I am not one who is in favor of an "all in one basket" storage solution. I'd rather have 2 good, fast 16s.

brasssong wrote:Items this small should not cost $5 to ship.

THey sold a set of Samsung front loading washer and drier a while back and charged 5 dollars to ship. It evens out.

I'm all but busting a gut here reading the tinfoil hat wearers' posts. For hard drives, some people will only buy Seagate and some people will never buy Seagate and some people will only buy WD and some people will never buy WD. It's all anecdotal. If there are two or three lemons in a batch people will run from the brand for years. Others understand statistics and enjoy a good bargain when they see one. The people who got the lemons will swear that they never laid the card down on a dirty surface and never touched the contacts with their cruddy fingers and never picked it up on a cold dry day when they might have had a static buildup.

Class rating today is like megapixels 10 years ago... a total distraction. If you aren't shooting HD, Class 10 is way more than you need. Unless you're shooting HD video or stills in burst mode, the notion that you'll miss a shot is wrong. In most cases, just pointing the camera takes longer than saving the picture.

I've got one of these Centon 32GBs in my D90 right now; it's my go-to memory card. I used to use smaller cards. A lot of people here warn that if you use big cards and something goes wrong, you could lose your pictures. Statistically, that could happen, but with small cards, you are going to lose pictures because you never took them because you had to switch. I'm not going to let that happen to me again. True professionals use cameras that have two memory slots, often one CF and one SDHC (or now SDXC). If you're really fretting that you could lose pictures, there's your answer. Because failure rates are all statistics. (The only failure I've had was in a portable audio recorder, and my Kingston 8GB card lost the file. Highly respected brand name but it blew it the one time I needed it. It's all statistics.)

For only $49.98 for 2 class 10 cards(free shipping with Jumbowoot's coupon code - thank you Woot!), I couldn't pass this up.

I do understand that these may not be reliable enough to use as my primary use cards, but they should be good enough for back-ups, just in case.

wesdapilot wrote:As a photographer and member of numerous photographic organizations and a photo instructor, let me make a few basic comments.

First, why would you select a bargain basement memory card to store your photos? If you don't care enough to use the best cards available, your photos probably aren't worth taking in the first place.

Second, as the old expression reminds us, sh*t happens and there are too many chances of having a card lost or damaged to put more than a minimum number of images on the card.

I shoot with cameras at 10 mps in Raw, and routinely use 4 gb cards. Whatever the card will hold, when I get to one day's shooting, or 250 shots, whichever is first, I change cards. When shooting in Africa, China, Peru, etc., I will often have 6 or 8 cards per day. I back them up to my netbook, and to a hard drive storage device as soon as I return to my room. I will not erase the card until I return home and have the photos downloaded to my main computer. 23 days in China produced 81 cards and a total of 14,600 photos. While traveling in Italy last month, my wife sat her camera down on the table while having a coffee and turned away for 5 seconds. Her camera and the card are gone forever. She only lost about a dozen shots because we backed up the shots the night before and changed cards.

There is nothing that I can think of that is worth so little as to trust it to a third rate card like this. Then again, it is your photo, so "you pays your money, you takes your chances".

You think Berlusconi was at the next table and nabbed it to go upstairs and take pictures of his new pouting "interior minister"?

smeh wrote:All Flash memory eventually fails. This is an unfortunate reality of the technology. One way to mitigate this is to always use the "format" option on your camera rather than simply using the erase feature whenever you clear all the data from the card. Formatting the card should look for the sectors on the card that have gone bad and skip over them. The capacity of your card will go down over time but you'll be less likely to lose data.

I thought that formatting these cards was a ad idea, as the lifetime of Flash memory is correlated to the number f read/writes performed (in the region of just 100,000)

Wouldn't a format do a lot of that? Anyone very versed in this feel free to clarify please

Bought one last time. Used it a few months then it crashed (complete with lots of photos). Sent it back to Centon, replaced card worked less than two weeks (didn't lose as many photos this time). Piece of junk.

Used in Nikon D3100

By the way... I format every time I put a card in the camera.

ScotHibb wrote:lucky something boneless and more valuable wasn't in between those suckers

You missed the Darwin Awards >:-)

richardhod wrote:I thought that formatting these cards was a ad idea, as the lifetime of Flash memory is correlated to the number f read/writes performed (in the region of just 100,000)

Wouldn't a format do a lot of that? Anyone very versed in this feel free to clarify please

Wow, I never thought of it that way... I always format my card because the formatting process should, in theory, find the bad sectors and mark them as such, but I may indeed be shortening the lifespan of my memory cards. A quick Google search seems to back this theory up. I suppose it's a trade-off. If you already have bad sectors, a format should find them, but it may also wear out the memory faster.

Really, Woot? Really? No less than two days after I purchase the same card for $11 more?

With this low of a price, you're practically forcing me at gunpoint to grab my wallet and give you my credit card number.

richardhod wrote:I thought that formatting these cards was a ad idea, as the lifetime of Flash memory is correlated to the number f read/writes performed (in the region of just 100,000)

Wouldn't a format do a lot of that? Anyone very versed in this feel free to clarify please

I'm fairly sure that number applies to the number of times a given area of the card can be re-written. So, in essence, you can fill it up 50,000 times, then format it 50,000 times, and you'll arrive at that 100,000 mark.

