Do you/should you retire SD cards after a certain amount of use or time??

[papercut2008uk]

Ever since one of my new Patriot 64GB SD cards just gave up and died after a month of use, I've been a little wary of using the same cards over and over again, there is no telling when they might decide to die and not work anymore.  Always worried about being in the middle of taking loads of pictures without the option to upload or back them up and the card just die's. 

 

I do have a load of cards, some of them pretty old and used a lot and still working, but, do you retire/stop using your SD or other memory cards after a certain amount of time, or after taking a certain amount of pictures or moving data on/off them?? 

 

 

[Jim K Global Moderator]

4 minutes ago, papercut2008uk said:

do you retire/stop using your SD or other memory cards after a certain amount of time, or after taking a certain amount of pictures or moving data on/off them?? 

Nope.  

[+Biscuits Brown MVC]

While I haven't, you do bring up a good point. I have a few loaded into a variety of older mobile devices and never think about them but just like an SSD (only not as resilient) they do have a limited number of write cycles. Maybe its time to think about it.

[wvcaudill2]

I never even thought about retiring SD cards, although it does make sense that one would need to after a certain point.

 

I use SD cards in nearly every device I have - laptops, phones, cameras, etc and I have never had a problem with, or replaced, any of them.

 

Many of them are heavily used, The current SD card in my phone is being used as internal memory for the camera and other apps. The card in my laptop is being used for Windows ReadyBoost currently.