SDXC longevity?

How long are SDXC cards expected to last? In particular a Sandisk 64G 95MB/s sized cards?

Last year a 64G 95MB/s card went into corrupt mode. Last Monday the other card experienced similar issues. These are 2015 and 2016 vintage. Typical symptoms: an unable to write message, file corrupted/unreadable, missing. I'd done a quick format then a full format in camera and then attempted to do it in the pooter and one folder still remained on the card but was not accessible. Attempted a test write from the pooter to try and fill the card up using video files of varying sizes and it would write at 66-250 kbps. The displayed time was 8 days to completion.

Generally I'd replaced at 3-4 year intervals but came to the decision I was getting rid of them too soon when they were still plenty useful. The estimate is that these 64G cards saw about 200-400 frames a month in 6-7 years. This may be par for data being written. (?)

Thoughts?

All solid state media has a finite write life. After so many times erasing and writing, the cells will fail. Most media has spare sectors to replace failed cells, along with a round-robin algorithm to spread out writes. Some types of cells can be written much more than others, usually with high end enterprise-class SSDs. Reads are pretty much infinite as they don't wear a cell.

Cheap cards use cells with less write life (Sandisk Ultra), while nicer cards have more life per cell (Extreme or Pro). Filling a card is also more "damaging" to cells than using a larger card and writing less to it as it doesn't allow the wear leveling algorithm to work as well (less available cells to level to). So an nicer card that's rode hard can fail much sooner than a cheap card that may get read a bunch, but barely written to!

The way to look at media nowadays is to treat it as a consumable. Replace it on a scheduled basis, no matter if it's good or not at the time, especially if you use it a lot and for critical applications (production jobs, once-in-a-lifetime trips). I pull all my cards every 3 years and replace, relegating the older cards to backup or sneaker-net transfers. Think of the like a set of tires...when they start wearing down a bit, change them out for the winter (where you need traction) and put the old ones onto a spare set of rims for the summer. If you don't, you may get stuck somewhere at the most unopportune time!

As for the cost of replacing more often than "expected", I look at it as the cost of doing business. I'd rather know I have fresh cards than worry about them when I'm 1000 miles from home on a production job (or vacation). Media is getting cheaper and cheaper, especially CF and SD media...

ra40 wrote in post #19412034
How long are SDXC cards expected to last? In particular a Sandisk 64G 95MB/s sized cards?

Last year a 64G 95MB/s card went into corrupt mode. Last Monday the other card experienced similar issues. These are 2015 and 2016 vintage. Typical symptoms: an unable to write message, file corrupted/unreadable, missing. I'd done a quick format then a full format in camera and then attempted to do it n the pooter and one folder still remained on the card but was not accessible. Attempted a test write from the pooter to try and fill the card up using video files of varying sizes and it would write at 66-250 kbps. The displayed time was 8 days to completion.

Generally I'd replaced at 3-4 year intervals but came to the decision I was getting rid of them too soon when they were still plenty useful. The estimate is that these 64G cards saw about 200-400 frames a month in 6-7 years. This may be par for data being written. (?)

Thoughts?

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I mostly use CF cards, but do use SD cards occasionally. . I think my 6D only takes SD cards, so I use them when using that body.

I have not had a card failure in 14 years, not with my SD cards and not with my CF cards. . I use the same CF cards that I got back in 2007 thru 2010, and they work perfectly 100% of the time. . I shoot about 30,000 photos a year, for 14 years, and keep using the same 4 or 5 cards and never have any problem.

I don't know about SDXC cards specifically, as I am not familiar with the "XC" at the end of their name. . But any cards I have used just keep on working and working year after year after year without any problems. . Is there something about the SDXC cards, specifically, that causes them to fail after such a short time with so little use?

I should note that I always take the card out of the camera and put it into a card reader to download to the computer. . Not sure if that would make any difference or not, but figured it should be noted.


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Tom Reichner wrote in post #19412039
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I mostly use CF cards, but do use SD cards occasionally. . I think my 6D only takes SD cards, so I use them when using that body.

I have not had a card failure in 14 years, not with my SD cards and not with my CF cards. . I use the same CF cards that I got back in 2007 thru 2010, and they work perfectly 100% of the time. . I shoot about 30,000 photos a year, for 14 years, and keep using the same 4 or 5 cards and never have any problem.

