Flash memory

[lobster]

According to wikipedia , Its endurance is 10,000 to 1,000,000 erase cycles.

So memory cards for mobile phones, digital cameras etc.. only have limited amount of use before they have to be replaced.

Obviously used 10,000 time at a miniumum would take even diehard photographers a while to go through a 2gb memory card. I doubt someone would reach that amount of times before a new camera and card is bought, having said that some people still use cameras from the 1950's or before.

[boskysquelch]

common discussed little often proven. seriously it comes up in Digicam mags/forum all the time...ffs people throw putas away and 5 years later I'm still using them...recently I've watched HDs that have been put aside for 3 years...totally unusable...some clever spod comes along...BANG,,,they work agin...back to flash cards..personally I go for a mid size rather than uber...256 as opposed to Gigs...seems more sensible to spread the bet that you'lll get a fk_up...personally...I've used x2 256cards for the last 3 years...average of say 50 pickees per day...no shagged files yet...well cept a few but they were easilly forgotten...and the problem n'er repeated :)

Mind you I've seen loads and loads of buggered cards thru misuse(most commonly inserting/removing during powerups/downs/ins)..by others. :D

[FridgeMagnet]

I noticed this on the packet when I was buying a new flash drive the other day, but I have never ever heard of anybody having this problem with flash memory. I'd say that you're much more likely to physically damage the drive or card.

As far as I understand a "write-erase cycle" doesn't depend on the size of the card, it's for each "block" (however large that is) so a single operation with a large file might use more than one. I still don't think it's a big problem, given how cheap they're becoming.

Does anyone know what the lifespan of a 3.5" floppy generally is? From hearing about all the people who've stored their thesis on the same floppy all the time, worked on it from that constantly and suddenly the floppy dies just before they're supposed to hand it in, I'm guessing that it might not be that long if you use it every day....

[tom k&e]

Even at the low end of that range, it's equivalent to >25 years of daily use, which is probably longer than the rest of the camera will last, and will definetly make it completely obselete.

It really is a non-issue

[Drarok]

Does anyone know what the lifespan of a 3.5" floppy generally is? From hearing about all the people who've stored their thesis on the same floppy all the time, worked on it from that constantly and suddenly the floppy dies just before they're supposed to hand it in, I'm guessing that it might not be that long if you use it every day....

From sealed wrapped box to death? Mean time ~ 10 minutes. ;)

They're not THAT bad, but at work, we've taken one from the box, put some data on it, put it in a jiffy bag, taken it somewhere, and it's corrupt.

[Bob_the_lost]

From sealed wrapped box to death? Mean time ~ 10 minutes. ;)

They're not THAT bad, but at work, we've taken one from the box, put some data on it, put it in a jiffy bag, taken it somewhere, and it's corrupt.
You don't work with FM do you, cos that might explain this...

[Drarok]

FM - radio, or FM FridgeMagnet?

And not afaik, no.

[stdPikachu]

From sealed wrapped box to death? Mean time ~ 10 minutes. ;)

Lucky bastard. In my hands, the lifetime of a floppy is measured in picoseconds :D

Back OT, flash does have a limited lifetime, but in embedded devices like digicams it is very rarely a problem because the OS doesn't write to the filesystem much - pretty much the only thing it'll write for is when you add a new picture.

The lifetime of flash memory usually only becomes an issue when people try and use it for something it wasn't designed for, like installing windows on (sicne windows does heavy rewriting to the pagefile even if you have gigs of RAM).

[Poi E]

Saw an 8 gig card the other day. Blimmen heck! That's about 20 times the size of my first hard drive. Will solid state displace HDs at some point?

[Bob_the_lost]

FM - radio, or FM FridgeMagnet?

And not afaik, no.
Magnet? Geddit? No?

*Fetches coat*

(Solid state is on the way in, there's some interesting stuff being played around with if memory serves.)

[Poi E]

if memory serves.)

badoom tish!

[Drarok]

OW!!!! My sense of humour!

[tom k&e]

Saw an 8 gig card the other day. Blimmen heck! That's about 20 times the size of my first hard drive. Will solid state displace HDs at some point?

It's about 200 times the size of mine :eek: Which had to be partitioned, as 32 meg was the largest the os would recognise :eek:

And no, I think magnetic HDDs are here to stay. As std says, virtual memory will toast flash cards in the long run, and anyhow they're only going up in size at the same speed as HDDs, so won't overtake them.

[stdPikachu]

As std says, virtual memory will toast flash cards in the long run, and anyhow they're only going up in size at the same speed as HDDs, so won't overtake them.

Not only that, but sustained reads from modern flash are slower than sustained reads on modern HDD's. The only thing they're good at is random access since there's no rotational latency.

Some of you might have seen the upcoming "hybrid" hard drive thread, where hard drives write things to flash and keep them there, and only write them to the hard drive after a long while. It's a move designed to help reduce battery consumption in laptops by keeping the HD spun down as long as possible, but I still don't think they'll make a viable long term solution.

Hopefully the onset of MRAM (non-volatile DRAM) will see the birth of a new generation of solid state hard drives, but it's still years away from consumer level. Kinda in the middle is Gigabyte's (unspectacular but interesting) "iRAM" which is a PCI card filled with cheap user-supplied DDR RAM and a 16hour rechargable battery to keep the data alive. At the moment it's limited by the SATA bus, but it's still a very fast performer - but of course it doens't make sense for embedded devices like cameras.

[Bob_the_lost]

OW!!!! My sense of humour!
ithangeuw

*bows*

Why is the read/write speed lower for flash memory? Surely putting more of them in parralell should reduce that effect, a RAID style system?