Are SD cards less reliable when aging?

[Bill Blackwell]

Not exactly related to the OP's question, but I've been using the same PNY cards for about the last eight to ten years (from the Leica M-P 240 - and prior - through the M10-P). Never an issue.

When I bought the M11-P I decided to upgrade my cards to the faster UHS-II cards (also PNY). But the M11-P hated those cards, periodically turning out dead files and banding. But the old UHS-I cards still work fine!

I returned the UHS-II PNY cards and exchanged them for Lexar cards with similar specs; the new Lexar cards have no issues whatsoever. In hindsight I might have simply stuck with the old cards.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Infant Mortality problems probably cause more problems than an SD card that someone uses for a long time. I tend to transfer data from a card to the computer, then reformat it in the card. I had two 8GByte Sandisk cards that I thought had failed, but turned out it was a file format problem writing files to the card using the computer and the camera,

 

[Freakscene]

I’m curious about how a 5 year old thread comes back to life.

I have some old SD cards, and they all work just fine. The only casualties have been first or second use cards, as @Sonnar Brian points out is most common.

Thumb drives fail pretty often, but I think it’s the connection between the usb socket and the drive that is usually the problem.

 

[ChrisPlatt]

I just had my first USB thumb drive "go bad" on me, i.e. it cannot be read or written to on any device.
It appears to be a problem with the physical contacts rather than a failure of the memory chip inside.
I suspect most SD cards problems may similarly be attributed to physical rather than electronic failures.

Chris

 

[Sonnar Brian]

View attachment 4837443

How do these necro threads come back to life?

This one- we've had a few more years of experience to let the cards age...

I had a couple of 256MByte CF cards go bad within the last couple of years, from 2003. I use them for embedded systems. DOS and 32-bit extenders on ICOP Vortex processors.

 

[DownUnder]

Some of my SDs are still working after fifteen years. And I've put them through several different cameras.

So my take on this is yes, they go on going on for a very long time.

However, having read thru this thread, next week I will replace all my SDs with new cards. JIC...

But I will definitely keep the old ones. Somewhere easily locateable if I ever feel the need to retrieve them.

 

[Out to Lunch]

My oldest cards are of the 2GB variety for the Epson R-D1. The camera won't take larger ones but with its 6MP sensor not a major problem. Now and then, I clean the contact points on the card with alcohol. Cheers, OtL

 

[Sonnar Brian]

I just downloaded this page to a Kingston 128MByte USB stick.

Still works. One of the first USB memory sticks.

 

[chuckroast]

ALL storage media - magnetic, optical, solid state - in any of its forms from disk to tape to SD cards - should be considered archivally unreliable.

That's why commercial data storage systems have a high degree of redundancy. That's why data centers make multiple copies of critical data either by direct backups and then spreading them around physically, or via geographically dispersed storage systems (when the data is too large to be backed up).

If you are trusting your cards with your only copy of things you care about, you will sooner or later, lose some- or all of your data.

If you are not making multiple copies that are stored in physically different locations (e.g., Your home and a family member's home), you will sooner or later lose some- or all of your data. A safety deposit box for copies isn't a terrible idea either.

I do this for a living. Computers lie, disks fail, SD cards get physically mangled, etc. There is an entire branch of commercial computing concerned with BCDR: Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery.

BTW, this also/especially applies to data on your phones and computers. If you're not somehow replicating it, you're just begging for pain and suffering down the road. I don't know how many people have come to me over the years distraught because they lost all their pictures and documents when their Mac or PC crashed for good.

P.S. I do not have a good solution for a lifetime of negatives. So called fireproof safes work by releasing moisture into the contents to keep them from crisping up from heat - usually to the detriment of what's in there.

 

[splitimageview]

I’m curious about how a 5 year old thread comes back to life.

It's actually a 'no' they don't 'lose reliability' due specifically to age; it's based on write cycles.

They do fail, however and when they do, the 1 becomes a 0. 🙂

The answer is the same as it was 5 years ago! 😀

the life of a memory card is not based off an estimated expiration date that starts the day it is manufactured, but rather usage. According to the SD Association, memory cards utilizing current technology, along with normal usage, typically last 100,000 data-write cycles

 

[Pioneer]

My oldest cards are of the 2GB variety for the Epson R-D1. The camera won't take larger ones but with its 6MP sensor not a major problem. Now and then, I clean the contact points on the card with alcohol. Cheers, OtL

I have several 2 GB Sandisk cards and rotate them through a couple of early Pentax *ist digital camera frequently. I have had those cards for a long time but they keep on working. I have an old Epson Picturemate printer that I still use that takes those cards and prints from them directly. I imagine that once the printer dies, or I can't get ink for it any longer, then I will discontinue using those old SD cards, but maybe not.

 

[Godfrey]

Maybe a naif question for the experts but I'm asking myself and would like to know what the expertises think about if an SD card which has been used many times after a few years (2-3) is loosing somehow its properties.

I do not speak about speed in writing or transferring but more interested in reliability.

In other words should I replace my cards after 2/3 years of use?

Thanks for answer

robert

I have about 20 SD cards ... SanDisk, Transcend, Sony, Lexar, what have you ... that have been in use since 2006. None have ever failed ... many of the older ones are simply too small for today's 40-60 Mpixel cameras in a practical sense. The SanDisk and Lexar 32, 64, and 128 G cards I bought in 2015 to 2018 continue to work flawlessly.

At some point, cards which are heavily used will lose the ability to be written or store data. The same is true for all flash media (including SSD units!). This takes hundreds of thousands of write and erase cycles at least, however, and in practical use never happens. The 100,000 cycles mentioned above is a very very conservative/pessimistic estimate, and was made a decade or more ago. The technology has improved since ...

G

 

[splitimageview]

So cards won’t become ‘less reliable’ over time, but they can fail catastrophically. I have had multiple failures of both micro SD and SD. In all cases the failures appear to be caused by shorts, as the cards had little burn holes in the plastic or were severely melted.

 

[Godfrey]

So cards won’t become ‘less reliable’ over time, but they can fail catastrophically. I have had multiple failures of both micro SD and SD. In all cases the failures appear to be caused by shorts, as the cards had little burn holes in the plastic or were severely melted.

I've not seen this happen. What brands? It sounds like poor design/manufacturing error.

G

 

[splitimageview]

there are many such reports online. I still have the cards, some are PNY, some are Sandisk, here is a pic from reddit, one of the micro SD I have looks just like this:

 

[chuckroast]

The answer is the same as it was 5 years ago! 😀

the life of a memory card is not based off an estimated expiration date that starts the day it is manufactured, but rather usage. According to the SD Association, memory cards utilizing current technology, along with normal usage, typically last 100,000 data-write cycles

Yes, but that's not the whole story. SD cards can (and do) suffer mechanical failure unrelated to the number of times the media has been written to. I've actually seen this more commonly than flakey writes.

 

[splitimageview]

Yes as I stated above. 🙂