Thank you all for the great replies everyone. I’m definitely looking into everything each one of you has said.
I have attempted to use a Patriot 8GB class 4 microSD with the same effect. After about 4 weeks it failed as well. The patriot actually no longer functions at all. I’m looking to go out and buy a handful of microSD cards for testing. Does anyone recommend a particular microSD class? Or should I just stick with class 4?
Once again thank you for all the help!
Class doesn't matter. Don't use class as a gauge, it's completely useless
for both performance measurements and for life measurements. Use results
from things like Flashbench [1] and Arnd's big list [2] for performance.
[1]: http://git.linaro.org/gitweb?p=people/arnd/flashbench.git;a=summary
[2]: https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/Kernel/Projects/FlashCardSurvey
I like the SanDisk Ultra microSDHC 4GB part number SDSDQY-004G and the
Samsung Plus microSDHC 8GB part number MB-MP8GA. I haven't done life
testing, but performance should be much better with either of these cards
than with the Kingston ones.
Flashbench threads of my tests for each: SanDisk [3], Samsung [4].
[3]: http://lists.linaro.org/pipermail/flashbench-results/2012-February/000256.html
[4]: http://lists.linaro.org/pipermail/flashbench-results/2012-August/000322.html
Realistically, if you're killing SanDisk and Samsung cards due to too many
writes, you're writing too much. Use a tmpfs or spinning media. If you're
killing cheap cards (Kingston, PNY, Patriot, basically anyone who doesn't
own a silicon fab), that's not that useful of a data point. They're cheap
for a reason.
If you have to back to disk and must use flash, look into eMMC. There's
a cape coming "real soon now." It'll wear level much better than any SD
card.
-Andrew