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#1
Can anyone suggest a reliable 32GB Micro SD card?
Before I begin, this is sort of an oddball topic to ask about, such that I don't know where I should've put it in besides the Chillout Room. If the staff here deems another section more appropriate, please move this topic.
Some time in November last year I finally moved to upgrade to a smartphone from my old clamshell, a Sony Xperia TL which runs Android Ice Cream Sandwich, and I've really liked its usefulness as a music player for when I'm out and about; saves me from having to carry a Walkman! The Xperia has a slot that accepts Micro SD cards for additional storage. Since its internal storage is a relatively smaller ~16GB, which I want to save for things like photos that I take with its camera, I've been using a 32GB Micro SD card to store my music and other non-essential media files.
Recently I'd been having issues with the Micro SD card (a Kingston 32GB Class 4) occasionally corrupting itself and losing its data, literally everything including partition tables. I'd had this happen 3 times and each time I'd had to reformat it with one of my Windows desktops/laptops before it would be usable again. As luck would have it, the card died again just now and this time no attempts to reformat it have been successful; the card is dead to the world.
With a dead card on me, I went to Newegg to see what was on the market these days and was dismayed to see that Micro SD cards dying in Android smartphones appear to be very commonplace, with cards from literally all brands having lots of 1-star reviews of cards dying anywhere in a timespan of 2 weeks to 6 months. Yes, I know internet reviews are only worth a dime a dozen, but even then seeing so many 1-star reviews of failures is disconcerting. One even had an official response from Patriot where they know 32GB Micro SD cards fail very commonly with Android smartphones.
So far, the only card I found that had at least a fairly good ratio of good reviews to bad was this card whose brand I don't know much of:
ADATA 32GB Micro SDHC Flash Card with Adapter Model AUSDH32GCL10-RA1 - Newegg.com
While I would really like to procure a replacement, throwing in $20~30 bucks for a card that will just die again feels like nothing more than a waste of money. I would thus like to ask you guys for recommendations regarding Micro SD cards, mostly in the way of good brands and manufacturers, if that's not too much to ask. Normally after doing my research I would go for big-name brands like Sandisk, but even Sandisk seems to have deplorable failure rates.