Wyze V4 killed 3 micro sd cards

Cameras
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2 months ago I decided to get some more wyze cams, all V4’s. I have used a couple to monitor my child in place of a baby monitor. We’re about to have another child so I decided to get some more and wanted better coverage of the house. I probably went a little bit overboard, got 8 cameras lol. And I also got 8 micro SD cards for them a. I made sure they were all the proper kind, C10, A1 grade chips. All of them 128gb, exFAT format. All of them the same brand, They were all working fine, though 2 of the cameras I haven’t set up yet. However, after just now trying to look through some to get a funny moment saved, I found that 3 of the sd cards are in read only mode as if they were dead already.

Now I do understand a little bit, like each card essentially can only be re-written on so many times before it fails, so something like continously recording will kill an SD card much faster than normal. But 2 months feels extreme, especially at a 50% kill rate due to me having only used 6 out of the 8 so far.

Whats worse is I tried to insert another micro SD card into one of the cams that killed a card only for that cam to say that the format on the new card was unsupported. I attempted to use the app itself to reformat that card only for it to freeze up. I checked the new card manually and it was just fine, formatted to exFAT like the rest. It’s almost like for some reason these 3 cams have just decided that they’ll no longer work with SD cards, and bricked the 3 I had inserted into them once they were full.

Is this an issue with the cams or with the cards? I just can’t imagine a card being so low quality that this could happen so quickly.

The cards are, admittingly, a bit on the cheaper side. Brand: Bliksem Model: TF162. They are TransFlash which I thought were ok for continous recording. They’re all 128GB marked as C10 and A1. I got them off of Amazon.

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Welcome to the Forum, @smbeauleau! :wave:

I believe that can happen with low-quality or counterfeit cards. What specific cards are you trying to use in your new Cam v4s, and what’s the source for the cards you’re using?

You may also want to take a look at this topic where Wyze is focusing on microSD card issues with certain Cam models:

Note that one of the data points requested in that topic is specific information about the cards being used, including photos of the cards themselves.

For the cards that you already have, you could also try verification tools on a PC (e.g., ValiDrive) to authenticate the cards’ actual capacities and may additionally wish to do an in-PC full/overwrite format of an affected card using the SD Memory Card Formatter to see if that helps with your issue.

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Thank you for the quick reply!
Sorry for not thinking about putting in the SD card info into my post, I’ll edit it to show this info as well.

The cards are, admittingly, a bit on the cheaper side. Brand: Bliksem Model: TF162. They are TransFlash which I thought were ok for continous recording. They’re all 128GB marked as C10 and A1. I got them off of Amazon.

I did put all 3 of them into my PC and that’s when I found out that all 3 of them are full, and I’m still able to see all of their recordings. However all of their recordings are back to when I first inserted them, as if they were never able to be written over even once. They were also in read only mode, and using diskpart command to remove the read only value didn’t work, which also means I can’t reformat them. I haven’t tried any programs, like the one you suggested, to reformat them though. I’ll give that a go.

However I have placed good SD cards in them, that are not in read only mode, and the cams still won’t recognize a writtable sd in them saying they need to be reformatted. So it’s possible that the brand of cards I got was a cheaper, not really reliable brand, however there’s something wrong with the cam itself sadly.

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Unfortunately for you I agree with Crease that you likely have crap cards. There are lots of those around - especially on Chinese website or sources. Do use a card verifier on a computer.

For what it’s worth, I have always used SanDisk cards and mostly “High Endurance” ones and they have been highly reliable.

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I love my Wyze cameras for my security hobby around my house. However, to monitor my 21 month old granddaughter when my wife and I babysit we use a Hello Baby monitor. It has worked well for us.

The Hello Baby camera connects directly to the included monitor bypassing my WiFi. I have had my Wyze cameras go OffLine at times.

When my granddaughter moves the monitor screen comes back on. The camera microphone is always feeding the monitor which also has a light bar volume indicator.

This model comes with 2 cameras and a split screen monitor.

Congratulations on another child on the way.

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You’re welcome! :+1:

I can also see that you replied in the linked topic, so hopefully that’ll be helpful to Wyze in resolving issues like these. :+1:

I’ve never had to do that, but I’ve read about that as a solution to read-only problems before, and I think that was a good thing to try. :+1:

One other thought I had is that if you’re using an adapter (inserting your microSD card into an SD-card-sized adapter and then inserting that whole thing into a PC’s SD card slot), then you want to make sure your adapter isn’t causing the PC to misread the card. I have one adapter with a lock switch on the side that consistently slides backward (into the locked/read-only position) whenever I use that with a microSD card. Just about every time I insert that into a PC’s SD card reader slot, the microSD card inside essentially becomes a read-only card because the lock slider moves. If I want to format a microSD card in a PC, then I have to choose a different adapter with a stiffer slide that doesn’t get pushed back when inserted into a PC’s SD card slot.

Hopefully that makes sense. I don’t know if that’s part of what you’re seeing when trying to access one of these cards directly with a PC or not, but it seems worth mentioning.

What has Support said when you contacted them? With your Cams being so new, if they determine that your particular units really are bad, then they may offer to replace them for you.

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I was using a USB stick with a micro, (and normal) SD card slots in it. Far as I could tell it doesn’t have a lock function on the usb stick itself, though I do know of the lock on the adaptors.

