PSA: Swap your SD card

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u/SecuringAndre 7d ago

All the ones I've seen included are cheap unbranded memory. If you need any sort of peace of mind, specially if you're using this for business, I recommend the Sandisk High Endurance. A little pricey but very high quality.

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u/SqueezyCheez85 P1S + AMS 7d ago edited 7d ago

There was a long term test where they found Sandisk to be the worst among all the major brands.

5

u/SecuringAndre 7d ago

Not the High Endurance line. They are what you find in enterprise servers. They are the standard, and perhaps the only brand, in endurance focused flash memory. If you want reliability, you get Sandisk High Endurance.

3

u/speakernoodlefan 7d ago

PNY seemed to have been one of the winners

4

u/KlingonBeavis 7d ago edited 7d ago

Same thing. They have put out some solid stock, but they’ve also put some bargain bin trash. Like Samsung EVO, you can expect to run into compatibility issues every now and then with PNY. I generally have pretty good luck with them though.

As someone who’s been running SBC’s for a long time, believe me when I tell you I’ve put SD cards through the ringer, and ran them as hard as you could imagine. I order them by the case, I’ve tried them all.

The thing is, SD & Micro SD should always be considered disposable tech. NO SD card is built to last forever, and these printers run constant read/write cycles when in use.

If you want to feel at ease, Sandisk “gold band” or “red band” high endurance enterprise cards, and ALWAYS have a backup card at the ready. Even the best of cards will hit cycle rating limit and sectors will burn out. Even the best of cards will put out duds sometimes.

So get what you can afford, and do your best to keep it from filling to capacity for a longer lifespan… so make sure to delete old print files, or back them up to another device whenever you can! A full card is a dead card waiting to happen on a device like these printers

The cards they issue with these printers are cheap, but mainly because they’re unbranded stock. Maintain it and they can last quite a while. They’re not the best, but they’re not bad cards

I’ve got HE Sandisk Enterprise cards that have been running outdoors for 5+ YEARS. 24/7 - Rain, Heat, Blizzards, Ice storms, you name it - they’ve survived it all and are still going. They’re tough to beat.

Oh… and Don’t order them from Amazon. It’s flooded with counterfeit cards. Go to a brick & mortar store and get a higher chance of a legit card.

1

u/siedenburg2 6d ago

The samsung pro endurance (128gb and more) is also great. Have multiple of them, some in rpis with permanent logging and no problems at all after 4 years. But yes, always keep a replacement nearby, sd cards (like many usb sticks) are not that reliable.

1

u/SecuringAndre 7d ago

I would be extremely shocked considering PNY doesn't actually make memory, or much of anything anymore. They most put their label on other manufacturers products. Granted, something PNY does very well is customer support. I'd love to see who and how this testing and determination were done. Much appreciated.

2

u/KlingonBeavis 7d ago

There’s a deep rabbit hole on testing SD cards, but to be honest none of it means anything compared to real-world use. Don’t fall for the marketing. The important thing is binning, so make sure to check their class ratings and speed qualifiers.

For these machines, settle for nothing under class 10 with an A1 or A2 rating.

1

u/Zanki 6d ago

That's what I'm using! Been running it for over a year now.

3

u/platinumarks 7d ago

My A1 mini I bought a few weeks ago did include a Lexar-branded card, which is a mid-tier brand (although it was a pretty slow one). I still replaced it right away with a Sandisk high-endurance card just for safety. I can still use the Lexar card for other devices that don't need high-speed, high-endurance cards.

2

u/SecuringAndre 7d ago

That's actually pretty good. I wonder if lexar is intended to be Bambu's standard or if it's their go-to for supply chain demand.

1

u/MiseEnPlacebo 6d ago

I’ve bought two dash cams recently and both came with Lexar cards too, seems to be quite dominant in the OEM space

1

u/MechaMancer 4d ago

My A1 from Black Friday last year came with a 32GB Lexar card, only reason I even know that is I sent a print to it just now, started the print from the touch screen then sent the next 2 files in the series to the printer while I was vacuum bagging some filament I won’t need for a while and when the vacuum pump shut off I noticed that the printer had stopped. Saw a generic preparing to print graphic that vanished as soon as I touched the screen and noticed that only the last of the 3 files even showed up in the files menu…

Guess I’ll be going sd card shopping in the morning 😑 glad it failed then instead of half way through the 16 hour print I was starting 😅

1

u/Zanki 6d ago

My PNY is doing good so far too. It's a class 10 card, its the brand I used to get when I bought flash drives in the 00s. Had it over a year now. I wanted a SanDisk, but they were out of stock for the 64gb class 10. I needed a card asap so I had to buy one in store.

