Hello, I fly the Mavic 3E daily for construction site mapping and inspections. I use the recommended SD cards from the list on the DJI website (Samsung Pro Plus purchased from samsung.com no amazon/ebay counterfeits) and format them often with no issues. I recently opened a new one, inserted it, formatted it before my flight, and it seemed to work fine. I looked at the pics on the controller and they looked ok. After a battery swap the SD card error appeared and I could no longer see the pics and my laptop did not recognize the SD card. After formatting it works fine in all my other devices (camera, laptop, gopro).

I opened another brand new SD card and had the same problem, and a 3rd as well that was purchased this week, just to make sure. My old SD cards of the same brand/type still work ok, so I am using those for now, but eventually I will need to replace them.

Has anyone else had this issue with genuine SD cards?

I've heard that Samsung cards are notorious for doing what you just described. I only use SanDisk cards but even those aren't perfect. I have several cards of theirs that show a constant SD card error notification during flight even though the pictures/videos save perfectly fine to the card. The M3E also doesn't have the option to format those same cards while in the drone. I can insert them into the RC and format there just fine though. It's a shame that this Mavic 3 is the only one without a single bit of internal storage yet has the most issues with SD cards.

Thanks for that info. I will give the SanDisk extremes a try. The M3E can format the card in the drone through the photo settings menu, but I will try to do it in the controller. Agreed, even 24/36GB internally would weigh very little and be a great alternative.

MikeBNA Posted at 3-9 09:24
Thanks for that info. I will give the SanDisk extremes a try. The M3E can format the card in the drone through the photo settings menu, but I will try to do it in the controller. Agreed, even 24/36GB internally would weigh very little and be a great alternative.

Yea other SD cards show the format option but I have several cards that throw this error (even though they work fine) and those cards specifically do not show a format option. Even the base model Mavic 3 Classic has 8 GB of internal storage but it is strangely missing totally from the much more expensive M3E. 8 GB would be enough for doing small-medium size jobs when you forget an SD card or when the one you have doesn't work.

I've been using  the Lexar XC V30 1066x UHS-I microSDXC 256GB card in my M3E and M3P with no formatting or other issues.  I also have had good luck with SanDisk Extreme and Pro memory cards in my drones and land cameras.

There is are allot of counterfeit memory out there.  It looks like the real deal, but it is not.  I don't mind paying extra and buy mine from an official Lexar, SanDisk or Samsung retail source.  No Amazon, eBay, etc..

Since we are all sharing here, I have been a Sandisk loyalist for quite some time and always had great luck.  I have also started buying Amazon Basics brand, and surprise surprise, they work great and are very inexpensive.  

TonyPHX Posted at 3-11 15:18
Since we are all sharing here, I have been a Sandisk loyalist for quite some time and always had great luck.  I have also started buying Amazon Basics brand, and surprise surprise, they work great and are very inexpensive.

You had me curious so I just checked into the Amazon Basics SD cards. A 128GB one is $2 MORE that a Sandisk Extreme (gold one). They basically have the same specs so for all we know they come off the same assembly line. I'm sure Amazon buys them in bulk from one of the big brands and slaps their name on it. I'd like to do a read/write benchmark on them both.

Johnnokomis Posted at 3-11 18:08
You had me curious so I just checked into the Amazon Basics SD cards. A 128GB one is $2 MORE that a Sandisk Extreme (gold one). They basically have the same specs so for all we know they come off the same assembly line. I'm sure Amazon buys them in bulk from one of the big brands and slaps their name on it. I'd like to do a read/write benchmark on them both.

I did exactly that, and found them comparable to the Sandisk Extremes of same size.  The fastest I have tested has been the Sandisk  Extreme Pros.  However, all have been great in every DJI device I have.

I also ran them through some of the niche tools out there like Validrive.

Overall, I'm pretty much happy with Sandisk, Kingston, and Basics.  And after a card has seen plenty of field use, I take it out of service.  No reason to have a failure on a project.

These days it doesn't make much sense to not rotate cards around. Only a few years ago I only had one SD card per device of mine. Now days they've gotten so cheap that I usually have 4 or 5 backups in my drone case alone. I also keep one in my RC Pro as a last resort option. The only ones I've ever had a total corrupt/unusable card with are ones that have spent a lot of time as a Raspberry Pi OS drive.

Johnnokomis Posted at 3-11 19:28
These days it doesn't make much sense to not rotate cards around. Only a few years ago I only had one SD card per device of mine. Now days they've gotten so cheap that I usually have 4 or 5 backups in my drone case alone. I also keep one in my RC Pro as a last resort option. The only ones I've ever had a total corrupt/unusable card with are ones that have spent a lot of time as a Raspberry Pi OS drive.

Same.  : ). And a Windows install on SD.  : ). Some things just do not last.