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Long term soak test seems the only realistic way forward to see if a very early card failure happens
One of the more interesting things to come out of that aged thread were concerns about long term write wear on a Pi's SD card (in my case a cheapo blue Sandisk) and whether continual usage of mysql and other regular card writes would, in effect, rapidly "wear out" the card.
Well, 18 months on, I thought some might be interested in an update.
The mysql database now has > 350,000 rows (a mixture of normal data and some quite heavy blobs) & I deliberately left on a horrible amount of debug file logging to maximise the number of writes to the card.
Outcome (so far): The SD card has behaved itself, and has exhibited no problems whatsoever.
How long will it last ? Who knows .... only time will tell ... if it ever fails, I will post an update.