There are two reasons many people have had trouble with Sandisk SD cards.

First, the obvious, like any storage device, it must be formatted before use.

The reason SanDisk does not format the card in the factory, is likely due to the fact that it takes longer to manufacture that way. Second is that some items, such as some digital cameras, must reformat cards. There are also the issues of FAT16, FAT32, or VFAT (FAT32 with long filenames, etc.) Most PDAs would want VFAT, but many digital cameras can't handle it, and some even require the older DOS FAT16 format, as it is much easier to handle with small processors.

Additionally the SD card standard is designed that some devices will accept a maximum size, or only a certain size. Many earlier Palm PDAs only supported 64MB, but most newer ones support more.


Not all digital devices work with all SD cards   August 18, 2005
 17 out of 17 found this review helpful

There are a number of people leaving reviews here that bash SanDisk, and I'm sure that their experience justifies their opinions. But let me relate my own experience.

I bought a couple of motion-activated trail cameras and bought several Kingston 256MB SD cards for them. I decided on Kingston based on so many favorable reviews of their SD cards on Amazon. But the cameras were not compatible at all with the Kingston cards. The cameras wouldn't power up in the manner that the user manual said they would, I couldn't access the menu screen, none of the set-up buttons worked, and the LCD screens showed things never discussed in the user manual. Things were just generally screwed up, and I wondered if I had received a defective unit.

I called the camera manufacturer and they said that they also had experienced trouble with certain "offbrand" makes of SD cards, but that they hadn't had any trouble with SanDisk. I had never heard that Kingston was considered an offbrand, but I decided to experiment using another manufacturer's SD card. I inserted a SanDisk SD card, and the camera worked beautifully. Perhaps SanDisk adheres more closely to guidelines for cross-compatibility between digital devices, but that was a lesson for me.

Contrary to the experiences of some, I have never had problems with a SanDisk memory card - CF or SD - whereas this is the second time I've had problems with a Kingston memory card - one time it was a 512MB CF card that suddenly went belly-up after not much use, and now their 256MB SD card was having compatibity issues. I'm sticking with Sandisk or Lexar.


Great product must have for any Pocket PC user.   October 14, 2002
 14 out of 15 found this review helpful

I just got a Toshiba e310 and although 32MB is a big step up from my old 8MB Handspring I need more. This 256MB SD card is great. I keep all my mp3s and files on here. I've had no problems with it at all. I would be nice if it had a larger capacity like the compact flash cards, but it doesn't put nearly as much strain on my batteries so its worth it. For anyone with a Pocket PC, this is a must have!


Issues, many issues   September 19, 2003
 14 out of 17 found this review helpful

So I bought the SD 256 for my camera. So, what is that 234Mb limit anyways? But worse, it died on me, luckely after I unloaded the pics. Not readable in any device (camera, PDA, PC). So I had it exchanged. Gues what? Not even 3 month later, it crashed again. This time with about 170 unsaved pics from a friends wedding in Florence, Italy. Unreadable! Unrecoverable! Gone! Needless to say that I become a less happy customer. It seems to be an issue with Taiwan produced cards in the whole range (16-256Mb). The China ones seem okay (yeah, I know China thinks Taiwan is part of China, that's an other discussion, there are different plants)