Which SD Cards Can I Use With My Survey Drones?

A slow SD card can result in missing images and GPS data or corrupt files.

SD card quality can vary greatly between models (regardless of the advertised speed). Since the drone is flying quickly with high overlap, the SD card may not be able to save photos fast enough to the card. This may result in missing images or GPS data, which can be problematic.

Your SD card should support a fast write speed of up to 90 MB/s and have a U3 or V30/V60 rating (see figure below for example).

The maximum supported capacity is 128GB for many drones, so check your specific drone before purchasing a card.

Typically cards 32GB and under must be formatted as FAT32, and cards greater than 32GB need to be formatted as exFAT.