How to know how many write cycle of an SD card ?

[Narf03]

Hi all, need to know are there any program or ways to know how many write cycle of an SD card ? or even some test programs that try to keep writing and writing until it kills the card and give you the result ?

I am in need to know about the write cycles to estimate how long before the SD card fail.

Thanks.

[malakai]

Not that I am aware of. The overall lifespan of an SD in a Pi is measured in years. Unless you are seriously trying to kill the card. I did watch a video of a group to see how long a card would last if you wrote to every single part of the card over and over and the result was around 3 months before the last of some 40 cards died. Not sure the size of the cards they used. But imagine writing to say a 16 gig card every day for 30 days filling up the card every 24 hours that's what 480 gigs. You would want to think that isn't much but unless your copying a DVD to the card constantly then deleting and re-writing to the card it just isn't happening with typical use.

[pluggy]

The number of write cycles a card will stand isn't set in stone. A card could fail in short order or it could go on for years, way beyond its official lifespan. People have tried writing the flash in arduino chips to destruction (very similar technology). They typically went on to a million write cycles before becoming flaky. Its not something I would worry about........

[Jade]

I've used multiple sd cards for about 5 years now. I ran linux off them extensively, had swap partitions, etc, and they have yet to fail. Same thing about a few 4gb compact flash cards I have. I did have a few cards fail on me but they were used very very intensively, think running a mysql database with heavy read/writes 24/7.

[hojnikb]

Nothing to worry about imo.
Its more likely for something else to fail before flash wears out (cards controller for example)

If the flash fails in card, you can always clone in and burn that image to another card.
When flash wears out, its usually still readable, you just cant write to it..