In reality, unless you'll using these a solid-state drives on incredibly file-intensive computers, you're far more likely to more onto a new setup before you wear the card out... at least in terms of that read-write lifetime.

Format freely. That in and of itself won't wear the card out. You could fill and format twice a day for your entire life and barely need to worry about that.

Aquila76 wrote:Well said, thormj. All of your posts regarding this have been spot on and user-friendly. I award you this photo comparing what 1GB looked like before SD cards. Imagine lugging 32 of those around attached your camera or smartphone!

Wrong, that hard drive in the picture is the IBM 3380 Direct Access Storage Device. Introduced in the 1980's, with 2.52 gb of storage. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

kayak206 wrote:You must not have been alive 20 years ago.. in 91 a 1 gb hard drive looked like any 3.5" hard drive today.

Well; I was, and while the first 1 gb hard drive did come out in 1991, they were not under $1000 until ~ 1994.

Ahh, the memories.

Seems like everyone has their lips on Sandisk's buttocks...

I have 6 SDHC cards and NONE of them are Sandisk. I have 8 flash drives and 2 of them were Sandisk. I say were because they both died after just a few months. I've never had any other flash memory fail on me. Seems like Sandisk makes crap to me. One more thing to consider is that a LOT of these companies all buy from the same manufacturer and then stamp their name on it.

Smartpost sucks. My package went from DFW to Houston, bypassing Austin altogether. It left Houston two days ago and hasn't been seen since.

For less than $3 you could have shipped it first class USPS, woot!

Well, one works and one doesn't!
Already working on getting it warranted!
Wish I had read some reviews before I pulled the trigger. I will be less likely to purchase in the future, if woot keeps selling crap like this.

bbomar wrote:Well, one works and one doesn't!
Already working on getting it warranted!
Wish I had read some reviews before I pulled the trigger. I will be less likely to purchase in the future, if woot keeps selling crap like this.

How many times do I need to ask for an RMA?

This is now getting stupid.

Return and refund.

"Do you understand the words that coming out of my mouth?"

bbomar wrote:How many times do I need to ask for an RMA?

This is now getting stupid.

Return and refund.

"Do you understand the words that coming out of my mouth?"

Well, after 3 emails attempts I have an RMA.
Blood from a Turnip!
They will be getting and back, and I will be happy that they do.

Totally agree that smartpost sucks.

Within a day it was about an hour from my house. Sat there for a day. Then went to a FedEX center in the town I live in!! 5 minutes from my house! Sat there all day (I debated calling about just picking it up, probably should have). Next day, it said 'out for delivery'. Oh cool! Well, then by the end of the day, it said 'Delivered to local post office'. Then the NEXT day (Today) USPS delivered it to my mailbox. Huh? haha. Oh well, it works! Looks to be working fine. Wouldn't use it for my DSLR, and it's awfully slow, but I think it's going to work well for the Wii. I've got it modded and intent to install lots of old PlayStation rips from my PSX collection, as well as my collection of N64 games on there. Cool beans!

Edit: This thing is UNBELIEVABLY slow. Using it in an emulator, games stop and have to load in cinematics, yet it's supposed to be class 10. And we're talking low res 240p N64 games and such. So if your using this for photography or video, fo-get about it.

BUT, for the price, still an awesome deal. Well worth it.

Wow, SMARTPOST is unbelievably terrible... According to FedEx they received the shipping info on 11/25, and the package on 11/28; there hasn't been an update since... It's now 12/10 and they just now updated to say "Shipment Information Sent to USPS," not even that USPS has my package yet. For all I know it's still in Dallas, TX and I'm in California. WORST SHIPPING EVER.

I formatted both cards and tried to install Mac OS X (10.6) on them for use as alternate boot volumes. The install (when booted from the internal HD) would just abruptly abort after a few minutes of progress, then the Mac would reboot from the install DVD. Booted from the DVD, the installer wouldn't even see the cards.

Perhaps a Linux install might be less... picky.

I got them mostly as alternate backup volumes for a couple computers (PC & Mac), but my expectations are low - and falling.

I ordered this on 11/23 and STILL do not have it. It supposedly shipped on 11/25. The last tracking update poasted on 12/11 and said it was in Texas (I am in Minnesota.)It said it would be another 2-3 days for arrival at that point. I STILL do not have it. I am so disappointed with this seller.

This thing is junk. Tons of bad sectors on the chip. I'm sending it back.

This should have only been in the Bag of Coal. I got this last week and it won't record video at all, maybe 5 seconds if I am lucky.

So, I bought my first Woot item, and Woot lost it! Now they won't help, and won't resolve the situation so that I get my item.

Really disappointed here.

Here's my tracking number: 02927009713113642548

It's stuck somewhere in TX, despite being where I live in Salt Lake City. Now it's been there since 12/13, and we're at 12/21! I ordered Nov 25th...

I'll spread the word to all my friends and family not to use Woot. Customer service has not been helpful... I've been buying and selling since the mid 90s online, and I have never had an item lost in the mail. No, that's not hyperbole. I guess I've just been lucky.

The worst part? Woot won't provide an item. I know they run out of things, but I bought, and paid for mine.

Super disappointed.