Hi,
I was just wondering if anyone knows if sd cards have a certain shelf life ie do they actually have a battery?? so therefore only last a certain number of years.

I noticed some brands give a 1 year warranty wheras others give a 5 year warranty.

best wishes
Rikki

they are flash memory with no battery needed, and should be very reliable storage.

Naturally chips have been known to die, and one assumes that more expensive chips might have tighter tolerances, but I have used flash memory devices in cameras and mp3 players for years with many, many write cycles and never had a problem yet. In contrast I've had hard disks and floppy disks let me down and been thankful for a rigourous backup regime which has never lost me any information yet - which I fully intend to continue!

Rikki,

Alec is right as far as I know. I do not trust hard drives after several failures.

The only thing that has concerned me, was the size of the SD's. I lose my spectacles all the time and they are a lot smaller.

I make regular backups to CD on all data that I consider important. That will probably outlast me.

Cheers,

Fran in Florida

Thanks Guys,
you've put my mind at ease.
I've managed to pick up a bargain recently with a couple of sd cards. And then the horrid thought struck "What if the cards only have a limited shelf life of a year or so because of batteries or some other reason I hadn't thought of".
It would have been awful to not get any use out of them, but the price was too good to miss out on.
Thanks again.

best wishes
Rikki

Fran, specialist photo outlets sell small cases for flash cards. I have one little hard case with space for SD cards and pcmcia adaptor, and a little black wallet type case, the same only closed with velcro. Ideal.

Alec,

I have one for my Olympus camera, but I will have to remember where I left it.



Fran

nice one.