SD Cards after a few years in trail camera

[Bean Counter]

Has anyone ever software tested their SD cards for bad sectors after a few weeks/months/years in the rain, heat, cold, bugs, dust, sunlight, moisture, moonlight, saliva, darkness, snow, bear scratches, urine, spider webs, dirt, etc etc etc? I'm about to pull my trail cameras from a month long soak from up in the Elk Factory and I'm wondering if it would be a colossally bad idea to use them in my DSLR. They got about 5 months of use last year, too. I'll probably mark them with a red sharpie and keep them as backups only.

i would think at minimum i should put them in a ziploc bag with some silica packs for a few days to make sure they're fully dried out, and format all the images off of them without bothering to check for any masher bulls. all we have here in Arizona are dinks anyway

[LeviD1]

I have 3 cards that are about 3 1/2 years old and they sit in my cameras all year long pretty much. I have never had a problem and they are still working like champs. If your camera is good there shouldn't be really any moisture getting in.

[Bean Counter]

Yeah my brownings have a nice gasket that encloses as the main door slams shut. But the primos has a dinky little plunger type plug at the bottom. At least its on the bottom and not likely to take a lot of dripping.

[bobcat]

In my experience sd cards are pretty much indestructible. I've ran them through the washing machine at least twice now, with no effect.

[Bean Counter]

I've read that a few times--always nice to hear. I just dropped $100 on a 64GB CF card. I'm hoping between being bigger so that my spastic fingers don't misplace it and quality that it will be forgiving if it meets such a fateful swim 

[fishnfur]

Mine have done the washing machine voyage three times and still work.  I did have one that inexplicably broke in two- front and back casings.  That one did not survive!