Do CF cards wear out?

BillN_33

BillN_33

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Bill
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I seemed to have been using mine for years with no problems ........ just take them for granted

is it best to replace them after a certain time period?
 
Like most electrical/IT items they will just keep going and suddenly fail, unless they are physically damaged beforehand.

I certainly wouldn't worry if you have been using good quality 'originals', until you have been using them intensively for five - ten years, by which time the read / write speeds and size will appear pedestrian by the technology of the day, you should replace them anyway.

You are unlikely to notice any incremental slow up. Think of conventional batteries and rechargeables. The latter usually just 'stop' whereas older alkaline batteries just give a fading performance over time.
 
You can record to 2 cards at once on many higher end bodies. If work is important this is the only sensible way forward. Then you don't care if one fails. The probability of failure of both cards at once is vanishingly small.

Unless you shoot sports every day you are fairly unlikely to exhaust flash memory in just a couple years. Of course there are duff ones around, hence the dual card advice.

Finally, at 4 year old, your old cards are too small by modern standards and considering the file sizes of latest cameras. At the same time, far bigger cards can be bought for the same price or less compared with the old ones.
 
They all have a sector read/write limit and will wear out in the end but most people upgrade their cameras (and therefore buy newer faster cards) before it ever becomes an issue.

Basically, when they start going wrong (corrupted sectors etc) throw them out and get a new one.
 
Replace them when they die. Unless you're flush with cash, and enjoy creating waste - then you can buy new ones just for the hell of it, as some people seem to suggest.

I'm using some 8 or 9 year old cards that are going fine. I haven't found the existence of larger capacity cards to have affected their performance in any way. ;)
 
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i still have a 128Mbyte jessops badged CF card from around 2004 that's still going strong
totally useless in todays cameras but still useful for upgrading firmware which is all it's used for now
 
BillN_33 said:
is it best to replace them after a certain time period?
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The weaker point of a CF card is possibly the contacts. Not that they
wear out but mainly caused by misalignment.

It happened to me 3 or 4 times in the last 3 years and I was the cause
since I was trying to go fast without taking too much care.

As far as the memory is concerned, I had no problem yet. So, I don't
think that these should be a "better time" to replace them.
 
CF cards, like all types of flash memory, do wear out. They can only withstand a certain number of program/erase (P/E) cycles. However, what that number is for any given device may not be easy to ascertain. According to Wikipedia, most commercially available flash products are guaranteed to withstand around 100,000 P/E cycles before the wear begins to deteriorate the integrity of the storage. CF cards have onboard controllers which try to ensure that all parts of the card are used evenly. So if you completely fill a card and reformat it every day, that translates to a life expectancy of around 300 years. Half fill it and reformat every day, 600 years, and so on.

Obviously this is a bit simplistic, but even so I think it shows why manufacturers such as Sandisk are willing to offer lifetime warranties on their cards.
 
Usual cause of failure ime is physical damage due to mis-handling/storing them. I've had the odd one that had read/write errors but I suspect that was again due to poor handling by me.
 
StewartR said:
CF cards, like all types of flash memory, do wear out. They can only withstand a certain number of program/erase (P/E) cycles. However, what that number is for any given device may not be easy to ascertain. According to Wikipedia, most commercially available flash products are guaranteed to withstand around 100,000 P/E cycles before the wear begins to deteriorate the integrity of the storage. CF cards have onboard controllers which try to ensure that all parts of the card are used evenly. So if you completely fill a card and reformat it every day, that translates to a life expectancy of around 300 years. Half fill it and reformat every day, 600 years, and so on.

Obviously this is a bit simplistic, but even so I think it shows why manufacturers such as Sandisk are willing to offer lifetime warranties on their cards.
Click to expand...


Thanks all - I format fine every time I use them - some are over 5 years old - I'll just grab a few new ones and double up on the write to two cards with "important" shots

All useful info as I, (we) just take them for granted
 
As an aside, I have always downloaded my pictures directly from the camera rather than taking the (SD) cards out of the camera and putting them in a 'reader' to download. I only do this to avoid handling them too much and would imagine it would also be good practice for CF cards. I had a colleague who had managed a bunch of newspaper togs and she told me they always used CF cards in their cameras as the contacts were not exposed (like an SD card). Do you use card readers and is there any benefit to doing so?
 
DoctorJ said:
Do you use card readers and is there any benefit to doing so?
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Generally faster, takes up far less space on my desk than a camera. Often will be downloading from more cards than I have cameras anyway. If you're on a shoot, you can keep shooting while files are downloading. Don't have to check how much battery life is left in the camera before starting to download.
 
Taking the card out avoids the risk of damaging the far more expensive usb camera socket, ruining the camera.

A card and reader are far cheaper to replace.
 
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