This SD Card Killed My Footage
A few months ago, I was on the sideline of a Super Rugby semi-final. Camera in hand, batteries charged, focus locked. Everything was dialled. I was capturing some of the best moments of the match. Then halftime hit.
I checked the footage. Gone. Nothing. The camera had stopped recording somewhere in the first half. No error message, no warning. Just silence. The culprit? A SanDisk Extreme Pro 128GB SD card, rated at 300MB/s and apparently, at least on paper, built for professionals.
This wasn’t an old, overused card. It was brand new. Fifth use, max.
The card was bricked. Dead. It wouldn't mount in a camera or a computer. No recovery tool could touch it. Just a sleek, branded lump of silicon and plastic that now had the data retention ability of a potato chip.
So I Tore It Open
I wanted answers. I needed to know what exactly failed and how. So I pulled out my macro lens and did a full teardown.
What I found shocked me more than the failure itself.
Inside, there was no controller chip. No separate NAND flash module. No capacitors. No logic board like you’d expect in most electronics. Just a single black chip, soldered to the PCB, with a web of tiny gold traces leading to the contact pins. Everything was embedded into one monolithic chip, sealed in epoxy. One chip doing everything.
That means when it fails, it really fails. No data recovery. No soldering off the NAND. No jumping the controller. Just nothing.
Why This Matters
We tend to think of SD cards as passive storage. But they’re not. They're computers in their own right. They have firmware, logic, memory management, and interfaces that need to function perfectly every single time. And when everything is baked into a single chip, you get convenience and miniaturisation but you also get zero repairability.
I later found out that cards like this are manufactured using a process called Chip-on-Board, where tiny silicon dies are bonded directly to the PCB and encapsulated in epoxy. It’s the same principle behind many USB sticks and microSD cards. Cheap, efficient, and impossible to fix.
SanDisk Isn’t What It Used To Be
I’ve used SanDisk cards for years. They were the default. The safe choice. But something’s changed.
Since being acquired by Western Digital, SanDisk has moved a lot of its manufacturing across multiple sites like Thailand, China, and Malaysia. There are more and more reports of SD cards failing without warning, especially in the Extreme and Ultra ranges.
What I experienced isn’t a one-off. It’s becoming common.
What I Use Now
Since that game-day disaster, I’ve switched. I now use Sony TOUGH cards and Angelbird AV Pro SDs for all critical work. They’re more expensive, but they’re built like tanks. Waterproof, shockproof, monolithic in the right way, with actual traceable QA and recovery support.
I also run regular card tests using tools like H2testw and Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. I label every card and treat them like the mechanical components they are. Because they are. These things move in and out of cameras every day. They get handled, flexed, pressed. They’re not just passive media. They’re part of the machine.
Final Thoughts
If you’re a content creator, filmmaker, or photographer, don’t cheap out on your cards. The most expensive lens in the world won’t matter if your storage can’t hold up.
Get one here - https://amzn.to/43Iyuhw
And if you’re still using SanDisk Extreme Pros, especially the newer ones, check them. Test them. Back up your footage. Because trust me, you don’t want to be standing on the sideline of a once-in-a-lifetime moment watching your card decide it’s had enough.
