ScotJimland

Maybe a silly question, probably is, but I was just curious..

I have a 1gb Kodak SD card which has been in use for over two years and has had literally thousands of images on it.. I haven't noticed any change in image quality..
so, do they degrade and need replaced every so often or do they just fail ?

TIA

Jim

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American Dream

Hi Jim,

I tend to keep any media like that away from any magnetic/electromagnetic devices especially if I have something important archived on them.All my photos are backed to cd/dvd anyway.

I have used cards for a number of years without any problems.

The main problems We've seen is where media has been left in a reader in a pc and it tried to checkdisk it on boot and corrupts the file data.The other problem is they can be affected by virus' and malware the same as any other rewritable device.

Still using some smartmedia cards in an old fuji camera from 1999.

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weejohnw

Hi Jim,
Back these up on your computer and or put them onto CD's
It can happen that your card will just fail to read and all pics will be lost
My son lost all his from a trip to Romania with this very problem.
Regards Wee John

ScotJimland

Hi

just to clarify, it's the SD card in the camera ..

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GJH

I agree with previous posters.

Safest thing is to back up onto the PC after each session of taking photos, to minimise chance of loss, and to have spare cards in case the one in the camera fails when you are starting/part way through a session.

Jill uses a camera much more often than I do and tends to have several, relatively small capacity cards rather than one large capacity one.

Graham

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Braunston

Hi,

I have checked this question out a number of times in the past and can find no concrete evidence of any inherent time limit on these cards, one reference I found quoted some 25000 reads/writes but i couldn't confirm that anywhere else,

I totally agree with keeping backups but in answer to your original question i don't think they are time limited, just like any other storage including hard drives I would, as I am sure you already do, keep backups as often as you can, as that blokes law always seems to come up and bite you when you are least expecting it

madbluemad

Hi Jim
A couple of things. Ive never known an SD card to wear out. I have damaged one by placing it in my computer card reader instead of downloding the pics from the camera.

I have also lost one when my camera was stolen in Spain last year.

I had a lot of pics on that camera and of course I cant get them back. I now always download my pics to my computer ASAP rather than risk losing them from my camera.

Jim

ScotJimland

Pretty much as I thought .. there must be a point when a card will fail .. so it may be worth while replacing mine and using the 1gb as a back up..

Shooting in Raw mode I only get about 130 pics on a 1gb card and I usually download daily .. but I like the idea of using several smaller cards rather than one big one.. when I bought the 1gb card it was quite expensive but with the cost tumbling no reason not to have a few..

Once again, thanks for the informative and helpful replies..

next question..

are A frames legal.. and do they have a braking point ..

Jim

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walburga

My 1 gb SD card, with all the TT5 maps including aires for western europe, went belly up last september when we were halfway down france. We had to go back to paper maps and concentrate a bit more on road signs.
When I eventually got the card into a computer not only could it not be read, the computer could not see it !
Got TT 720 now with on board hard drive.
regards
Allen

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Jim

The cards do go wrong sometimes, but even then all is not lost, but it takes a special software to retrieve the data. Backing up to CD or DVD is the cheapest but some DVDs are very unreliable. Some say that even the most poorly washed and fixed traditional photograph will outlive photos stored on a cheap CD

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