Trouble transferring from one SD card to another

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farmerjohn1324

Member
I am thinking that the problem is with the receiving SD cards. I tried twice (with two different "receiving" SD cards) to copy (backup) my 107GB worth of vacation photos/videos from one SD card to another.

For some reason unknown to me, when the files were transferred, it was not complete. Some of the folders didn't copy at all. Some of the folders copied just the folder but none of the photos/videos inside the folder were transferred. Some of the folders copied just fine.

I am transferring directly from one SD card to another without copying to the laptop first. I don't have enough space on my laptop harddrive to do that unless I did it in small pieces. If that's what I have to do, I will do that. But I'd first like to know what the problem is and how to troubleshoot. Currently my laptop harddrive has only 20.2GB free.
 
beers

beers

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Staff member
What exactly is a 'receiving' SD card? Are you simply describing a card conducting a write operation? What model of cards? If you cheaped out on ebay with generics or something then they're probably fakes.
 
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farmerjohn1324

Member
beers said:
What exactly is a 'receiving' SD card? Are you simply describing a card conducting a write operation? What model of cards? If you cheaped out on ebay with generics or something then they're probably fakes.
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The "receiving" card as opposed to the "sending" card. The one that's receiving data from the other card.

SanDisk Ultra 256gb.
 
beers

beers

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Staff member
farmerjohn1324 said:
SanDisk Ultra 256gb.
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Where'd you buy it from, though? A lot of people make somewhat genuine-looking fakes where it's actually a 4-16 GB or so drive underneath that was flashed to report a higher capacity. When you put more data on than the card can actually support it just starts overwriting itself and your data becomes weird/corrupted.
 
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farmerjohn1324

Member
johnb35 said:
Have you verified you can access data on original SD card. Other than that, Most likely a hardware issue somewhere.
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Yes, I've verified I can access data on original SD.

I'll try Walgreen's instead of Amazon and buy another.

I could also try moving it in smaller pieces to my computer first, then to the SD. Not sure why that would make a difference, but you never know.
 
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farmerjohn1324

Member
beers said:
Where'd you buy it from, though? A lot of people make somewhat genuine-looking fakes where it's actually a 4-16 GB or so drive underneath that was flashed to report a higher capacity. When you put more data on than the card can actually support it just starts overwriting itself and your data becomes weird/corrupted.
Click to expand...

Amazon. I think this is the most likely scenario. I seem to remember the actual capacity being different from what it was labeled. I'm not in town right now to check, but I will tomorrow.
 
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farmerjohn1324

Member
Both of the Micro SD's are listed as 256gb on the packaging. One of them says 250gb when opened in Windows, the other says 499gb. The 250gb one said "drive damaged" when I put it in, then Windows ran a repair and said it was now okay.
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
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farmerjohn1324 said:
Both of the Micro SD's are listed as 256gb on the packaging. One of them says 250gb when opened in Windows, the other says 499gb. The 250gb one said "drive damaged" when I put it in, then Windows ran a repair and said it was now okay.
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A 256 gb drive, windows should list it around 237gb. Not sure how one is reading 499.
 
beers

beers

Moderator
Staff member
farmerjohn1324 said:
Both of the Micro SD's are listed as 256gb on the packaging. One of them says 250gb when opened in Windows, the other says 499gb. The 250gb one said "drive damaged" when I put it in, then Windows ran a repair and said it was now okay.
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Those both sound screwy. 256 should report as ~238 GiB in Windows as per @johnb35 . A 500 GB card would report as ~465 GiB in Windows. You can throw '250 gigabytes to gibibytes' into Google or do a (1000/1024)^3*capacityingigabytes formula to convert.

You'd probably have better luck considering something other than SD cards to back up your data onto.
 
Darren

Darren

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I would maybe recommend a SSD if you're worried about long term storage and not losing files. External drives are pretty reliable but still have spinning disks so an SSD would be ideal as they are much less likely to go bad, really just depends on if you want to spend that much.

Seagate, WD, Samsung, etc are all fine.
 
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farmerjohn1324

Member
Darren said:
I would maybe recommend a SSD if you're worried about long term storage and not losing files. External drives are pretty reliable but still have spinning disks so an SSD would be ideal as they are much less likely to go bad, really just depends on if you want to spend that much.

Seagate, WD, Samsung, etc are all fine.
Click to expand...


What do you think about this one?
 
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farmerjohn1324

Member
Darren said:
Should work
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I bought it.

But while I'm at it... What do you suggest to use for files that I actively use? Is there any reason not to keep this SSD permanently connected and use it for files I'm actively working on, and not just storage?

I only need about 3gb to hold everything I use "actively." Currently, I have this on a USB Flash Drive that I back up not as often as I should. These are important files. All my current and old accounting, tax forms, etc.

What's the best method here?
 
beers

beers

Moderator
Staff member
I don't really understand buying a 2TB storage appliance for 3GB of data, but it should work a lot more seamlessly than juggling SD cards.

As for keeping it connected, it depends. You trade instant access whenever you want as a convenience factor for potential risk such as an electrical surge taking out your components or malware that might overwrite the drive. If your only backup is also connected to the system, poof.
 
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