SanDisk - Will not RMA SDcards used in bootable devices.

[fourdee4d]

Hi all,

I use SanDisk MicroSD cards daily in development and testing of DietPi: http://fuzon.co.uk/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6#p6

I have a MicroSD card from SanDisk and its now failed after 2 months of usage. So i did the usual thing and sent a RMA request thinking this would all get resolved.

Here is the reply I received from SanDisk:

We received your product replacement request however retail memory cards are not designed to be used as bootable device and may reduce the life expectancy of the card due to the high number of reads and writes.
We do not support this use and for that reason the replacement will not take place.

Image of the email i received: http://fuzon.co.uk/downloads/Sandisk.png

Has anyone ever experienced this with SanDisk in the past?
Are their any SD card manufactures that will commit to RMA for bootable devices. I'am completely annoyed at SanDisk and confused as they always seemed to be the most reliable.

[kusti8]

All of the SD cards I have (except for two which are Transcend and HP) are SanDisk Ultra/Plus/Premium whatever they call it these days class 10 and have never had any problems with them. Work perfectly. I don't know what to say. I get mine at BestBuy for about $10 for 8GB.

Is there anything in the warranty that prohibits booting?

[fourdee4d]

All of the SD cards I have (except for two which are Transcend and HP) are SanDisk Ultra/Plus/Premium whatever they call it these days class 10 and have never had any problems with them. Work perfectly. I don't know what to say. I get mine at BestBuy for about $10 for 8GB.

This is the 1st SanDisk card to fail on me, its a shock to me also. I even have a 3 year old SanDisk 2GB class 4 card, and its never failed me.

Heres the product that failed (i believe this is exactly the same card thats sold and used with "n00bs"): http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00M ... ge_o03_s00

Is there anything in the warranty that prohibits booting?

No doubt i'll be spending my weekend looking through their "Terms and Conditions". I'll let you know what i find.

[kusti8]

I don't know about the UK, but looking through the warranty for the US (http://www.sandisk.com/Assets/Umbraco/S ... 011615.pdf) it would fall in the second paragraph for excessive usage (which is a catch all for the above).

It doesn't help their reputation.

[Heater]

Do what? That document excludes:

...other excessive uses that exceed normal use in accordance with published instructions.

OK, where are these published instructions?

Basically if you actually use the thing to write and read data you void the warranty

[fourdee4d]

I don't know about the UK, but looking through the warranty for the US (http://www.sandisk.com/Assets/Umbraco/S ... 011615.pdf) it would fall in the second paragraph for excessive usage (which is a catch all for the above).

It doesn't help their reputation.

Excellent find, thanks for posting. I'll see if i can track the UK version of this tomorrow.

Basically if you actually use the thing to write and read data you void the warranty

Yep, looks like your spot on. What annoys me is the fact their reason for denying RMA is because its being used in a "bootable" device.

One could even say:
- my PC is a bootable device.
- my Android phone is a bootable device.
- my iPhone is a bootable device.

So in effect, they claim that they do not support the above? Absolute joke if you ask me.

[mikerr]

How did they know ? Did your RMA mention use in a Raspberry Pi ?

Official NOOBs cards are samsung BTW:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/noobs-sd-ca ... wag-store/
viewtopic.php?t=68322&p=498653

[FTrevorGowen]

...
Heres the product that failed (i believe this is exactly the same card thats sold and used with "n00bs"): http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00M ... ge_o03_s00
...

AFAIK, the "official" NOOBS cards (from the "SWAG shop" in the U.K.) are Samsung, Class 6, 8Gb cards** , but, I guess it depends upon where you (can) purchase a pre-loaded NOOBS card from. I do also have a few Sandisk cards (purchased from a supplier I've used for over a decade) and some of those were marketed as "ideal for Android" (Implying a "different warranty" perhaps?) So far I've not had any problems with them or any other of the cards I've used****
Trev.
** IIRC, found to be optimum for use in Pi's back in 2012/13 by the RPF (at that time)
**** As shown here (card 'T' has now been used in my P2B):
http://www.cpmspectrepi.webspace.virgin ... cards.html

[Morphy99]

I've just got this bs from them regarding the ultra fit drives I've used and died on me. Did anyone find anything specific about using it as a boot disk in the UK T&C's?

[gkaiseril]

More than likely SanDisk has a utility that can access areas hidden from the user and examine the even wear tables also they would most likely see the OS install. Because the boot of an OS requires so many reads and writes to memory for control values this is probably causing the excessive wear on the media. These card were designed for use in cameras and multimedia play devices where a file is written once and then read many times before it is later overwritten with a new file or reformatted.

In your specific case you are probably rebooting many more times than the RPF expected. I would look at booting from a USB stick or SSD during your heavy development cycle and then do the final testing using an SD card to boot from

My PCs do not boot from SD cards.

