Comments on: Review Update: The Hoodman RAW Memory Cards; Hoodman Responds

By: Michael Tan

Michael Tan — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 06:55:46 +0000

1) He have zero in field failures, doesn’t mean that will be forever. As lexar and Sandisk ship a few tens of thousands of times more CF than hoodman, there’re bound to be more failures than hoodman, don’t be hoodwinked.

2) The large failure rates quoted, he must know more than anybody else, as Lexar may not itself have such figures due to the complex nature of failures. Failures due to user using the flash memory with near zero batteries are not to be counted as card failures, and that in itself is a common cause of failure. In addition, these high failure rates quoted take consumer cards into consideration, and these consumer cards use MLC flash.

3) All SLC memories have very low failure rates, and that’s what is used in Sandisk and lexar’s professional flash memory. MLC have higher rates of failure. Even so, if pictures mean anything, my practice is to retire flash cards once every 12 months, the cost of replacement is infinitesmal compared to the cost of losing data.

4) Replacement of far cheaper Lexar and Sandisk cards is far cheaper than paying Hoodman pricing.

By: ron

ron — Wed, 14 May 2008 02:18:13 +0000

I’m not sure what “3-5% failure rate” means. Does that mean that for every 100 pictures you put on your card, you can expect to retrieve 95-97% of them? Or does it mean that for every 100 times you load the card into your camera, you can read the images from the card 95-97% of those times?

Or does it mean at the end of the assembly line, they take 3-5% of the the manufactured cards — the ones that don’t pass the quality tests — and they throw them away?

In any case, as I said above, I’ve never ever had a lost image that I can blame on the card — I use both lexar and sandisk.

Hoodman is not a memory company anyway… they are selling something they have contracted to be manufactured. Perhaps their manufacturer is only sending 95% of the production run to them — and they can them claim that 100% of the cards actually work before they send them to the distribution channels.

Bottom Line: If there is a good argument for buying Hoodman cards, their VP did not put it forth. In my experience, Sandisk and Lexar have been 100% reliable, 100% of the time, by any measure.

Ron

By: Kristin

Kristin — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:24:54 +0000

Do they stand behind that failure rate? If it fails will they reimburse you for the card and lost pictures? Probably not.

I have had a Sandisk CF card fail, but only after 5 years of regular use. I would like to see what their failure rates are like when they have been in the market for at least 5 years… a year and a half of 0 REPORTED failures doesn’t convince me.

By: Charles

Charles — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:18:08 +0000

I’d like to see the data backing up the claim of 3-5% failure rates for other cards. That is extremely high! Furthermore, you’ve got to compare apples-to-apples: what are the failure rates of SanDisk and Lexar “professional” UDMA cards? (For that matter, what is a “mass merchant” card?) Finally, how many cards does Hoodman have in the field? Zero failures is not very impressive, or statistically significant, if they’ve only sold a few hundred cars…

By: Peter

Peter — Mon, 12 May 2008 06:54:18 +0000

It may be useful to check out the updated information from Rob’s web site, he includes the Hoodman card.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/camera_multi_page.asp?cid=6007-9406

By: B Forsberg

B Forsberg — Sat, 10 May 2008 21:16:40 +0000

100% guarantee is one thing but there is nothing like 100% reliability. - When a shoot is lost it is lost. It doesn´t matter which card is failing - US made or not.

By: jim

jim — Fri, 09 May 2008 19:07:43 +0000

I hate it when a lose a bit because it’s on the loose.

By: John Law

John Law — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:15:04 +0000

I think this is a story worth note, one it shows most of us are willing to for go buying US made stuff for china made stuff….which means we probably won’t ever get manufacturing jobs back in the us….

I have had a lexar card crap out on me…its a crappy feeling….I think I would pay more for a 100% guarantee that being said is it possible to make a 100% Guarantee? Its all Zeros and Ones, and you only need to loose one to loose them all…

By: Roy Beusker

Roy Beusker — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:00:34 +0000

After having lost a COMPLETE photoshoot on a Sandisk Extreme III 4GB (the card suddenly went electrically ‘dead’: recovering was impossible and after contacting the Sandisk helpdesk they concuded this was a lost case for me - they just could return me a new card…), I seriously will consider buying a card that can promise me more reliabilty!

Just one lost shoot CAN sometimes mean loosing an important client (or worse: your credibility).
Believe me: it happened to me…

By: Kyle Barnett

Kyle Barnett — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:44:17 +0000

I have a different few of these things in that I buy allot of them. I work for a group that purchases about 150-300 every other month (I told you it was allot). I will tell you the facts are they do fail, and fail regularly. Lexar has an average of 3-5 failures a month. Just to cause some more confusion, I switched to purchasing SanDisk and for 3 months Ive had zero failures.

I will be looking at hoodman in the future. In our business failure is an absolute no go.

By: Kelvin

Kelvin — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:31:16 +0000

Sorry Stefan, I meant to post To Mitzs.

By: Kelvin

Kelvin — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:30:37 +0000

To Stefan,
I wish it was only 80 dollars to fill my tank.
To
I have used Lexar and have been happy with them. I accidentally erased a card, got it switched in the D3 slots. The fact that Lexar has daisy, stackable firewire 800 readers and that they come with recovery software that actually works (better in Vista than Leopard unfortunately) is a big deal to me. I would like to buy only US products, and I would like to be able to afford it. But, my D3 is not made in the US, nor my Nikkor lenses, nor my gas, nor the parts that make up my Diesel Ford Truck (for sale). It is a price game before failure rates, thats why the D3 has dual slots.
I would like to be able to afford and test Hoodman’s claims, but alas the money tree has yet to grow from my photoseeds.