Tell me more ×
Raspberry Pi Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for users and developers of hardware and software for Raspberry Pi. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 19 down vote favorite
7

Is there a way to estimate the lifetime of a SD card? If not, is there a utility I can use that monitors its integrity and reliability so I know when to use a new SD card?

share|improve this question
2  
I'm also confused by the reasoning behind the "close" votes as not constructive. Is it because different SD cards will have different answers? – jandjorgensen♦ Jun 13 '12 at 20:05
It is just very hard to answer authoritatively, until someone actually does some experiments to find out. – finnw Jun 13 '12 at 20:34
2  
What makes it a bad question is that the answers will be guesses – finnw Jun 13 '12 at 20:52
7  
That would make those answers bad answers. Just because it can't be answered accurately now doesn't mean it can't be accurately answered. – jandjorgensen♦ Jun 13 '12 at 20:57
4  
@finnw - A question which is difficult to answer isn't a bad question, it's a good question! It's a question which people are going to keep on asking, so is perfect for a site intended as a reference for answering questions that people want answered. Bad answers on the other hand can be voted down. Not allowing people to try to answer defeats the purpose of a stack exchange site. – Mark Booth Jun 14 '12 at 10:28
show 1 more comment

1 Answer

up vote 8 down vote accepted

There are several tools that will check integrity of a filesystem, and recurring errors will point to a SD card reaching the end of its lifetime.

fsck is a commonly used Linux application and you can use it to check a partition like this:

fsck /dev/sdx

Where x is the partition number.

As for estimating the lifetime, the Sandisk Product Manual states:

SanDisk SD cards have an endurance specification for each sector of 100,000 writes typical (reading a logical sector is unlimited).

However, I do not know how many read/writes the typical OS uses on average.

share|improve this answer
I think 'typical' would be indescribable. It would be completely dependent on the software installed. It may be possible to calculate the read/writes of a clean install but that will vary with each little update making the statistic fairly meaningless. I think the tools you listed combined with the knowledge that it will take a good while to burn up a card should be sufficient base data to go on. – tencent Jun 14 '12 at 16:48
@tencent I think it's the best we can do. – Jivings♦ Jun 16 '12 at 14:21

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.