[Leica] Flash lifespan

[scheng at aotera.org (Spencer Cheng)]

On Mar 27, 2009, at 12:22, H. Ball Arche wrote:

>
> This has probably come up before so I apologize for needing a  
> reiteration, but how long can an SD card hold its data without  
> deteriorating?
>
> A 2 gig card will hold more pictures than the amount of film I'd  
> shoot on a given day, and now definitely costs less, but what are it  
> archival properties?
>

I've asked my H/W friends and the answer varies between "it depends"  
and no one really know. Under good storage condition, years and maybe  
a decade or 2. BUT a cosmic ray hit can mess things up at any time. It  
is limited by how long a static charge can be held in the memory cells  
without significant leakage.

Sandisk allegedly saying their MTBF is 2 million hours (2 sources) but  
nothing definitive on official literature.

<http://communities.sandisk.com/sandisk/board/message?board.id=extreme3&message.id=236#M236
 
 >

I am still looking for a definitive answer but the current generation  
of flash memory cards is NOT designed for archival storage.

Regards,
Spencer