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Maybe there are more lemons with SD cards.

The fact that they're used in dash cams, exposed to high temperature thermal cycles, and recording tens of terabytes of data which can be more than the typical consumer HDD/SSD in it's lifetime is quite impressive.

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Recently I found a long lost go-pro style camera using metal detector, after it had fallen off an RC plane, which crashed into a tree in dense forest. Over nearly a decade the camera had been buried several centimeters into the ground, and the card inside the camera wasn't particularly well protected (just an open slot, not waterproof or anything), which made it exposed to lots of water and freezing winters for nearly a decade. After some cleaning the SD card worked perfectly, and all the data was intact. It even had the crash recorded in it. I was impressed by that. The camera didn't survive though.

I recommend everyone take a picture of their contact information with their digital cameras, that way if it gets lost and found, people know who to at least send the pictures to if the camera is destroyed.

I imagine the RC plane's owner would get a real kick if years later the camera was found and they got the footage back.

(I used to work at Philmont Scout Ranch and would do a lot of detective work to get people their cameras back.)

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