is there a way to know when memory is dying? (SD, CF, USB, etc)

[phritosan]

I seem to recall reading about a program recently that could give a heads up how long your memory had left, but over the last week ive looked at hundreds of programs. I got in a mood to play with my ipaq, you all know how it is. but, bookmark crazy as i went, i missed that one.

is there a way to tell how many read/writes your memory has left?

thanks!

[Menneisyys]

I seem to recall reading about a program recently that could give a heads up how long your memory had left, but over the last week ive looked at hundreds of programs. I got in a mood to play with my ipaq, you all know how it is. but, bookmark crazy as i went, i missed that one.

is there a way to tell how many read/writes your memory has left?

thanks!

You shouldn't be afraid of your flash-based memory cards/sticks 'die' because of the write/read cycles. Flash memory controllers are done so that once a memory cell becomes useless, the controller units simply map it out and don't use it in the future. The user only sees some (not much) free space decreasing, nothing else.

[Lex]

Is there a 'sudden death' syndrome with these storage media? One day it works, the next day it won't and seems gone for good? Any tips or brands to avoid?

[Menneisyys]

Is there a 'sudden death' syndrome with these storage media? One day it works, the next day it won't and seems gone for good? Any tips or brands to avoid?

Some people have reported this; and, the case with the palmOne T3 vs. SanDisk SD cards is still known (the Palm, before issuing the ROM upgrade, overdrove the SD cards so much than (relativeky) weaker cards like those from SanDisk died). Still, that was a bug specific to the T3 and no other PDA. No other PDA has ever turned out to be a flash ROM-card killer.

Sudden death is very rare. My case (which can't be generalized though!): I've been using WinCE devices since their inception, and - except for some real RAM-based PCMCIA cards back in the WinCE 1.0 days - used tons of different flash ROM-based cards with my devices. No flash memory card has ever died on me (knocking on wood).

[Lex]

No flash memory card has ever died on me (knocking on wood). Thanks for this response and for all you contribute to this Forum, Menneisyys. It's a great resource to have such access to folks 'in the know' and ready to answer.

[portnoy]

I've experienced a couple strange instances just recently of cards going wacky. First was a SmartMedia card that I tried to read using the card reader attached to my Toshiba e335 through the Toshiba Host adapter cable. It scrambled the pictures on the card, not only that but from that time on even after formatting the card on both the computer using the card reader as well as in the camera, even new pictures were unreadable on the ccomputer. Finally I tried using my Memplug SmartMedia adapter in my Handspring Visor and that did format the card and now it works fine again.

Second was the SD card I use in my Toshiba PDA, when in the card reader in my computer it would report as unwritable as write protected. I formatted that in my Toshiba using Storage Tools (http://www.pocketpcfreewares.com/en/index.php?soft=545) and now it seems to be fine again. While I was at it I set it to format as FAT32. Don't know if that'll make any difference though.