How often do you replace your CF cards?

[daydreamsart]

I do write the date I buy it on the CF card, but wonder how long, how

many uses, etc, before I should toss and replace my cards. What do

you do?

[grant g]

I'd only replace or toss a card if it's damaged (might bend a pin in the slot) or too small for the current equipment. Even then, I use the old Canon 32MB cards and anything smaller to save my favorite pitures on.

[craig_gillette]

I haven't. The number of cycles expectable are huge. Failures, if any, are random and not really predictable. There are a variety of figures kicked around on sites that show on a Google search. So, fwiw, anywhere from an older Wikipedia article which points to 10,000 to 1,000,000 and others which pointo even much higher cycles, 300,000 to 1,000,000,000 or more. It seems likely that if you moved to newer higher capacity cards, that you've easily got several years expectable life even in extremely heavy use. Maybe replace them when you wear out the cameras you are using them in?

[petequinn]

Why would you replace them unless you need more space or they are damaged? They are

chips, just like the memory chips in your computer. How often do you replace them?

[wickedmartini]

I haven't had to replace one unless it has been clearly damaged. I have many cards that I have been using for years. The CF cards seem to be pretty durable compared to some other formats.

[paul -]

I'm still using one I got for my then-state-of-the-art D30. The only bad card I ever came across was defective right out of the package.

[eric friedemann]

CF cards are solid state devices, so you shouldn't be able to wear them out internally. As was noted, I wouldn't replace a CF card unless there was damage to the exterior of the card that could, in turn, cause damage to the pin connections in a camera. Per other posters, I've not had to replace a CF card.

[conraderb]

never had to replace a CF card unless it was bad out of the box, and I hope that the only reason I would ever have to replace my 6 1gig cards is b/c memory becomes so cheap that I could buy 6 10gig cards for the same price :-)

[Ed_Ingold]

If one of my cards drops through a crack in the boardwalk, I replace it.

[nick_w.]

I've put my cards through the wash many times. One of my cards has a huge dent on the underside. I've dropped 'em, stepped on 'em, sat on 'em. They all work great and have for a long time. In case it matters, I mainly use one 1gb 80x lexar and two 512mb Sandisk UltraII cards.

[todd1664878707]

Ever since my dog lost his favorite ball 9 months ago, I've been letting him use my CF cards as chew toys. Sure they are torn up quite a bit and one side is ripped open, but as long as I can turn it upside down and shake it and not have any of the stored bits fall on to the floor, I'll still use it. Obviously I'm just kidding. They can really take a beating and I've never had to replace them. By the way I use Kingston CF cards. I find them on newegg.com. They are really cheap and I've NEVER had any problem with them. I highly recommend them only because they are much cheaper than the other name brand disks.

[daydreamsart]

Thanks. I feel a bit better about continuing to use them. Unless my dog chews one up, or something.

[ptucci]

I know this isn't a direct answer to your question, but an earlier answer got me thinking... I dropped a PDA with an SD card, from a height of 3'. It wouldn't start. It ended up, the SD card had been cracked slightly (invisible, under the label). I'm now a bigger fan of CF cards.

[fxdonny]

You should toss em all to me Cindy :)