Durability of flash memory cards

[N_Cook]

/
A COUPLE have been reunited with pictures from a camera they dropped
overboard on an Atlantic cruise, thanks to an Oxfordshire woman.

South Africans Barbara and Dennis Gregory were en route from New York to
Southampton on the Queen Mary 2 in 2008 when they dropped their camera in
the ocean.

But 16 months later Spanish fisherman Benito Estevez found the camera in his
nets with the photos still on the memory card.
/

Mrs Gregory, 53, said: "I remember the camera getting lost. We were about a
day out from Southampton sitting on deck when somebody shouted out there
were dolphins.

"We jumped up and rushed to the side and it happened - Dennis didn't have
the camera strapped round his neck and it slipped out of his hands.

"It literally bounced off his lap, across the deck and into the water with
hardly a splash and it was gone.
/
http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/headlines/5006204.Friends_get_reunited_with
_lost_photos/

 

[William Sommerwerck]

That's interesting. I haven't had an SD card fail that I recall.

How do you define "failure"? Malfunction after abuse? A well-sealed card
might continue to operate even after a salt-water dunking, and a
poorly-sealed card after same, followed by a thorough rinsing in fresh water
(then by a drying).

Of course, the memory cells can only be written to and erased a finite
number of times. Each card supposedly has its own internal OS that handles
"leveling" -- seeing to it that the cells are written to and erased evenly.
Even so, I let my camera cards fill up before transferring their contents to
a hard drive or Zip disk. Then I erase and reformat the card.