How safe is it to use a SD card for storage?

[ironk]

I got one of those TW700 tablets, and I inserted a SDHC card into if for extra storage. I am wondering if its ok to use the SD card for important files or are regular hard drives better? I may connect the winbook tw700 to a monitor and use it as a desktop, but I am not sure if I trust the flash storage in it or the SD card for files that I use everyday.

 

[skriefal]

If it's for read-only use then they're reasonably reliable -- but I'd still keep a back-up. If it's volatile data that will be written or over-written frequently then performance will be much slower and definitely keep frequent back-ups.

 

[master_shake_]

why even take a chance?

if you can back it up, then do it.

 

[schmuckley]

Not very..have redundancy.

 

[Berryracer]

They'd die any day. Never trust em

 

[coercitiv]

Never trust SD cards. Treat them as temporary storage.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Don't trust _any_ storage medium. Backup all important files.

It's not a difficult concept.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Don't trust _any_ storage medium. Backup all important files.

If its anything really important, you should have multiple backups too. Just in case the backup is corrupted.

If you're really paranoid, or simply can't afford to loose the data, you should do off-site backup as well.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Any storage is unsafe if it's the only one used. Always have a backup.

Though for something like a tablet or phone, there is normally not really any important data on these devices, maybe selfies or other pictures that you took, anything that is a keeper then transfer it to another medium.

 

[bononos]

The lifespan of sdhc cards aren't that great but if they aren't written continuously and just mostly used for storage, they should last quite a while right? At least as long as pendrives?

 

[CiPHER]

I will choose one ZFS pool over 10 SD cards used as backups any time.

Backups are great, but using unsafe and unreliable storage is bad to begin with. You might need multiple backups and even then might be prone to silent corruption.

SD cards are unprotected flash and as such can corrupt in various ways. An SSD provides protections to mitigate the risks that unprotected NAND is susceptible to.

Consider a SD card or USB stick to be much less reliable than an SSD or a regular harddrive.

 

[ironk]

thanks everyone. Doesn't look like its too reliable...

Backups are great, but using unsafe and unreliable storage is bad to begin with.

That is what I was thinking too, I would like to have something good to begin with.

I do backups, but I tend to stay away from flash memory as main storage but had thought maybe things had changed.