this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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Careful with SD; they quickly wear out with lots of small writes. I once fried one as homedir while trying to compile Firefox.
Endurance SD cards made for cctv cameras are the way to go. The Endurance versions are slower and slightly more expensive but they last a lot of writes.
Sounds like you got a shitty SD card. High endurance cards are recommended for frequent writing.
Can't say for sure, because all are mixing high quality with recycled from the scrapyard quality. The big names only a bit less of the scrapyard.
Yes, this. I got a 1tb micro SD card a few years ago for my hacked Switch (Fuck Nintendo, especially now that they've went after emulation) and finding a LEGITIMATE SD card was very hard, especially since I wanted the high-capacity and they don't just sell those at Wal-Mart. Be VERY careful about buying SD cards folks, lots of scammers out there in the markets now.
EDIT: forgot to add that I received TWO duds, fake SD cards that were NOT 1tb, when trying to get my SD card
How annoying is that! Where did you get the fakes?
Another question. Is that a separate issue? Like let’s say if you buy from Best Buy:
Sounds like @MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml was saying it’s still a crapshoot even if it’s totally genuine. Like if you buy 10 for 10 different handhelds, maybe only half of them are still working after a couple years but the rest of them last two or three times longer…
Mine were off of Amazon since I live about 2 hours away from anything other than Walmart. :’)
Yes, that.
Each write to a memory location wears out that location slightly degrading it's oxide layer. Flash memories compensate for this by "wear-leveling" which spreads the writes around to different locations to make sure the device wears out evenly.
It will mark bad locations and stop using them. If you run with the device almost full then it cannot effectively wear level and the few open locations will be overused and wear out.
It's not specifically small writes, it's the number of writes to any one location. But of course it's faster to do small writes so you end up with more if they are all small.
Also, there are flash memories optimized for performance that will wear out faster and others that are optimized for longevity that write slower.
Keeping the device cool will extend it's life also.
For longest life, keep the device cool and mostly empty and minimize writes. In critical applications find a device that optimizes lifetime over performance.
Hold on, i think i now remember: this one was about SD usually having smaller block size, so each small write causing a multiple in blocks written, i think?
Are SD cards not still the standard storage for digital cameras? I can think of few things designed to produce more small writes than a digital camera.
This person is confusing me. I use SD cards for my cameras and drones and routinely move files and reformat them with no issue. I have several cards that are over 6 years old and used daily. SD is the standard for all current cameras and drones.
I've only heard about SD cards data getting corrupted when doing lots of small writes. This was something people talked about when the raspberry pi first came out I think. But, I've been using micro-sd cards for years for all sorts of things and never had a problem.
I've had an SD card in my dashcam for 6+ years now. Constantly writing and over writing from -20F (sometimes lower but it's protected so I'll stop at -20) to well over 110F when baking in the summer sun.
It's got a battery so it continues to run for hours after I shut it off. Used to go 17 hours on the battery but that's probably way less now.
My point being that the SD card has been rock solid in very extreme conditions for 6 years now. Sure I made sure to get the extreme use version, I but don't buy this kind of thing on eBay or Craigslist and you'll be fine. Maybe stay away from Amazon too.
A digital camera has several megabyte writes, every once in a while, filling up the SD card evenly. Even bad SD cards usually have many thousand write cycles before they degrade, so that's not likely to be an issue. What is worse is if you have a log file, for example, that is stored in a fixed position on the card and gets updated several times a second
I'd like to know more about this- as far as I know they are solid state, meaning no moving parts (ergo more reliable)
Hmm, for now only about the general fragility, due to simple controllers. But i think i have an article about this saved somewhere.
Btw, if you reformat an SD, I/O and lifetime will fall sharply, because of some block size parameters differing, above mentioned article goes in detail about this stuff.
Edit: it wasn't this but has some nice info too: