Average life of media?

[jepinto]

I've a Fuji 128 xD card for a Fuji S5000.  All of a sudden, the camera will give a "Card is not initialized" message-Right after just taking a set of shots, with no error message.  And now the card can't be read by wither the Cube of the MBP.

Second time it has happened.  Card gone bad?  Camera going wonky?  I'm losing my mind???

Card went from camera to card reader, not even into the hold of the nether regions aka my purse.

I can format it in the camera, but I'm afraid to depend on it.

[Jack W]

Jennie,

If you can't read it, you have nothing to lose by formatting it in the camera.

And that's where it should be formatted anyway.

New cards are really cheap. 2gb going for $20-$30. Smaller ones even less.

Go for it gal!

My 2€ worth.

- Jack

[krissel]

QUOTE

One of the main considerations of working with a flash media is its reliability in terms of bit-flipping, bad block handling, and life span.  All flash architectures today suffer from a phenomenon known as "bit-flipping".  This "minor"glitch may hang your system completely if it corrupts a critical file.[7]  This phenomenon is more common in NAND devices than in NOR.   NAND devices are often shipped with bad blocks randomly scattered throughout them; these must be initially scanned and mapped to improve reliability.  A flash block must be erased before writing to it. But the number of times that it can be erased is limited.   NAND devices offer up to 10 times the life span of NOR devices.[1]  Most NAND systems utilize a wear leveling algorithm to make sure all cells get distributed erase/writes, and NAND is rated for a minimum of 10,000 erase/write cycles.

http://ipcommunications.tmcnet.com/news/20...4/23/280615.htm

This guy has a lot of good suggestions especially concerning static:

http://paxtonprints.com/index.php?x=flash_media

More info:

http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/19711.html

[Paddy]

Jennie, while your card should theoretically last for 10,000 or more read/write cycles, it may be faulty. Jack's right - cards are too cheap to continue using a card you don't trust!

http://dealnews.com/memory/prices/x-D-Card/31/1GB.html

Steve Paxton's advice on the link Kris provided is excellent, particularly the bit about always storing your cards in plastic cases (not loose at the bottom of your purse!! ). And the other point he made about having multiple smaller cards is also good. Why spend a lot to buy a large capacity card, only to have it go toes up or get lost, as well as run the risk of losing a LOT of pics? Depending on the size of pictures your camera produces (and its settings) a  "large capacity" card could mean different things though! I shoot with 512MB to 2 GB cards generally, but all my cameras are over 6MP. I also make a point of downloading pics every night or more often when taking pics I can't easily reproduce. Little portable drives for that purpose are terrific if you don't have a laptop handy. I'm paranoid though - I download 'em onto at least two different drives before erasing the card in the camera!

Note: xD cards don't appear to come in capacities larger than 2 GB at the moment.

[jepinto]

Well, it did it with a brand new card.  So, put brain in gear.... low-in case anyone is interested and it happens when I try to use an image directly from the card.

We cooked some really beautiful octopus a couple of evenings ago.  While in the marinade, we thought to get a shot of the dish-who knows when one might open a restaurant and need menu shots?-and rather than save it to the hard drive first, just was going to email the shot using Apple Mail.  It hung up the computer.  Did a Force Quit, and voila! card is no longer readable.

So, for whatever reason, now, I save to hard drive first! then use the image.

[Gregg]

On the more general theme your topic line evokes...

I'm wondering about the reliablilty of a flash drive in comparison to a CD or the ancient floppy or zip disk. Any horror stories out there about losing the data off a flash? Of course, it would be easy to misplace one...