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CF life span

J

Jan Reiff

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how long is an estimate life span of CF cards, especially of the red cards?

a photographer (shoots with nikon D2) told me he had some issues with an 2 year old card at a shooting last week, maybe caused by the age.
 
I have heard of record/wipe 800 cycles but have never had a failure myself.
 
Our cards and SSDs are made with SLC memory which has a lifespan of 100,000 cycles. MLC by comparison is anywhere from 1k to 10k cycles and are also more susseptible to power and other problems.

There are better MLC technologies coming out in the future with improved quality and speed but for now we're sticking with SLC for both performance and reliability. SLC costs about double MLC flash.
 
thanks for this information.
 
Deanan said:
Our cards and SSDs are made with SLC memory which has a lifespan of 100,000 cycles. MLC by comparison is anywhere from 1k to 10k cycles and are also more susseptible to power and other problems.

There are better MLC technologies coming out in the future with improved quality and speed but for now we're sticking with SLC for both performance and reliability. SLC costs about double MLC flash.
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What kind of expected lifespan does this translate to?
 
In theory it means each block can be written 100,000 times. If you were shooting on each card twice a day then that might translate to 50,000 days. But in practice early blocks get written more often. But it should still be a sufficiently large number that you're unlikely to run into it.
 
I'll bet if they last just 4 years they will have outlasted their usefulness!
 
jimhare said:
I'll bet if they last just 4 years they will have outlasted their usefulness!
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correct... Even 8gb are stacking up in the bottom of people's drawers at RED because we are all using 16gb cards now.. and thats only been a year.
 
Jarred Land said:
correct... Even 8gb are stacking up in the bottom of people's drawers at RED because we are all using 16gb cards now.. and thats only been a year.
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send them to me. i can still use them for dslr work. :)
 
Tom said:
send them to me. i can still use them for dslr work. :)
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heh heh heh.. as soon as I clicked post, I knew it was gonna be only moments till someone said that :)
 
I've got 10 8gbs and unless someone requests the 16gb for rental, I'll wait till there in the $300 range. Even when I start getting 16gb, I'll keep around my 8s. So I hope that the 8s last for at least two more years. Actually...wtf would cause their life to end? HDDs have a 3-5 year lifespan, so I would expect solid state to surpass that.
 
Sycophant said:
In theory it means each block can be written 100,000 times. If you were shooting on each card twice a day then that might translate to 50,000 days. But in practice early blocks get written more often. But it should still be a sufficiently large number that you're unlikely to run into it.
Click to expand...

Wear leveling takes care of that so early blocks don't get written more than later blocks. This is a critical part of the controller and not the flash.
 
Jarred Land said:
correct... Even 8gb are stacking up in the bottom of people's drawers at RED because we are all using 16gb cards now.. and thats only been a year.
Click to expand...

16gig. gimme gimme gimme gimme

32gig flash.... ooooh yes, now ya talking.

I so can't wait to dump my RED drives. They are so tripod only. ok ok.. some hand held as well.
 
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