SD card dead due to exFAT?


asimov-solensan

Very Active Member
Joined
Jan 8, 2010
Messages
732
Hello,

So my newest card died in exactly a year and I'm wondering if filesystem has something to do with it. It's the only card where I used exFAT. Is there any filesystem recommended to avoid wear on the SD card? Even if it has worse performance.

This was a kingston 256GB, I don't know which filesystem people uses for cards this size. I guess that direct alternative is ext2 but I connect the card to my laptop to transfer files and I hate to mess with permissions.

PS
Please don't worry suggesting ways to fix the card. It's dead to no hope. Just gives hardware errors on linux and isn't detected anyhow by gparted or windows disk tool. I will just try to make effective the brand warranty.
 
I, to my best recollection, only have the one 16GB USB stick formatted to exFAT and the last time I checked it was still alive. I don't know of a reason why it should kill a card outright, even if it's file allocation table is on a set of fixed cells that the card can't remap, it might kill the filesystem when the SD card marks the cells as duff, but shouldn't stop you reformatting the card.

I've a few SD cards I've killed when I formatted them. I wasn't aware of the special space at the head of the address space, so put the first partition on address (actually platter/cylinder/sector) 0 and that nuked some cards but not others. Nowadays I clone the original partitions start address, and since doing that I've not nuked any more cards. But they never wore out, so I don't know what happened with yours. My duff cards don't even get flagged up in dmesg when I insert them, so they seem to be electrically fried or something.

Still, other than that I don't see why a bad FS should make a card error and be unformattable. As far as I know, Kingston don't make their own SD controllers, so they might have bought a bad batch from the channel.
 
I've never had a SD card die on me, or so few I can't remember, where I have had tons of thumb drives die. I just use the micoSD cards in a reader that make them the size of a thumb drive now for that reason.

I really don't think exFAT would kill a card, isn't that made for cards? I have always used EXT4 or NTFS, either or, I only use Linux so 99% EXT4 but I'm told it is bad for cards but like I said I never have had any die.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I have, I had a 128G card but it was one I used on my Gopro, but I'm not sure what format it uses, not exFAT or NTFS because when I need to use them on a new install I have to install drivers where I never need to with cards I use in my gopro.
 
Thanks for your answers. Yes the problem may not have been wearing, it just died after a year of daily usage on Pandora. One day I woke it from low power mode and puff, the card was gone. Never happened this, usually my flash disks (usb or sd) mount only in ro and show other problems but I'm able to backup data and format them.

From your comments I get that it has been just bad luck and I'm safe using exFAT.
 
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