sdcard & NAND-Flash memory life is usually dependent on:

  • temperature (too hot or cold may cause data loss)
  • sdcard Flash cell type
  • sdcard internal controllers' wear-leveling strategy
  • sdcard larger capacities tend to spread out wear if mostly empty
  • file-systems like F2FS on average have shown to improve operational life by 70% or more

SLC (Single Level Cell)

  • Industrial uses
  • 50k to 100k  write cycles

eMLC (Enterprise Multi Level Cell)

  • noncritical industrial uses
  • around 20k to 30k write cycles

eMMC as pSLC (a.k.a. 'pseudo-SLC').

  • is usually just MLC flash configured to only use states 3 or 0
  • around 20k  write cycles

MLC (Multi Level Cell)

  • each cell holds 4 different charge levels per cell
  • around 3k to 10k write cycles

TLC (Triple Level Cell or 3D cells)

  • each cell holds 8 different charge levels per cell
  • some TLC based SSD drives use SLC caching areas
  • typically around 3k to 5k write cycles
  • Warning: can be as low as 300 write cycles for some chips