I don't know about SDXC cards specifically, as I am not familiar with the "XC" at the end of their name. . But any cards I have used just keep on working and working year after year after year without any problems. . Is there something about the SDXC cards, specifically, that causes them to fail after such a short time with so little use?

I should note that I always take the card out of the camera and put it into a card reader to download to the computer. . Not sure if that would make any difference or not, but figured it should be noted.

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SD (especially faster ones) tend to fail more because of heat in a smaller size. All my cameras shoot CF or CFExpress, so they are bigger with better cooling. My cards all get heavily abused - thrown, stepped on, never downloaded from a camera but never formatted either and I've only had one fail that was being used as a hard disk replacement in a nano sized box.

I've seen many an SD bubble the plastic casing or microSD card melt the adapter from extended copying, like a marathon copy session of 900+mb x2 onto 1TB microSD Extreme cards for my FLAC player. The adapter warped enough that it got stuck in the Lexar pro reader!

Tom Reichner wrote in post #19412039
I don't know about SDXC cards specifically, as I am not familiar with the "XC" at the end of their name. . But any cards I have used just keep on working and working year after year after year without any problems. . Is there something about the SDXC cards, specifically, that causes them to fail after such a short time with so little use?

SDHC (high capacity) cards can store up to 32 GB of data, while SDXC (extended capacity) cards can store up to 2 terabytes (2000 GB).

I think a greater factor in life of these cards it to buy a reputable brand and from a reliable source such as Best Buy, Adorama or B&H Photo. I do not consider eBay or Amazon as reliable sources, at least for memory cards.. The Sandisk Extreme PRO 64 GB SDXC UHS-I Card is around $20 at Best Buy and has a Lifetime Limited Warranty. Some less expensive SDXC cards from Sandisk only carry a 5-year warranty.

As to the question of short life of SDXC vs.?; I doubt that can be answered, or more importantly is it even true? Just too many unknowns to consider, some of which may be unique to the individual owner. I have a niece that frequently has bad cards, but she puts them in the back pocket of her jeans and often sits on them. For the same reason she goes through phones at an alarming rate. Who or what is to blame?

Appreciate the input. I've had 3-64G 95MB/s Extreme Pro's RMA'd at this point. In my studio type use, they go from camera to computer. No extended writes like doing video and I don't machine gun the camera to do high FPS captures. They have a fairly easy paced usage.

There is one 64G 95MB/s card of 4 left. Sandisk has RMA'd the others with 64G 170MB/s ones. Sent the one that triggered this question to them yesterday. We'll see how the last one does. At least these all gave signs of impending failure and getting the contents off the card was uneventful.

There is a 4G Extreme III 20MB/s I use for small files between computers that dates back to about '07. It is also the card used when taking images into the lab or similar print processing places. This one has been through the washer and dryer twice. Maybe those 64G needed a good cleaning.

There is a term called "endurance" which relates to the number of read/write cycles. Manufactures are pretty creative in how it is spec'd. The bottom line is there is a limited number of read/write cycles you can get before you will start to see failures. Read the fine print in the spec...

Does San Disk or other memory card maker publish TBW data on their cards? I see some manufacturers list this for dash cam endurance level cards though the mainstream info for SDXC I don't recall finding this info.

The camera will see about 108G/year in still images. Between 2 main cards that may be about 54G written between them annually. At 5 years using those numbers that's pretty low use for a failure.

Sandisk will be releasing some 200MB/s SDXC variants in the very near future. May update all of them or switch brands to see how they do.

ra40 wrote in post #19413733
Does San Disk or other memory card maker publish TBW data on their cards? I see some manufacturers list this for dash cam endurance level cards though the mainstream info for SDXC I don't recall finding this info.

The camera will see about 108G/year in still images. Between 2 main cards that may be about 54G written between them annually. At 5 years using those numbers that's pretty low use for a failure.

Sandisk will be releasing some 200MB/s SDXC variants in the very near future. May update all of them or switch brands to see how they do.

Sketchy comments are available from Sandisk. See https://www.mouser.com …emovableProduct​Brief1.pdf, specifically the left of page 1 under “Key Benefits”.

Thanks John.

SanDisk is likely well aware of their cards lifespan. I searched a bit and could not find hard data on approximate TBW figures. This would be good info to have available for buyers in the buying process. The suspicion is that enough users will have moved on to the latest-greatest cards and the lifetime warranty process is not a concern. Just how I was previously buying new cards every 3-4 years. So long as the user retains their receipts an RMA will be possible.

Lasts as long as a USB drive or an SSD.