Equipment & Techniques > Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear

Longevity of SD cards

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PeterAit:
I have a major trip coming up and was thinking about my SD cards, all of which are at least 2 years old. Do these things wear out? Am I at higher risk of a failure with an older card? I have never had a memory card error, so I suspect they are pretty durable, but I do not want to take more chances than needed.

Jim Kasson:

--- Quote from: PeterAit on February 08, 2016, 10:54:39 am ---I have a major trip coming up and was thinking about my SD cards, all of which are at least 2 years old. Do these things wear out? Am I at higher risk of a failure with an older card? I have never had a memory card error, so I suspect they are pretty durable, but I do not want to take more chances than needed.

--- End quote ---

There is wear with usage. Any decent card should tolerate more than 10,000 write cycles per cell before failure. There is software in the card to spread the usage across the chip. This wear can be a problem when flash devices are used as disk replacements in computers, but it would take a highly-unusual usage pattern to cause a cell to wear out in the camera.

I wouldn't worry.

Jim

NancyP:
I suspect failure is more or less random. I have a mix of cards, some 5 years old, youngest 2 years old. Admittedly, the very oldest and smallest got relegated to the Sigma Merrills, which are used only for landscape / still life, so the lengthy write time is irrelevant. (the cameras are on tripod on a time delay anyway - why o why wouldn't Sigma have a remote release shutter port?)

dwswager:

--- Quote from: PeterAit on February 08, 2016, 10:54:39 am ---I have a major trip coming up and was thinking about my SD cards, all of which are at least 2 years old. Do these things wear out? Am I at higher risk of a failure with an older card? I have never had a memory card error, so I suspect they are pretty durable, but I do not want to take more chances than needed.

--- End quote ---

You are more likely to physically damage an SD card than have it fail on you.  CF is more durable.  Sent one through the washer and dryer with no ill effect or loss of data.  I've used CF since 2004 and SD since it came out and have had 1 CF failure (controller went squirrely) and 1 SD failure.  Both were Sandisk, though that is mainly what I use.  The SD failure was a 16GB Extreme Pro which Sandisk replaced free with a 32GB version of the same card.

You are much more likely to upgrade cards for speed and capacity than have them fail.  I've got a draw full of old cards that still work.  The oldest being a Nikon 8MB CF card that came with the Coolpix 950 or 990.

That said, SD is relatively cheap so for an important trip, I would buy a couple extra just in case.  Have a way to off load them if possible to a portable SSD, hard drive or laptop.

Colorado David:
I was talking with a old friend of mine who is a retired Brooks educated commercial photographer.  He retired from commercial photograph at the end of film and never made the switch to digital.  He was holding one of my SD cards and asked how many images it would hold and how much it cost.  When I told him he asked why would you ever reuse them?  Why not just archive them?  That's a reasonable question for a film shooter.  As inexpensive as they are, why not stock up on some spares before an important trip.

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