Just as a little bit of a nerdy fascination, all 3 cards are full, mostly, about 110GB out of 123Gb that’s useable. They’re all in read only mode, a protection that happens when they’re broken. However I did run that ValiDrive program you suggested and it saw all 3 of them as no storage except for the last box which was read only. But they do all have around 110GB of video stored on them that I can still access. It makes me wonder if being broken makes the storage be read as no storage even though there is still stuff on it? I’m not sure, just found that interesting.

As for the cam’s, I feel stupid for even writing this, but after talking to support they had me reset the cams entirely to factory settings. They are now able to recognize SD cards again, though the 3 cards that are broken are, well, still broken. I’m curious to see if it’ll happen again.

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I don’t know the answer to that, either, and I haven’t read all the documentation for ValiDrive, but I think Steve Gibson tends to be pretty thorough in his work, so maybe he has an explanation for that. :man_shrugging:

I also wonder about trying a different microSD adapter for your PC and/or if you’d have better luck with any Linux tools (what I tend to use, including using the SD Memory Card Formatter for Linux with the --overwrite switch on the command line) when it comes to attempting to write to or format these cards. I don’t know if it’s worth the effort, but that’s something you could maybe attempt if you wanted to try to revive these.

Incidentally, I noticed the photo in your post in the other topic that shows a card that looks like it’s trying to resemble the SanDisk Extreme cards I’ve used in some Wyze Cams (I haven’t had any problems with those but mostly use SanDisk High Endurance cards now). When someone appears to be making an intentional effort lo have a product look like a well-known product, that tends to make me suspicious. It also reminds me of the “SANSUMG” cards that have been described a few times here in the Forum.[1][2][3]

Thank you for taking the time to post an update! I’m glad that your Cams are recognizing cards again after a reset! :+1:

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I’m in agreement with others that those cards are just junk. Unfortunately with the prices of cards being out of control people are turning to no name brands, and they simply can’t handle continuous recording for even a few days. They will fail to “read only” if you’re lucky, if you’re not lucky, they just totally die.

Since a 128GB card can record 10+ days of video, maybe instead go for a cheaper 32GB or 64GB card from a known brand (Samsung Pro Endurance and Sandisk Max Endurance are the best, but the prices are high right now). Lexar, PNY, even the Wyze branded cards are “middle of the road” (well PNY borders on low end) and should have decent longevity, even though they aren’t officially endurance rated.

You could try running those read only cards through the formatter from sdcard.org but if they’ve failed read only it probably can’t do anything, and they’d just do it again in a few days.

Hopefully you can return the cards and find a deal on something else.

Note always buy SD cards from reputable sources - i.e. “shipped from and sold by amazon”, direct from samsung/sandisk, or from a local retailer.

You can test cards to ensure they aren’t counterfeit too. Samsung has a utility for this (sandisk may too), but you can also use the formatter I mentioned above and do a “full overwrite” to confirm they’re good. There is also a program called h2testw which is designed for getting info on the “guts” of an SD card and performing a test to ensure they aren’t fake.

The only card I’ve ever had a proble with was a Samsung Evo 32GB which ran in a dash cam (definitely not intended for it) and they replaced it with an Evo Plus - still not rated for continuous use but seems much more robust.

Also worth noting, you do not need high write speeds for the wyze cams. Endurance cards are typically slow to write but at only around 10MB/minute on these cams, the requirements are very low, just about any name brand card out there can handle it.

Kingston cards were ok but never tried them in continuous write. Adata and Team Group and others like that are very low end, avoid those.

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Let me give a Thumbs Up for SanDisk High Endurance 32GB cards. My oldest card has been Continuous Recording for 51 months.

I get 3.5 days of Continuous Recording v3 videos saved before the oldest files get overwritten. If i need to save any videos, it’s not a problem for to download them within 3.5 days.

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Are they the high endurance or the older Max Endurance? I’ve seen complaints on the newer High Endurance ones but I think that’s because their write speed is a bit slower and can’t keep up with newer dash cams. They should have no issue with write speed on the Wyze cams though.

The Max Endurance is very good but has gotten expensive and hard to tell if they’re phasing it out or not. i know the Viofo dash cams recommend the Max but have the High as not recommended due to lower write speed. They also don’t recommend the Samsung High Endurance as its write speed isn’t great either. But again none of that matters with Wyze cams, as long as they can endure the constant writes, that’s all that matters.

Of course all of them are pretty expensive right now, but I’ve seen them start falling a bit.

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These are what I have in all my v3 cameras. I bought a spare that has been sitting on my shelf since Dec 2023.

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I was checking my Amazon account to see when I bought the SanDisk. I noticed this is not a bad price for the above card.

Here is a picture in case the price goes up.

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Good to know, it is one of the ones I’ve been keeping an eye on (saved items in amazon). Some reviews were bad but I think they’re all because of the lower write speed and trying to use them in Teslas and dash cams.

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I can attest that they are good indeed. I have five 32GB non high endurance, just 10C class since 2022 set to continuous write. One just died about a month ago, the other four are still working fine. I’m guessing they will die pretty soon as they are nearing to EOL.

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Are your cameras with SD cards indoors or outdoors? All of my cameras are indoors which might make the SD cards last longer.

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I’m glad my Samsung Pro Endurance 128 and 256GB cards are supposed to last for many more years. I saw some 256GB Samsung Pro endurance cards are now at $153.99. I was mad when I got my most expensive one at $29.99.
rofl

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This is one to avoid.

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it is really a 7Gig card. I wouldn’t trust it to store @Antonius’s collection of ant photos.

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Outdoors, somewhat protected from rain.

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How do you know? Did you buy it? :laughing: