Do memory cards age with use?

In other words, as the CF or SD card is written, reformatted, rewritten, etc., does the chance of a data loss increase?

Or does a 2 year old card that has been rewritten 50 times have about the same chance of a data loss as a new one (all else constant such as brand, etc.)?

the cells that store information do have a finite amount of times they can be written to. eventually, they won't be able to hold information. I wouldn't worry about it though. The number of required cycles is typically beyond what an average user can manage

Projected flash memory life cycle is around 10,000 r/w operations. And most cards have a leveling algorithm so they don't always write to the same cells. So you're more likely to outgrow your card than wear it out.

outgrow a card? Oh, you must have seen my receipt from B&H, where a few short years back I paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $450 for a 4gb Extreme IV card. I almost puked when I saw that receipt. I sneer at 4gb cards now. In fact, I haven't used on in a long time, preferring instead my 16 and 8 in camera at the same time.

me

MDJAK wrote in post #8956251
outgrow a card? Oh, you must have seen my receipt from B&H, where a few short years back I paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $450 for a 4gb Extreme IV card. I almost puked when I saw that receipt. I sneer at 4gb cards now. In fact, I haven't used on in a long time, preferring instead my 16 and 8 in camera at the same time.

me

I remember paying 230 bucks for 80mb

I think that long before they wear out you will outgrow them.

MDJAK wrote in post #8956251
outgrow a card? Oh, you must have seen my receipt from B&H, where a few short years back I paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $450 for a 4gb Extreme IV card. I almost puked when I saw that receipt. I sneer at 4gb cards now. In fact, I haven't used on in a long time, preferring instead my 16 and 8 in camera at the same time.

me

Explain to me why I keep my 10 MB PCMCIA card around; it probably cost more than the combined, pre-rebate, price of the last 3 Extreme IV 8 GB CF cards I got.

As others have said, the cards will eventually go bad. The good news is that it will be a very long time before that happens because of normal use.

I shot a soccer tourney with a company out of Minneapolis. They used 512mb CF cards because they could be burned right to a CD without worrying if there was too much data on the card. The cards were many years old and had been used probably at least every other weekend for the last who knows how many years. At that tourney alone, the cards were fill and emptied 6-8 times a day for 3 days. They had probably 50 of those cards.

MDJAK wrote in post #8956251
outgrow a card? Oh, you must have seen my receipt from B&H, where a few short years back I paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $450 for a 4gb Extreme IV card. I almost puked when I saw that receipt. I sneer at 4gb cards now. In fact, I haven't used on in a long time, preferring instead my 16 and 8 in camera at the same time.

I had to retire my first ever CF card some time ago - because I couldn't even fit one image on an 8 MB card.

DDCSD wrote in post #8958694
As others have said, the cards will eventually go bad. The good news is that it will be a very long time before that happens because of normal use.

I shot a soccer tourney with a company out of Minneapolis. They used 512mb CF cards because they could be burned right to a CD without worrying if there was too much data on the card. The cards were many years old and had been used probably at least every other weekend for the last who knows how many years. At that tourney alone, the cards were fill and emptied 6-8 times a day for 3 days. They had probably 50 of those cards.

That's actually a really cool idea to use the 512mb cards so they would fit on a CD. With the high res on my 50d, thus huge raw sizes, it wouldn't hold a whole lot...but still a good idea!

EVANDIXONdotCOM wrote in post #8964840
That's actually a really cool idea to use the 512mb cards so they would fit on a CD. With the high res on my 50d, thus huge raw sizes, it wouldn't hold a whole lot...but still a good idea!

They were only printing out 5x7's, so we set our cameras to get about 100 shots per card and the files are plenty big enough for that.

MDJAK wrote in post #8956251
outgrow a card? Oh, you must have seen my receipt from B&H, where a few short years back I paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $450 for a 4gb Extreme IV card. I almost puked when I saw that receipt. I sneer at 4gb cards now. In fact, I haven't used on in a long time, preferring instead my 16 and 8 in camera at the same time.

me

reminds me of when i bought 4mb of ram memory for $200 back when i wanted to upgrade from windows 3.1/dos to windows 95. or when i asked my mom for a 540mb hard drive for Christmas ($200 at the time) to add as a slave drive to my computer (the master was only 180mb).

Jon wrote in post #8956106
Projected flash memory life cycle is around 10,000 r/w operations. And most cards have a leveling algorithm so they don't always write to the same cells. So you're more likely to outgrow your card than wear it out.

In addition to that, when registers start going bad, formatting identifies and maps them out. The visible result of a very, very, very old card would be very gradually diminishing capacity after each format.

If you don't outgrow them before that, you're likely to physically damage them, or your dog will eat them (especially a Labrador Retriever).

You have a better chance of the pin holes wearung out or lint getting stuck in them , than the electronics "wearing out " or "cycling out "