Does anyone know if memory cards (in my case SD cards) have a life expectancy? I have used my cards over several years, formatting them each time I was finished with the photos from that trip. Should I purchase new ones for an upcoming trip or are the "old" ones good to go?

I would just ask at the photo counter at Best Buys. I am sure they could give you some idea. I have been using the same ones for 6 years now.

They last pretty much forever, barring mechanical damage. They do in theory have a finite number of times they can be written, but it's in the hundreds of thousands. The way they are used in cameras, they should last virtually forever. They're going to break mechanically long before they "die" electronically.

I've got cards I've had for close to 10 years now, and they're still going strong.

You might want to buy some new cards anyway, simply because they're so ridiculously cheap now. A 2GB SD card costs under US$20 now - if you have any old small cards (eg 512MB), may as well throw them out and replace them with 2GB cards.

Thanks fo your replies to my question. I have read elsewhere on this board that using a 2 gig card, you risk losing all your photos if the card becomes corrupted. Suggestions have been made to use several smaller cards rather than one giant one - and, Chris, you're right about the price of the cards - I too have seen a 2 gig card for $19.95...and I love my 512 MB card - I have never filled it up!! I guess I have to take more pictures.

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I have read elsewhere on this board that using a 2 gig card, you risk losing all your photos if the card becomes corrupted.

Well, that's true with any card, but why would your card become corrupted? I've been using these things, as I said, for well over 10 years, and never has that happened. The only way that's going to happen is if YOU do something silly like take the card out of the camera while it's being written to, and I'm sure you're not going to do that!

Don't worry about it!

Cards do go corrupt and who knows why...too much heat?, too much moisture?. Best be safe and not put all your eggs in one basket. They take up absolutely zero room.

Just for curiosity, what does one do with these thousands of pictures that one seems compelled to take in this age of digital? I do have mine programmed as a slide show on my laptop when idle time starts so I do have daily memory refreshers. But, I can't imagine the need for thousands and thousands of shots - just isn't enough time in life to make use of them all other then for the choice ones housed in an album or made into poster, and choice ones on a pc slide show. Boggles my mind as the need for such a large volume of pics! But, that's just me.

Have you personally had a memory card go "bad", Roxy? I strongly suspect this is like the myth that airport scanners damage film - everyone "knows someone it's happened to", but nobody's actually had it happen to them .

Solid state memory cards are amzingly reliable things - a couple of mine have (accidentally) gone through the washing machine in trouser pockets and come out none the worse for wear.

my memory card became corrupted and i lost quite a few pictures.

OK - that's interesting. Do you know why? Was it something that you did?

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Originally posted by Roxy:
Just for curiosity, what does one do with these thousands of pictures that one seems compelled to take in this age of digital? I do have mine programmed as a slide show on my laptop when idle time starts so I do have daily memory refreshers. But, I can't imagine the need for thousands and thousands of shots - just isn't enough time in life to make use of them all other then for the choice ones housed in an album or made into poster, and choice ones on a pc slide show. Boggles my mind as the need for such a large volume of pics! But, that's just me.

There are a few reasons to take many:

1) I love taking photos but I am not a very good photographer therefore I take several pictures and just delete the bad ones later

2) We don't take that many but have a very good camera that chews memory fast.

3) Just love photographing things

What do we do with them
1) Delete bad ones
2) Store all others on DVD
3) Cull so we only keep the very good ones on the PC or to get printed and put them on our website : http://peterandlouisephotos.blogspirit.com/archive/2007...louvre-at-night.html

It seems to me that you can take photos to remember an experience or place (don't need to be good photos) or you can take photos as an art form. I am category 1 but I want to be category 2.

Re: Memory card corruption. I have heard of this occurring but not very often.

If it does happen to you - put the card to one side and when you get home take it into a PC store and they may be able to recover some of the files using a hard disk repair program.

Surely the overall risk is still much lower than using film.

It really should not happen provided that you re-format the card each time you copy the pictures from it. I wonder if perhaps people who get card corruption are just deleting the pictures rather than reformatting the card?

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Originally posted by wilees:

quote:

Originally posted by Roxy:
Just for curiosity, what does one do with these thousands of pictures that one seems compelled to take in this age of digital? I do have mine programmed as a slide show on my laptop when idle time starts so I do have daily memory refreshers. But, I can't imagine the need for thousands and thousands of shots - just isn't enough time in life to make use of them all other then for the choice ones housed in an album or made into poster, and choice ones on a pc slide show. Boggles my mind as the need for such a large volume of pics! But, that's just me.

There are a few reasons to take many:

1) I love taking photos but I am not a very good photographer therefore I take several pictures and just delete the bad ones later

2) We don't take that many but have a very good camera that chews memory fast.

3) Just love photographing things

What do we do with them
1) Delete bad ones
2) Store all others on DVD
3) Cull so we only keep the very good ones on the PC or to get printed and put them on our website : http://peterandlouisephotos.blogspirit.com/archive/2007...louvre-at-night.html

It seems to me that you can take photos to remember an experience or place (don't need to be good photos) or you can take photos as an art form. I am category 1 but I want to be category 2.

Thanks for sharing your photos and info-they are great. We all pretty much do the same thing I guess, except perhaps create a website.

My puzzle is the need for the "thousands" that travelers want to store on huge memory cards. I suspect that the dvds they are stored on are not frequently viewed. I guess it is a fine hobby to have (I've beening creating albums since I was 10) - I've just relegated myself to taking under 1000 as being quite adequate and even that is huge.

I take 2 128s, 1 256 and 1 512. I do not use them all so have a spare in case one or 2 go bad, or, they somehow go off on a tour of their own during my own tour!

I can remember being advised in packaging instructions early on, to ensure they are cared for with cushioning and not banged around, so I travel with them individually wrapped in a styrofoam'ish cushion secured with a small rubber band, so they don't clang and bang against each other in transit. Who knows if that is valid advice, but memory cards are a piece of technology that needs to have good health for digital shooting to produce a pic, so, for once, I follow tech advice no matter what I think.

quote:

I can remember being advised in packaging instructions early on, to ensure they are cared for with cushioning and not banged around, so I travel with them individually wrapped in a styrofoam'ish cushion secured with a small rubber band, so they don't clang and bang against each other in transit. Who knows if that is valid advice, but memory cards are a piece of technology that needs to have good health for digital shooting to produce a pic, so, for once, I follow tech advice no matter what I think.

The main thing that can damage a memory card is getting it physically dirty, so it is important to keep spare cards in an environment in which they are kept away from dirt that could work its way inside the card. SD cards are normally supplied in a little plastic box - that's an ideal way to transport spare cards. Certainly don't keep them loose inside a camera case, or anything like that - that's asking for trouble!

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Originally posted by Roxy:
Just for curiosity, what does one do with these thousands of pictures that one seems compelled to take in this age of digital?

I was at our local photo processor a few months ago to get a couple of photo's printed while they were on special at 15c each. When I placed my order the girl said they would be a while as she had a batch of 600 photo's to print. I asked who would want to print that many and she said these people had been overseas. She also told me she had once done a batch of 1000 pictures.

That's what some people do with their photo's