# Sony RX100M4 256GB SDXC card?



## Trenton (Feb 19, 2016)

Hi there!

In about a month I'm going traveling and will be without my computer for some time. In that regard I need to purchase some additional memory cards to last me the trip. 
So far I've been using a Lexar Professional UHS-I U3 64GB card for my RX100 Mark IV camera which has worked perfectly fine both for stills and 4K video. 
Specifically I'm considering the Kingston 256GB UHS-I U3 256GB SDXC as those cards are fairly reasonably priced compared to other brands.
Does anyone here have any experience using cards of 256GB capacity with the RX100M4? All memory card tests posted online with this camera that I've managed to find so far have been mostly with 64GB cards (and a few 128GB cards).


Regards, 
Trenton


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## tspear (Feb 19, 2016)

I would start by checking if the camera supports a card that size.
Next, in case of data corruption, I would hesitate to put all my eggs in a single basket. I would rather get ten cards, and lose one then possibly have one big card go bad.

Tim


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## Trenton (Feb 19, 2016)

tspear said:


> I would start by checking if the camera supports a card that size.
> Next, in case of data corruption, I would hesitate to put all my eggs in a single basket. I would rather get ten cards, and lose one then possibly have one big card go bad.
> 
> Tim



Thanks for your reply. I've been having some trouble finding out the max supported capacity for the camera. The official tech info only states the memory card speeds required and states that it must be 'larger than 64GB' for 4K video. Maybe I ought to send Sony a mail and ask them directly?
I agree with you on multiple cards being better than fewer big ones, but I'm able to get my hands on two 256GB cards for a pretty good price so that's my main reason for wanting those particular ones. Still, it won't cost me _that_ much more to buy four 128GB ones instead so maybe that's the best option.


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## Hal P Anderson (Feb 19, 2016)

I remember following a long discussion of the card-size issue many years ago on the Nikonians forum. The participants were about equally divided between favouring many smaller cards or few larger cards. I think in terms of probabilities, the amount of data probably lost is the same no matter which way you go. If you have lots of small cards, you're much more likely to lose _some_ images, but with big cards, you're less likely to suffer a loss, but when you do, it'll be a large one.


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## Johan Elzenga (Feb 20, 2016)

I had a long discussion with Sandisk about this some years ago, and they said that their research showed that the greatest chance of losing images is by physically losing the memory card. You drop it somewhere, and you don't notice that you did. Their conclusion was that your camera is the best possible storage place for memory cards, so they advise using one big card rather than several smaller capacity cards.


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## Trenton (Feb 20, 2016)

Thanks! After some additional research (no thanks to Sony) I did find out the RX100M4 accepts 256GB cards. I was unable to find anything about the 256GB Kingston cardspecifically, although the 64GB version of this card apparently works reliably with this camera so I think I'm gonna take my chances and just ordered two of them. There should still be sufficient time to give them a proper testrun before I travel. 
(as far as the whole 'putting all my eggs in one basket' issue goes the 128GB versions were sold out so buying four of those instead of two 256GB cards suddenly became a non-option for me and buying a whole bunch of 64GB cards would simply be too expensive for my taste)


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## Trenton (Apr 1, 2016)

So, a little update to this thread:
I've finally returned home from my travel and everything went fine with one exception; a corrupt memory card. Yes, one of my two 256GB Kingston cards went corrupt two days into my journey after some write error and my camera was no longer recognizing the card. This is the first time I've ever had a memory card go corrupt on me so I have no experience with this kind of situation. I just got back home to my computer and it doesn't recognize the card being inserted in my card reader. I assume the only hope is getting some recovery software and try to salvage my files that way? Or is all hope lost? What do you people recommend is the best way to go about this? :(


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## Trenton (Apr 4, 2016)

Another update:
The card is completely dead and doesn't even show up when inserted into my card reader nor the camera itself. So I've given up on trying to salvage my 2-3 days of photos and videos.
If I've learnt one bitter lesson from this it's to either have smaller capacity cards so that I don't lose as much data if a card fails and/or bring a tablet or laptop and an external harddrive with me while traveling so that I can back up my cards whenever I get back to the hotel in the evenings. Ah well, lessons learnt the hard way. :(


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