USAGE OF MEMORY CARDS!

Hi,

I have 3 CF cards, out of which only 1 is being used constantly. Should I rotate the usage of each card, or is there any harm in using only 1 card constantly. What would be the life span of an Extreme III 2GB Sandisk CF card?

Any other hints/advice most welcome.

Thanks

Derek
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Gear: Canon EOS 5D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM, Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG MACRO, Canon 580 EX II speedlite.

I used only for a year and it still works another year later after being the main one.

I'd rotate through them. Still, they're good for tens of thousands of write cycles, IIRC.

Reading and writing isn’t going to be the reason they die. Most cards are rates for somewhere between 1,000,000 and 4,000,000 R/W cycles. However, insertions and removals is another thing. That’s somewhere around 10,000 inserts and removals. So chances are that the cards contacts will wear out way before the memory internal to the card.

Rotate them and use within 1 week of the Sell By date else they'll start to smell.


Oh wait no that's milk. Sorry.

cdifoto wrote in post #4715015
Rotate them and use within 1 week of the Sell By date else they'll start to smell.

The cards or your pictures?

I think cdi means to spin your milk before you drink it.

LotsToLearn wrote in post #4715425
I think cdi means to spin your milk before you drink it.

And to be more specific: while it's still in the cow.

LotsToLearn wrote in post #4715425
I think cdi means to spin your milk before you drink it.

I know what happens when you don’t. Last summer as we were headed off to vacation for 18 days, one of our boys decided to grab a last drink from the jug before heading out and left out a near full gallon of milk on the counter. Not only was it completely unspinable, it stunk to high heaven as well. PU….

Speaking of vacations...


Always make sure you close your coffee creamer container's little flip lid. I came home from a week in Florida to a dead cricket in there.

Not that many write cycles. Commercial industry standard for NAND memory usually rate at 100,000 write cycles. And it does NOT mean after 100K cycle, it won't function. They just don't garantee the date reliability and write speed after the cycle rating.

There isn't a limit on read cycle. It is significantly higher than the write cycle number.

The 1M cycling rating usually happen in government, aero-space and military industry, which is very very expansive and it is something we won't see.

But 100K cycle is quite a lot. You need to fill up the memory card to FULL then erase it for 100K times. If you only fill up the memory 1/2 way everytime and do a erase, you can do this for 200K times. So don't worry about write cycle of memory card. You will most likely replace it before it goes bad.

eel

gjl711 wrote in post #4715009
Reading and writing isn’t going to be the reason they die. Most cards are rates for somewhere between 1,000,000 and 4,000,000 R/W cycles. However, insertions and removals is another thing. That’s somewhere around 10,000 inserts and removals. So chances are that the cards contacts will wear out way before the memory internal to the card.

i make it a rule that if i take a card out i replace it with another, to many time i go out and take the first shot and NOTHING.. no memory card....... =(

cdifoto wrote in post #4715015
Rotate them and use within 1 week of the Sell By date else they'll start to smell.

Oh wait no that's milk. Sorry.

great advice!!!

HoRnYTuRbO wrote in post #4717091
i make it a rule that if i take a card out i replace it with another, to many time i go out and take the first shot and NOTHING.. no memory card....... =(

I make it a point to just leave the door open and turn shoot without card off.

I number my cards and rotate them.

By numbering them, should you encounter any image problems, you may be able to immediately ID the culprit and remove the offending CF Card.

Without the numbering, you may have an image problem happening sporatically and not realize the problem is confined to a particular card.