 hour ago, majoraxis said:

I bought 2 pack of the 128 Lexar UHS-II cards a year ago and one die, the other one works without an issue. I would not buy them again. I also have 4-5 San Disks cards and have used the much more and none of failed yet and a few are a few years old...

I have lots of Lexar cards. The only one that has every failed was a 633x microSD 128GB card, which worked for half an hour (literally) then became read only. That particular one was a half normal price "deal" from Amazon though, and I suspect that it was probably a fake. Or maybe a refurbished/failed batch that should have been destroyed but instead was repackaged by some shady middleman and sold as new through the grey market.

Amazon are pretty good in terms of returns though, you tell them what the problem was, and they give you your money back if you don't want a replacement (which is what I opted to do). They send you prepaid return labels as well, so it doesn't cost you anything other than inconvenience.

You are probably going to have more issues with the high performance/high capacity cards since those push the performance boundaries and the thermal limits (if you stick one of these things in a small USB card reader you would be shocked at how hot they get when pushing a lot of data). I think many of the issues people have are due to cards spending too much time at or outside a safe thermal envelope and they simply fail due to overheating.

Just reading reviews on Amazon I would guess that about 5% of these high performance cards fail like that, and that seems to be common across the board.

6 hours ago, Ken Ross said:

I am currently using the Lexar Pro 1000x, UHS-II Class 10 cards. Although I have no problems with them and have had no issues recording 4K, they are slow to write. So if you need to do some fast run N gun, upon ending your last clip, you may not be able to record your next clip for several seconds. That's the biggest difference I've found relative to my SanDisk. But I'll say this, it's enough of a difference that next time I'd get the SanDisk.

The write speeds on those particular cards varies depending on the card capacity. The 16GB version for example writes at 40MB/s, while the larger cards write at 75-80MB/s. Also, if you are using a UHS-I bus device you will only get half of that speed, so you would be better off using a high performance UHS-I card in that case.

The 2000x cards run at much higher write speeds (~260 MB/s).

All of those cards (with the exception maybe of the 1000x 16GB card) will be throttled by your device write speed, not the card write speed.