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How often should a memory card be replaced?


3 weeks 16 hours ago #749698 by Matt Nguyen
Meaning, the life cycle of a well used memory card.  Should you swap them out every XXX number of hours, years or ??


Thank you
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3 weeks 16 hours ago #749701 by db3348
When they  no longer work reliably , 
  • when they frequently cause error message to appear on the camera screen , or on uploading images to computer
  • and / or regularly prevent camera from capturing images , 
  • even though you have them formatted properly and camera properly configured to record them .
Are you having problems ?  Getting error messages or camera refusing to shoot ...... ?  
Do you use  same card in different cameras ,  and  if/when so, do you format card when you switch card between cameras ?
Have you been trying to edit the card content (e.g., add or delete image files) on a computer , instead of editing it in the camera  as is normally required . 
Have you been trying to remove card while images/videos are still recording ?  Not a good idea .

I don't believe cards necessarily have a defined life cycle of xxx numbers of images / hours /years .
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3 weeks 13 hours ago #749703 by TCav
See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Memory_wear

Flash memory fails. Of course, the reliability of a single memory location is astronomical, but flash memory is assigned in blocks, and when any memory location in a block fails, the entire block is marked as bad. So the reliability of blocks of flash memory are substantially less than astronomical.

All flash memory cards have spare memory blocks that can be remapped to fill in for failed blocks, but once all the spare blocks have been mapped in the active storage area, if any more blocks fail, the entire card fails. All flash memory does this remapping behind the scenes, so there's no way to know how close you are to losing the entire card. Doing a low lever format will hasten the failure of the card because that process rewrites the entire capacity, and any block that fails will eat up a spare block. But a conventional format will only rewrite the File Allocation Tables, which is faster and doesn't tax the entire card.

SanDisk and Lexar include more spare blocks than other manufacturers, so their cards are more reliable, but even they will fail eventually.

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2 weeks 4 days ago #749776 by MM Images
I use mine till I loss them or they stop working.  Which has not happened .
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2 weeks 3 days ago #749833 by Joslyn
While I don't wait till the memory card fails, I usually will pick up new card or cards when I see a very good sale going on. Which usuasually is around the holidays.
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2 weeks 1 day ago #749902 by Jessy Page
Till I lose them :rofl:
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1 week 5 days ago #749991 by Norse Photographer
If it ain't broken, don't mess with it.

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1 week 5 days ago #750008 by Overread
Frankly the only time I'm updating cards is when I get a good deal on a card and shift smaller cards to back of memory card holder.  
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1 week 3 days ago #750087 by Tim Chiang
I still own a 2gb memory card.  That is OLD!  For me, I don't replace unless I find a good sale.
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1 week 1 day ago #750187 by Ssoyd
I have memory cards over 10 years old that still work fine.

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1 week 1 day ago #750188 by CharleyL
It's always good to transfer all of the files from memory cards and then low level re-format them occasionally. This will remove any defective portions of the memory from use and test the good portions, making what's left good to use again, but I would then look at the final test results and if an increasing number of new bad sectors were found, I would likely replace the card with a new one. It will depend on your comfort zone and thickness of your wallet.  When to do this, will depend on how often you use the card and how badly you need to depend on it, but I do it at least Annually with cards that I use frequently, and I'm not a heavy user. No hard drives, even solid state drives should be depended on 100% either. They too will develop bad sectors over time, so should be treated the same way. This is why RAID drive systems exist. It's also an attempt to catch and fix problems before data is lost, and with built-in recovery capability. I haven't yet heard of RAID capable memory cards yet though.

Charley  

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1 week 1 day ago #750218 by James F
My memory card slot holds like 10 memory cards, and I'll usually by new cards when on sale.  I'll then cycle out smaller cards and store those in my desk.  While I've not had any major issues, cards can fail, and I think keeping them fresh is a good step to keeping things running smooth. 
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1 week 12 hours ago #750283 by Ira Weber
+1 on sale and store smaller cards away
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5 days 20 hours ago #750370 by CharleyL
So, how big is your oldest memory card? Does it still work?

Actually, my oldest photo memory card was a 3.5" 1.2 meg floppy disk. (I went digital in 1998), but I have some Sony 128 meg memory sticks (cards) that are still in my drawer, I managed to see several photo files still on one of them that still open and display fine. Although a bit pixelated (330 K file size) when compared to photo files today they aren't all that bad and I was printing 8 X 10 photos from those files. I still have the Sony MVC-FD95 camera (my 2nd digital camera) that I bought in 2000 that used the floppy disks ( 4 photos per floppy disk at full resolution - A full 1.9 megapixels). It still works too, but now sits on a shelf almost full time. 

Charley

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3 days 7 hours ago #750445 by Mike McKinnon
+1

Only buy when on sale and replace older cards

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