MicroSD cards have their drawbacks, mostly being too easy to lose because of their size; but I'll tell you what I like best about them: they're as easy as optical disks to destroy (for security) if they fail. After a year or so, my 64 GB microSD card went dead and I couldn't revive it; so I just tore/crumbled it up with a few twists of the finger and threw the bits away. No need to bother with scissors. I can never do that with a dead hard drive.

They are easily hidden also. I remember seeing a whodunit detective comedy thing where a dog was chipped with a micro sdcard.

They 'die' regularly, (from what I've read) - I dislike them because I find them awkward to manipulate.

I still use standard SDHC cards, via a USB adapter, can't remember when I bought them, but they're still going strong, & I even had 2 laptops that would boot from them, which was very handy, as I could swap O/S systems very quickly.

I sometimes wished that they had been used internally, in replacement of the hard disk, but then we got SSD drives, so that problem went away.

Being small and cheap seems to make them attractive to the manufacturers of small devices like dashcams, who can use "storage not included" to keep their list prices down. In general I think that's better than them using non-replaceable storage even with the high failure rate.

I used SD and µSD cards for backups for a while, but I found the USB adaptors were temperamental even though the cards were OK. Between that and the cost per GB I ended up going back to old-fashioned hard discs - I don't need to hide my backups in a matchbox, at least not yet.

We tore apart a cheap USB thumb stick once to find that it really was a micro SD card with connections to adjust it for the USB plug.

No problem believing that. But that's probably why I generally stick with Sandisk or Kingston.

Not sure any flash card is worth a darn no matter size or make. There used to be a military grade one but they were bought out.

I should just replace my phone's sd card every year to avoid it crashing??

The advantage of microSD cards is that they're really small. The disadvantage of microSD cards is that they're really small. They don't take up much space so they fit into very small devices, but they're easy to lose. I don't know of any way around that. I've had few problems with the cards, but lots of problems with the readers, at least the USB types that have slots for inserting the card. I've had a bunch of those quit working. The cards work fine in a working reader, though.

I've got several SBCs and I've got a lot of these micros. They do have a limited lifespan and only so many writes. I've had several quit on me. What's interesting is that when they quit they switch to read-only. You can do anything you want(delete, format, copy,etc) and it appears to change, but when you remount them all it's just like it was when it quit.

This is a filesystem safety feature so the only way to get rid of that data is to crush the card. At least you don't lose data when it quits.

Yes, and that returns to what I observed: that they're easier to destroy than other media. Consider the difference between stealing media (to steal data) and destroying media. People want to steal your media more often than they would want to destroy it. They might want to destroy your data because they're jerks, but how often? If the medium is to be destroyed, it's just as likely that you personally want to destroy it, because the medium broke and you just want to make the data inaccessible.

I have a bunch of microSD to bigSD adapters I bought in bulk plus a few USB microSD readers. I always keep my microSD inserted into them, and the whole thing is kept in a small box. I've never lost one.

I haven't either, but it's not through lack of trying. My cards not in use are usually in cases that came with them (multiple cards will fit) or in standard-size SD adapters. The main reason I mentioned loss is that some people lose things more often than others. And I'm getting to the age where things get lost easier than they used to.