I read somehwere that SD cards (especially the professional grade ones) are much more reliable than USB keys, and they can be used as a substitute for SSDs to store archived data. Because the point of getting SSDs is for the read/write speed, if you just let it sit there as an archival medium, then you are wasting money.

Why wouldn't you store archives on a regular hard disk?

It's really a question of the quality of the flash drive maker. Some are pretty crappy and don't handle large amounts of read/writes nearly as nice as SD cards do (since SD cards were designed for use in cameras where one would take hundreds of pictures, offload, and repeat). That said, higher capacity quality SD cards don't offer much of a price benefit compared to lower-end SSDs (SD cards quickly lose their GiB/$ ratio once you leave the 4 GiB size). The size benefits of SSDs also can kick in if you'd rather not have to split your backup across multiple small SD cards. SD cards also have a more limited compatibility, SDHC can't be read by standard SD readers, and even some newer SDHCs can't be read by some older SDHC readers.


Basically, whether SD cards are better than flash drives is a big "It depends" with manufacturer and date manufactured being while having their own drawbacks, and at the larger capacity end of the market are a wash price and compatibility wise with SSDs.


There are advantages to using different forms of medium for different backups. The different qualities of the different mediums means the same risk factors don't apply to all your backups.

Well I obviously meant the good brands like Lexar or Kingston. it's just that people have always been saying that USB keys can not be used for archival purposes, but I just read that SD cards are in a totally different league. And are as reliable as SSDs. They are much smaller, and more compatible with all systems (any system will have a usb port).

My laptop came with a dual 1.8" Intel SSDs Raid (160GB x 2) and an SDXC card slot.

The SD slot is an extremely convenient storage solution because of the limited drive space with my SSDs, and there are SDXC cards available now up to 64GB, with a theoretical maximum of 192TB (not likely to come to market any time soon).

However, these cards are very slow, much slower than 5400RPM HDD, let alone SSD. If you want to work with large files in Photoshop, or 1080p video editing, for example, you really need to copy your working files from the SD card to your primary drive.

There are also a few USB 3.0 external SSD drives on the market are much faster than any SD cards.

I would have to disagree with "totally in a different leage". There are crappy SD cards just like there are crappy flash drive (and crappy SSDs too). I'd say out of the three, SD cards are the least compatible due to their various flavors (SD, SDHC, SDXC, eyefi, etc) not all of which are compatible with all adapters. Even of the same kind, the brands don't necessarily work across the spectrum. I've had trouble with my Lexar SDHC with some adapters, and absolutely no trouble with my SanDisk SDHC.

The main "problem" I can see people mistakenly citing for why SD cards are unanimously better than flash drives: SD cards are always in the FAT format for 99.999% of people, whereas some people format their flash drives in NTFS. NTFS is a journaled file system and as such it wears down flash media faster than FAT does.

However, in either case, as a write rarely, read rarely, you won't find much of a difference in life between a SD card and a flash drive, assuming both are of comprable manufacturing quality.


If you read the OP, you'd notice Speed isn't an issue. Also on the SDXC side of the market, they are more expensive per GiB than SSDs

What about against SSDs?

SSDs offer TRIM (assuming operating system or third-party tool support), which you won't find on your flash drive (at least not as far as I know) and definitely not on your SD card, which will definitely extend their life.