Found this recent topic of interest. How do you keep track of SD card age and know when to cycle them out? Checking the speed ratings?
petego4it wrote:
Found this recent topic of interest. How do you keep track of SD card age and know when to cycle them out? Checking the speed ratings?
In my opinion, there is no reason to keep track of the age of one's memory cards. Use them until they fail, if that ever happens.
petego4it wrote:
Found this recent topic of interest. How do you keep track of SD card age and know when to cycle them out? Checking the speed ratings?
I don't, I use them until they fail, which has not happened yet.
(I wonder if there are published MTBF charts for each manufacturer.)
petego4it wrote:
Found this recent topic of interest. How do you keep track of SD card age and know when to cycle them out? Checking the speed ratings?
I buy what suits my camera. I've never had one fail, so I just keep hoping that they won't. My D750 has two card slots, so I have some backup. Remember when cards had extremely small capacities? I had them, of course, but they're gone now. May be I sold them with the old cameras they fit.
I use them until I don't use them, meaning advancements in size and speed at reasonable price replaces old cards. I actually had a couple 2Gb cards - they got recycled by giving to friends with photos from some event. Now have 8Gbs sitting on the shelf - will include as a "bonus" when I sell a spare camera I have. Sure 16Gb will soon go the same way as I have mostly faster 32Gbs now.
petego4it wrote:
Found this recent topic of interest. How do you keep track of SD card age and know when to cycle them out? Checking the speed ratings?
My roughly 15 year old ones still work as well as the day I bought them. Never occurred to me to give a crap about cycling them out.
Yes, they are small capacity and generally used as back-up or for when I just need to switch a card for a small site visit etc.
I have never thrown a card away or had it fail.
I haven't tried any programs yet, but your post impelled me to look into some Flash-testing programs. The one that looks best (without trying it yet) is Check Flash, which runs on Windows systems. You can find it here:
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/download/did/75/ I'll give it a try soon, but running out right now.
Ron Bandes
new to Ugly Hedgehog
just getting back into photography and videography after 20 year absence
retired computer security professional
now (and for past 12 years) focusing on election integrity
Thanks all. Guess I'll keep my oldies!
I find that as I upgrade to new camera and new technology, I need new bigger and faster cards in my cameras. newest camera for example likes 32 or 64 gig 300 read/write speeds. so I really cannot use any of the old cards and get to use the features I paid for in new camera.
ergo, old cards go away every 3-5 years.
SD cards are rated for 100000 writes to a cell. Write leveling means that the card will ensure that the same bits are not used each time. So probably after some 1 million pictures you should replace the card or perhaps the camera.
I write a volume label yymmddA0001 where the date is the date of the first use (at my age I do not fear Y3K ), letter is in case I label more than one at a time (I have a D7100 so I under A & B), and the four digit number is the number of times it has been reformatted. I have a little script that domes this for me. That way if a card ever fails I will know how long and how many writes it lasted.
My 1GB CF cards still work. Sure, they are museum pieces, but they work. They don’t work in my D500 or X-T2, so they don’t get much use any more. Those have XQD/SD 128GB or SD/SD 64GB cards in them.
I never throw SD cards away because I don’t RE-use or write over the files. I just buy new cards because flash memory is cheap. I like 64gb sdxc Transcend cards which run about 30 bucks, half that for 32gb.
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