Comments on: Memory Cards – How to Extend Their Life and Keep Them Healthy

By: thuy

thuy — Fri, 15 May 2009 02:49:41 +0000

Thank you machinedog. Only if it could give me an accurate reading. Oh well.

By: MachineDog

MachineDog — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:01:55 +0000

“Has anyone had an issue with SanDisk Extreme III not reading the right capacity in their cameras? I have a Nikon D80 and a 8GB SanDisk Extreme III. When I put the card in blank, it says I have over 651 images that I can take. However, I have gone over that amount. Is there any way I can fix the card reading?”

Image sizes can range depending on what you’re taking a picture of, to my understanding. If your picture is an all-white picture it’ll take up far less space than one with a lot of color changes. That’s why it’s only an estimate.

By: Biomech

Biomech — Thu, 14 May 2009 19:35:59 +0000

It’s also worth pointing out, in regards to data recovery, that when a file (data) is “deleted from a storage device such as a memory card or harddrive, that data is merely marked as unrequired. The data is still there but the system knows it is available to be used if required. There are various applications around for recovering data that has been deleted and they work very well (I’ve done 2 huge harddrives in as many years). The system wont use this space unless it needs to, this is why so many hard drives can be picked up on ebay and have the sensitive data recovered. You might not write over that deleted file for 20years!

By: Anita

Anita — Thu, 14 May 2009 14:30:53 +0000

What does all of this mean for the new Eye-Fi card? information is being sent from my card to my computer every time my camera is ON in my house. Is it being read or does that count as a “write”. Do these cards not last as long?

By: thuy

thuy — Thu, 14 May 2009 04:39:29 +0000

Has anyone had an issue with SanDisk Extreme III not reading the right capacity in their cameras? I have a Nikon D80 and a 8GB SanDisk Extreme III. When I put the card in blank, it says I have over 651 images that I can take. However, I have gone over that amount. Is there any way I can fix the card reading?

By: Danro

Danro — Mon, 11 May 2009 22:00:37 +0000

Never forget the electrostatic discharges if you are wearing nylon or synthetic clothes. This could damage a flash card as i know. It is good to avoid touching the contacts of the card. But nobody noticed (underlined) this….

By: Fredshome

Fredshome — Mon, 11 May 2009 09:05:17 +0000

Will above says it all, really. The only real risk with memory cards is substandard units from strange brands that fail unexpectedly (aka write-only cards). Buy regular brands (Sandisk, etc.) and that problem goes away.

Current flash memory is pretty much immortal for practical purposes if you don’t abuse the hardware.

By: Will

Will — Sun, 10 May 2009 12:01:09 +0000

Thanks for telling us who you got these tips from. I’ll make sure that whenever I need data recovery around Sydney I avoid this guy entirely.

Some of the information given in the article *may* have been relevant five years ago, but is now hopelessly out of date.

“you might reduce the card’s life expectancy by half just by reading a single picture.” – this is completely misleading, the only reason reading a single picture could reduce a card’s life expectancy by half, is if it was already dead.

Except in the case of very snap-happy photojournalists, modern multi-GB flash cards will outlive the cameras they’re used in by several orders of magnitude.

By: Fletch

Fletch — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:20:32 +0000

The photo of they guy holding the San Disk CF card has photoshop disaster writted all over it! Was it really necessary?

By: MeiTeng

MeiTeng — Tue, 05 May 2009 07:10:18 +0000

Thanks for the tips. I have only recently discovered the need for reformatting of memory cards.