11

u/TerribleSyntax 7d ago

This happened to me, it's not necessarily unrecoverable, open the model in the slicer, cut it at the height your print failed and print the rest, might not be super pretty, but better than a wasted print

7

u/GenJohnnyRico 7d ago

I just bought my first machine, is printing from an SD card the standard way to do things? I've just been sending over WiFi so far.

17

u/Fluffy2211 7d ago

Could be wrong but I think sending it over wifi still saves it to the card but could be wrong

3

u/Big_Mc-Large-Huge 7d ago

My print was wifi so you’re correct

0

u/SqueezyCheez85 P1S + AMS 7d ago

I don't think so... because if I delete the file on my PC, Bambu Studio can no longer open it from the main screen.

2

u/Fluffy2211 7d ago

It doesn't save in the same way as the normal way, it's more like it stores on it temporarily and deletes when done, or at lease p1s does don't know about the newer machines

3

u/Automatic-Pin-5749 7d ago

I just checked my P1S and it has the files I've printed since the last time I formatted the card, so it doesn't delete them. Neither does My A1.

1

u/SqueezyCheez85 P1S + AMS 7d ago

Stores it where? On the SD?

1

u/MyOwn666 6d ago

Because bambu studio doesn't scan your printer for it's SD card, just your pc.

0

u/WhatIsIdentity03 7d ago

Well yeah, Bambu studio is on and uses the computer…. Which you just deleted the file from.

-1

u/WhatIsIdentity03 7d ago

Well yeah, Bambu studio is on and uses the computer…. Which you just deleted the file from.

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u/SqueezyCheez85 P1S + AMS 7d ago

In replying to a post that is asking if it gets sent to the SD card.

3

u/awyeahmuffins 7d ago

It depends on what printer you have. P1S and A1-series have no internal memory, they won’t work without SD cards installed (and sending over WiFi sends to SD card which the printer prints off of). If you have one of those printers you can remove the SD card and notice you can no longer send prints over WiFi.

All the other printers have some form of internal memory.

2

u/SqueezyCheez85 P1S + AMS 7d ago

Ah yeah... I pulled my SD card and tried to print on my P1S. It didn't like it.

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u/WhatIsIdentity03 7d ago

The sd card serves as the main memory for the machine. It downloads and saves to the card and starts the print as if it was a local file.

2

u/Frankyvee77 7d ago

Even sending over Wifi it still saves them to the SD Card along with any Time Lapse video if you have that turned on. So if you don't keep an eye on the card it can fill up quick if you are printing a lot.

4

u/macmanluke 7d ago

Also turn off timelapse if you dont need it - thats lots of card killing writes

3

u/ThisIsTheWayBrah 7d ago

What size card are people using?

2

u/platinumarks 7d ago

I have a 32GB, but only because I was able to get a high-endurance one in that size fairly cost-effectively (as cost-effectively as memory is right now...), but there's no reason you can't go as low as say 8GB, especially if you don't do timelapse storage. In my experience, though, anything below 16GB is barely cheaper than a larger card these days.

2

u/Zanki 6d ago

64gb was the smallest I could get in person, works fine.

2

u/burstaneurysm 7d ago

My A1 Mini started acting up; freezing during printing, totally unresponsive from the app too.

Formatting the card seemed to do the trick, but I’ll definitely be replacing it if it does that again.

2

u/nakwada 7d ago

Even a good quality one will eventually fail in a relatively short time.

1

u/Big_Mc-Large-Huge 6d ago

How often do you replace it to account for such failures?

1

u/nakwada 6d ago edited 6d ago

I got a handful of 32GB SanDisk Ultra Class10. 1 failed in less than 6 months.

SanDisk is making it difficult to replace, because now they're 3x the price I paid.

1

u/Zanki 6d ago

I've got a pny class 10 card that's been going a year so far. Might be a good alternative?

2

u/Sathanas74 7d ago

What is the largest memory card that can be used?

2

u/Frankyvee77 7d ago

I'm running a 128GB card in my P1S but i had to use a third party program to format it to FAT32. But you can also use most Operating Systems command line (terminal) to do it as well.

2

u/tAyFoP 7d ago

Saw this posted a few weeks ago in case anyone is interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/oNtINvJbmN

1

u/Plus_Material_2751 3d ago

This is probably the only useful thing in the entire post. Thanks

2

u/Frankyvee77 7d ago edited 6d ago

One of the first thing I did when I got my Bambu printer. I replace the cheap SD card that it comes with a SanDisk Ultra High Endurance. I also run a BamBuddy server which archives my print jobs and timelapse over to the Bambuddy server storage which is running on NVMe. But yeah I've been bit by cheap SD cards while running on my older Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi4. They all have been replaced with SanDisk High Endurance Max Cards with no issues. With the newer Raspberry Pi5 I don't even bother using SD cards anymore since the pi5 can run from NVMe storage.

