memory cards

[carrbowl]

What are the thoughts about replacing or cycling through memory cards...I have had all mine so long, I'm beginning to get a little voice in the back of my brain talking to me. I think that means it is time to replace them....

[toverman]

From my experience, with some cards that I used for about five years without issue, if you handle them carefully and reformat every time you clean off the card, you're good to go. But decent memory is getting so cheap now compared to what it used to be, that starting fresh probably couldn't hurt.

When in doubt ... throw 'em out! Or donate them to a student.

[swhoutx035]

I have always heard that there is limited (albeit a high number) number of read/writes to CF and SD memory cards. Even if you reformat you would evenutaly bump up against that physical limit.

I found this tonight:
"This would have been the case few year ago. Modern CF cards controllers implement block rotation in hardware, which means that the swap is not always written on the same blocks. We evaluated that it would take 10 years continuously writing on the card before the failure risk becomes significant. "

http://mrzonbu.wordpress.com/2007/09...pan-per-zonbu/

[Peacock]

I have had some for three years now, and still no problems have even accidentally washed and dryed a card, and still works!

[swhoutx035]

And as toverman pointed out memory is getting cheaper and faster. It might not be a bad idea to gain some peace of mind and some extra space/speed.

[rebardwg]

Have any of you experience speed differences between the 4GB and the 16GB cards? Both my 4 and 16 are rated at 133x, but when I snap a picture with my 4GB, the image instantly shows up on my LCD, but when using the 16GB, it takes about 3 or 4 seconds to show up. Is it b/c of the larger capacity?

It doesnt matter if the card is full or freshly formatted (in camera), the lag on the 16 is the same. Any ideas?

[swhoutx035]

I haven't noticed any difference, but all my cards are 8GB and larger. The 8gb is a UDMA card reserved only for sports or when using the high continuos shooting. The 16 and 32 GB cards are both 133x and I've never noticed any delay for the first image. I shoot RAW+JPEG and never have any problem unless I hit the camera's buffer limit.

3-4 seconds seems really long for a single image at 133x. Are your 4 and 16 cards from the same manufacturer? There are some fakes and copies out there but I've never run accross them.

EDIT: another thought might be that some cards have a faster write speed than read speed. You could be writting to the card at 133x, but the rate of the read of the card might be less than that. What make of card are you using?

[The Loft Studios]

I buy a new set every 2-3 years no matter what.....
Out with the OLD, in with the NEW.

[carrbowl]

so what do you do with the old ones?? sell them

[tc95]

Give them away in Photo-Frames for X-Mas....