[bensimmo]

Ask them to ask their parent company (Western Digital).
If they cannot be used as bootable devices, then why did their parent company use them and sell them as bootable devices, both the SD card (preinstalled as a bootable device) and the UltraFit drives under the PiDrive branding.
Specifically these are shown


(Ok so WDLabs and these are now shut down, but that doesn't alter usage )

[bensimmo]

As a side, register any Samsung cards as soon as you get them, they will not warranty (past the retailer's warranty as they are not involved) if not registered.
They also have a similar 'write intensive' policy on their EVO PLUS cards (from website details and easy to find)
The EVO/EVO+EVO Pro only against Surveillance Systems.

Evo Pro.

Warranty does not extend to dashcam, CCTV, surveillance camera and other write-intensive uses

Thing is surely the intensity* shouldn't matter as long as it doesn't g past the given spec. limits


*(whatever they define that as, e.g. how hard a voltage it hits it with at a write? Like an intensive felttip pen user squashing the nib )

[i486]

Basically if you actually use the thing to write and read data you void the warranty

Yep, looks like your spot on. What annoys me is the fact their reason for denying RMA is because its being used in a "bootable" device.

One could even say:
- my PC is a bootable device.
- my Android phone is a bootable device.
- my iPhone is a bootable device.

So in effect, they claim that they do not support the above? Absolute joke if you ask me.

In PC/Android the SD card is storage, not bootable media. The OS is loaded from HDD or internal flash, not from SD card. And the main difference is whether logs and temporary files are (not) stored to SD card.

[bensimmo]

Basically if you actually use the thing to write and read data you void the warranty

Yep, looks like your spot on. What annoys me is the fact their reason for denying RMA is because its being used in a "bootable" device.

One could even say:
- my PC is a bootable device.
- my Android phone is a bootable device.
- my iPhone is a bootable device.

So in effect, they claim that they do not support the above? Absolute joke if you ask me.

In PC/Android the SD card is storage, not bootable media. The OS is loaded from HDD or internal flash, not from SD card. And the main difference is whether logs and temporary files are (not) stored to SD card.

My Android devices (well some, android5+) take it as extended harddrive and cannot be removed without half of my stuff not working, it is locked to the device as well.
Apps and all sort run from them.)
While it is not booted to, it just acts as a harddrive still. It is not a Picture and Video storage device.

[i486]

As a side, register any Samsung cards as soon as you get them, they will not warranty (past the retailer's warranty as they are not involved) if not registered.
They also have a similar 'write intensive' policy on their EVO PLUS cards (from website details and easy to find)
The EVO/EVO+EVO Pro only against Surveillance Systems.

Is there other Samsung card allowed for surveillance?

[Morphy99]

More than likely SanDisk has a utility that can access areas hidden from the user and examine the even wear tables also they would most likely see the OS install. Because the boot of an OS requires so many reads and writes to memory for control values this is probably causing the excessive wear on the media. These card were designed for use in cameras and multimedia play devices where a file is written once and then read many times before it is later overwritten with a new file or reformatted.

In your specific case you are probably rebooting many more times than the RPF expected. I would look at booting from a USB stick or SSD during your heavy development cycle and then do the final testing using an SD card to boot from

My PCs do not boot from SD cards.

Thing is I haven't even sent it back and they've rejected it just for mentioning host device as a raspberry pi 3 and fault occurred when booting. I was referring to an Ultrafit USB stick as I boot with these. I'm guessing you're not replying to me though thinking about it as you couldn't possibly know how many times I reboot :

[Morphy99]

As a side, register any Samsung cards as soon as you get them, they will not warranty (past the retailer's warranty as they are not involved) if not registered.
They also have a similar 'write intensive' policy on their EVO PLUS cards (from website details and easy to find)
The EVO/EVO+EVO Pro only against Surveillance Systems.

Is there other Samsung card allowed for surveillance?

Sandisk have these although apparently, no one is willing to warranty an RPi used SD card which I find crazy.

[Morphy99]

Ask them to ask their parent company (Western Digital).
If they cannot be used as bootable devices, then why did their parent company use them and sell them as bootable devices, both the SD card (preinstalled as a bootable device) and the UltraFit drives under the PiDrive branding.
Specifically these are shown


(Ok so WDLabs and these are now shut down, but that doesn't alter usage )

I've asked them which of their product line they would recommend for my use case. I'd be surprised if they didn't accept warranty on those pi drives, maybe they're a different chip like their endurance sd cards?

[Paul Hutch]

Ask them to ask their parent company (Western Digital).
If they cannot be used as bootable devices, then why did their parent company use them and sell them as bootable devices, both the SD card (preinstalled as a bootable device) and the UltraFit drives under the PiDrive branding.
Specifically these are shown

(Ok so WDLabs and these are now shut down, but that doesn't alter usage )

I suspect that if you bought that from WD Labs then WD Labs would honor the warranty. FYI the WD Labs site is still offering this for direct sale, with a $3.60 discount if you buy just one set.

Time based warranties are tricky for flash memory because the endurance is not affected by time but by write cycles. This is why some companies offer a life time warranty. They assume usage in cameras and media players where almost nobody would exceed the write cycle specs in a time frame where most people would take the time to request warranty replacement.