Wyze Cam V3 SD Card Failures

Current FW Wyze V3 cams are destroying my 32GB SD cards. The SD cards are class 10 Micro SD HC. I’ve had this issue now occur on 3 different cards from different manufacturers, and multiple V3 cams. Cards are not recoverable / reformattable / present when examined via windows 10 platform. The V3’s say it’s no longer present. V3 Cam FW is current as of 6/22/21. Failure occurs within days of installation in continuous recording mode. Suggestions?

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Are they High Endurance cards? HE cards are recommended for video camera use - especially continuous records use. As I understand it, SanDisk will not warrantee non HE cards when used in video cameras (not personally confirmed).

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A 32GB card dying after less than a week of use seems well prior to any “High Endurance” threshold. That’s only about 3 complete overwrites of a 32GB card.

Dave

I had the same issue with one of my V3’s . what really sucks is it is in a different state so driving 950 miles to swap cards is beyond disappointing.

oddly enough one of the cards manged to come back to life after the new firmware upgrade from yesterday.

that tells you the problem is in the camera not the chips

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I have 31 operational Wyze cameras (18 V2, 2 Pan, and 11 V3). 16 of the V2 and both Pan cameras have RTSP firmware, and the V3 cameras are updated to whatever the latest beta firmware is within a day or two of new firmware being released. All except one V2 with a dead card slot have 64GB uSD cards and all are set to record continuously. I started recording the purchase date on uSD cards 26 months ago. 10 are older than that. I have had a few non-HE cards die (from before I started buying HE cards) , but none of the HE cards have failed.
Some of the cameras are outdoors, and some have been exposed to as much as 151 degree environments.

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The failed units I had were all indoors in comfortable environments

Dave

Is power to the cameras, stable? That high failure rate suggests power being cut in the middle of a write operation. This is one reason I don’t use continuous recording.

Power is stable, that said, one of the three cameras with an ad card failure was relocated. That cam was unplugged without any preparation in order to be moved. And the sd card failure on that cam was noticed subsequent to that relocation. I do not know of any power loss events on the other two cams, but that is certainly a possibility. Are there cautionary instructions documenting this potential hazard and/or how to mitigate it (obviously aside from disabling recording)? Does shifting from continuous recording mode to event recording mode simply roll the dice far less frequently, or is there some additional benefit to sd card integrity?

Dave

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The Wyze app has a new SD card unmount button somewhere. Prior to that, people used the “Stop” button in the “More …” page.

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Name the manufacturers and cards.
Like @K6CCC I’ve a lot of cameras, but all but a few run with 32 GB Samsung EVO cards.
No problems with the cards. Early on I tried SanDisk and a couple of cheap brands, they had problems.

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These are the cards I am using:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P3D6Y5B?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details

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Failed SD cards:
KOOTION 32GB class 10 20MB/s

SanDisk 32GB class 10 40MB/s

PNY 32GB class 10 100MB/s P-SDU32GX3U1100EL-GE

The PNY was the most recent failure and the only one for which I still had the part number. Not much room for 20 digit part numbers on micro SD cards.

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None of those were listed as High Endurance…
And yes, get out the magnifying glass to read a 20 digit number on a uSD card!

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I understand your suggestions to use HE cards for long term functionality, but in this specific case I do not believe that HE could be a relevant factor. The failures that I have encountered occurred within a few days of beginning recording on a brand new card. As a 32GB card holds about 3 days of continuous HD mode cam video, a storage card failure that occurred within a week of starting would only have had the opportunity to have been overwritten about 3 times. I would not expect any storage card to be worn out by that limited quantity of data writes.

Dave

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I had constant failures with my 32GB cards in multiple v2 and v3 cameras. It often took rebooting the camera 3 times in a row to get it to read the card. I figured it was an issue with the cameras or Wyze, or whatever. It was so annoying.

Then I bought SanDisk Ultra 128GB microSDXC UHS-I Cards (up to 120MB/s) and I have not had a single issue on my two v3 cameras. (didn’t install any in my v2). The performance of using the cameras (watching recorded video, etc) is so much faster than when I had with my 32GB cards. Plus, I love the length of video storage I get with the larger cards.

https://amzn.to/2SmeW0y

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I have Scandisk Ultra 64GB in all 7 of my cameras set to continuous recording I have never had an issue with them

You’re not the only one! My V3 bricked a SanDisk card so I contacted SanDisk with my serial number and they informed me that using their Ultra of Extreme lines of cards in security or dash cams actually voids their warranty. I had no idea. Then they sent me this link:

Guess the High Endurance line is necessary even though I don’t really understand why… Oh well.

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I’ve got 3 V3’s and 3 V2’s. Two of the V3’s are outside in Colorado where we get wide temperature swings, One of the V3’s and one of the V2’s are outdoors in Phoenix, which has had temperatures of over 100 for the last several weeks. The other 2 V2’s are indoors, one in an unheated garage and one in an interior room. All have SD cards and none have had a failure of any type. None of the cards are “HE” type, and all are SanDisk brand.

Wonder what is happening to some of us that doesn’t seem to be a problem for others?

Maybe unplugging camera while writing to the *μSD card?