Replace edge-storage cards before wear becomes evidence loss

Bottom line: an edge-storage card can still appear installed while its remaining write life or recording reliability is deteriorating. Health information is useful only when someone collects it, understands its product limits, and acts before footage is needed.

Source fact: supported devices expose storage health and failure events

The AXIS OS Knowledge Base states that storage-device health statistics are available from AXIS OS 6.20 for Axis Surveillance Cards, including an estimated wear indication. From AXIS OS 10.3, an event can be created when the configured SD-card wear level is reached. Those version and media qualifiers are important: the presence, meaning, and accuracy of a health field cannot be assumed for every card or camera.

Health telemetry is an early-warning input, not proof that every expected segment is readable. A card may also fail because of filesystem damage, improper removal, power interruption, temperature, unsupported capacity, or another condition not summarized by a wear percentage.

Source boundary and applicability

The knowledge base describes Axis products and software versions. It does not specify a universal replacement percentage, warrant third-party cards, or guarantee evidence availability. Check the camera datasheet, approved-media list, firmware documentation, retention design, and environmental limits for the exact deployment.

Applicability questions

Is the card primary storage, failover storage, or a short buffering layer?

Which camera, AXIS OS version, card model, capacity, and endurance class are installed?

Can the monitoring system collect wear, filesystem, mount, recording, and failure events?

How quickly can a failed card be replaced without losing required coverage?

Is encryption enabled, and can authorized personnel recover or reinitialize the media safely?

DSE recommendation: manage cards as consumable evidence infrastructure

The following steps are DSE recommendations based on the cited source.

Maintain an asset record for every card with installation date, camera, model, capacity, firmware, purpose, and replacement history. Poll only documented health fields and alert on storage failure, unmounted media, recording interruption, or an organization-approved wear threshold. Set that threshold from the card vendor’s documented behavior, observed write load, retention consequence, and service time rather than copying a percentage from another product.

Use a controlled replacement process: confirm server or alternate recording, preserve evidence under hold, stop writes if required, replace with approved media, format or encrypt through the supported interface, and validate new recordings. Sanitize retired cards under the organization’s media policy.

Verification and evidence

Keep card inventories, health snapshots, alert-delivery tests, sample recording searches, oldest-footage checks, replacement tickets, post-change clips, and sanitization records. Periodically retrieve video from the card itself across several timestamps; a green monitoring dashboard alone is insufficient evidence.

Official references

AXIS OS Knowledge Base – Axis Communications