I’ve heard that they had a limited lifetime, but this past weekend it actually happened. The Secure Digital media card I used in my digital camera took a final, fatal dump.

I bought the card a few years ago, back in 2004. It had a then-whopping 512MB of storage. I paid $124 for it, which I thought was outrageous. It was; my SD card was a high-end model with a faster data transfer rate, which is better for digital photography.

The card lasted for thousands of photographs, but not as many as I thought it would. Saturday I was out with a friend taking pictures around town. I transferred the images into the computer on Sunday, but when I inserted the card back into the camera an Error 02 was displayed. Sticking the card into the PC resulted in a “media isn’t formatted” error. Trying to format the media failed. The SD card was dead.

Yes, it’s true Virginia, media cards die. That’s because media cards are based on flash memory. By design, you can only write to flash memory a given number of times. The exact number varies, but the drive uses a technology called wear leveling. So while the drive may support 100,000 writes, the information is organized so that you get many more writes out of the thing. Theoretically. Eventually, however, it will run dry.

I replaced my dead card with a brand new 4GB model. It cost me about $50. That price is actually high because, again, I bought a card with a fast transfer rate. Regardless, I now have eight times the storage for less than half the cost of the original SD card. Who knows how much I’ll pay for the new card’s replacement and what its capacity will be?

Bottom line: know that you digital media will not last forever. Someday, the thing will die. When it does, do as I do and try to get the computer to read it. When both the camera and PC determine that the card is dead, it’s dead. Just pray that you got your pictures off the thing before it bites the dust.