Is it better to fill up SD cards before erasing?

[IronWing]

I've been thinking about SD cards used in cameras. If I fill up an SD card pretty close to full before erasing it would cut down on the number of erase/write cycles experienced by any one sector. If I wipe the card when it is just a quarter full then some of the sectors will get written over with each new fill. So which is better for card longevity: waiting until the card is near full before erasing the images or erasing as I go along?

 

[OrangeMarmelade]

I never cared a lot about that, I just erase card normally.
don't know if the card will get broken that way, I use that camera occasionally to this day, and all works normally.

 

[denis280]

I alway erase as i go along

 

[Cerb]

You can't know. It will (a) depend on the controller's wear leveling algorithms, some of which are still rolling logs, for SD cards, and (b) erasing doesn't really erase anything, anyway. You could be doing well, overwriting the same LBAs, or you could be causing a lot of WA from the SD controller moving around static data to keep the wear even.

Your best bet for longevity is just to buy quality cards from a company that makes the memory itself, like Sandisk, or Samsung.

 

[Berliner]

It does not matter.

SD use wear leveling to distribute the writes.

 

[corkyg]

Echo what Cerb said. I rarely erase a camera card. I offload them to a HDD at least daily.