do memory cards wear out?

[emogirl]

I was told once that memory cards do wear out....kind of like a video tape being tape over so many times, eventually the quality goes kaput. Is this true? The reason I ask, a friend sent me pics from her camera and she is haivng problems....mostly streaks thru all her pics, i have never seen anything like it before in 15 years of photography....having gone over her camera and pics thoroughly, that is all that i could come up with. Since I am quite new to digital, I need your folks help!!! Sorry, i dont have the pics anymore to show you.

thanks, Kim
Please feel free to move this thread to the correct forum if i'm not there.

 

[emogirl]

im bumping this in hopes of getting an answer...thanks'

 

[mysteryscribe]

I don't know but you looked lonely... My guess is that it would take a long time and more likely have an accident first but i guess everything wears out eventually.

 

[Big Mike]

I would guess that the camera would have problems before the card...there are just so many more things that could go wrong with a camera. The test is simple...just try the card in a different camera. If the problem persists with both cameras...then it's the card...If not, then it's the camera

 

[emogirl]

yes....that was our solution, she was trying the little card that came with her camera and see what happens....in the meantime, while i'm waiting to hear back from her, i was trying to find out about the memory card wear....so i'm guessing you have never heard of that??

 

[Big Mike]

I've heard of them 'going bad' or just being bad from the start...but either people don't say what the actual problem is...or the files are corrupt. I've never specifically heard of a card causing streaks.

 

[mysteryscribe]

As an after thought I have a digital camera I shoot things for ebay with. It ruins memory cards for some reason. Once they have been formatted in the camera they can not be read by anything else. I had to hook the camera to the computer to read the cards. I don't use that type for anything else so it's okay with me. I also will never in my whole life fill that little card up.

 

[tasman]

Memory cards can become unusable, or corrupted in some way. It is probably from a static shock of some sort. Either from the camera or when it was removed and put into a reader. Either way it is probably better to get a new card and not use a corruted card and risk loosing your photos.

 

[Player_1]

I have a card that I've taken over 9000 pictures with. It never burned out, so I figure it's ok.

 

[Anubis]

My CF card says "good for 10,000 insert/ejects". So it should be good for about 46000000 photos. (Plus, I never eject it, I always hook my camera to the PC and don;t use a card reader. So hopefully I'll get more )

 

[boclcown]

technically, all digital media has some sort of life-span. DVD's are supposed to last between 75 and 100 years, I think, and I'm sure CF cards have a life span as well. Thing is, it will be extreemly long, and there is a much greater chance of something going wrong with th card (static shock, being dropper, corrupted, etc.) than the card just dying out.

In most cases, I would think that by the time the CF card actually dies, CF will have long been replaced by SD or something along that line.

 

[Alex_B]

i have heard somewhere that the lifespan of CF cards is limited by the number of writes/erases on it

but this is purely based on something i think i remember, it might be totally wrong.

 

[emogirl]

thanks for all the info guys...looks like my girlfriend will be buying a new camera

 

[smyth]

hate to bump an old thread but I wanted to throw in my two cents.

All flash memory slowly degrades by writing and erasing. However it is not the quality that degrades, it is the storage space.

Obviously that's not her problem, but I just wanted to put it out there.