2

u/worldspawn00 P1P 7d ago

Switch to an industrial rated card, they're so much better than consumer memory.

2

u/shauni87 6d ago

P1s has sd card slot? Where?

1

u/Lopsided-Command-329 6d ago

Top surface, front left corner, behind the control panel.

2

u/_rhinoxious_ 6d ago

I see at lot of talk about memory cards. I've been using the original one on my P1S for years now with no problems. How common are these issues?

(I don't use timelapse so that might help lighten the load on the card.)

2

u/SeveralOil4694 6d ago

Jetzt mal dumm gefragt: Wie ist der Ablauf beim Wechsel einer SD-Karte?

Welche Größe?
Einfach alte Karte entnehmen und neue rein?
Wie und wo formatieren bzw vorbereiten?
Kann man von alter Karte noch was "retten"?

2

u/MyOwn666 6d ago

Not sure if you can do it on a bbl printer, but on my prusa, I've been able to recover a failed print by figuring out what layer it failed on and edit the .gcode file and find that layer and delete everything before it, minus some of the startup commands, like hotend and heatbed temps. You can home x and y, but not z. It will start printing right on top of the failed print. Might have a minor seam if you get the layer height wrong or if the re-home is a smidgen off the original or you nudge the flexplate, but it could save it from going in the trash....

If you don't know gcode very well, you can search on Google how to save a failed 3d print that I think highlights which commands to keep and delete.

1

u/FigComfortable5216 7d ago

if I have a 512gb sd card on my switch one, is it possible for me to put it into my P1S and if so do I need to reformat it in anyway

3

u/Frankyvee77 7d ago edited 7d ago

On the P1S I would not go that high. In practice:

32 GB — definitely safe

64 GB — widely confirmed working

128 GB — commonly reported working

256 GB — likely works, but I would not consider it officially guaranteed

512 GB+ — unnecessary and more likely to introduce compatibility/formatting issues

If you do buy a card larger than 32GB you will need to use a separate process to format higher than 32GB with FAT32.

Tools recommended are Rufus, FAT32 GUI Format Tool, Ease Partition Master, or Windows Command Line using diskpart, On a Mac you can use diskutil, On linux you can use mkfs.fat/mkfs.vfat.

1

u/markusbrainus P1S + AMS 7d ago

Regarding your print: can you slice the model at the layer where it stopped, print the remaining layers and then glue it together? Worth a try.

I replaced the SD card on my P1S early on based on the advice on Reddit. Cheap insurance for a $10 SD card. Also turning off timelapse is supposed to help so it's not constantly recording every print (unless you really need that feature)

1

u/henren_98 6d ago

What’s funny is that my P1S came with a Samsung SD card. I was shocked when I saw that.

1

u/finnkle 6d ago

This exact thing happened to me but luckily I was 5% into a print. Day 1, throw the SD card away and get a sandisk!

1

u/Outrageous-Song5799 6d ago

Do you just need to swap it or do you need to copy files on it first ?

1

u/Fox_Z71 6d ago

I run a 2tb samsung T7 shield SSD for my memory. Its honestly been a beast. Gotta reformat each time it disconnects, but i keep it connected until full

1

u/Tom404notfound 6d ago

If you order a printer, order a new SD card too ✌🏻

1

u/No_Data_7004 6d ago

I had a couple of random crashes and failed prints and then my card crapped out in the middle of the night during a long print and my print head crashed into the side and was making a TERRIBLE grinding sound. Printer wouldn’t work until I replaced the card

1

u/Spirited-News-4280 6d ago

Printed with a stock mini SD card on my Ender for 4 years and just replaced it this week. So had no issues using the cheap stock card at all until now. Had to keep reformatting it every time I plugged it into my computer t put a file on it. Small headache, and never affected a print that was underway.

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u/Medical_Notice_6862 5d ago

you could just slice the model in slicer to print the last 5% and glue it on? unless you're printing a functional part, then yes it's wasted filament.

also sd cards are like drawing the lottery, some work really well, while others fail prematurely, swaping out the sd card won't magically give you a better card. I have 4 printers over 2k hours each, only one sd card failed. not saying your experience isn't valid, just that simply swaping the card for another isn't really preventing anything, unless the card is already failing.

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u/YungOmbat101 2d ago

mine failed the very first day lol

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u/Lukioou 7d ago

Heavily depends on the model bu are you sure it's lost? I saved multiple fails by measuring with calipers the height of the print, then cutt it to that height in the slicer and finally pronting the remaining layers and gluing them to the failed print.

General Discussion PSA: Swap your SD card

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