Once upon a time I owned a GameCube memory card, specifically so that I could have my own save progression when visiting my friend’s house (who actually owned the GameCube and games). That may not really apply anymore?
On another note though, making the sd card read only means it will last significantly longer. Flash storage (like SD cards) have limited write cycles, so this preserves the games themselves while leaving the much smaller save files to be written somewhere else where they’re easier to back up.
Bit rot happens on much longer time scales (like 10+ years), and can happen regardless of use. Most storage media has this as an issue though, so that’s why it’s always good to have backups.
Save games probably wouldn’t have a huge effect on write endurance, but certainly in some uses that write constantly like a dashcam, it could potentially destroy the flash in a matter of months. There are endurance sd cards for this kind of application, but they usually come in smaller sizes, and I’ve still had them fail eventually.
Why would I not want the savegames on the same card as the game? For me that doesn’t make sense.
Might be to prevent the SD card from running out of write cycles?
Once upon a time I owned a GameCube memory card, specifically so that I could have my own save progression when visiting my friend’s house (who actually owned the GameCube and games). That may not really apply anymore?
On another note though, making the sd card read only means it will last significantly longer. Flash storage (like SD cards) have limited write cycles, so this preserves the games themselves while leaving the much smaller save files to be written somewhere else where they’re easier to back up.
Since you brought it up, what about bit rot, which happens regardless of writes?
Bit rot happens on much longer time scales (like 10+ years), and can happen regardless of use. Most storage media has this as an issue though, so that’s why it’s always good to have backups.
Save games probably wouldn’t have a huge effect on write endurance, but certainly in some uses that write constantly like a dashcam, it could potentially destroy the flash in a matter of months. There are endurance sd cards for this kind of application, but they usually come in smaller sizes, and I’ve still had them fail eventually.