Flash Memory, a Look Back

An anonymous reader writes "XYZComputing has an interesting roundup of CompactFlash cards manufactured between 1998 and 2005. The cards go through a number of tests to see how the many changes which CF cards have undergone have affected their performance. One of the most interesting aspects of the article is a head-to-head comparison of "extreme" speed flash memory and that same company's less expensive standard model."

Interesting

[MBCook]

This is an interesting little article. The most interesting this is that in all this time the flash format is the same. Lucky. I'm not sure that will hold for the next 6 years. CF is popular, but it is wider than ExpressCard 34 (which could be a problem) and it has SD/MiniSD/MicroSD/MS/MS-Duo/Micro-MS/MMC/12 other things biting at it's heals (SD is getting very popular).

I find the difference between the two top Sandisk cards (the normal and the Ultra III) very interesting. I've been meaning to buy a new memory card for my camera (I'd like a bigger one) and knowing that the difference is that little could save me some money.

But that one card's access time is just HORRIDNESS. As the author said, that was bundled for free with a camera, and you do get what you pay for. Wow.

Re:Interesting

[Ford Prefect]

But that one card's access time is just HORRIDNESS. As the author said, that was bundled for free with a camera, and you do get what you pay for. Wow.

As a kind of contrast - with the camera I got shortly before Christmas, I got 1.5GB of free CompactFlash storage. One 1GB card which came in the box (it seems a pretty fast one, too) and upon registering the camera, a 256MB one through the post.

Unfortunately, SanDisk's supplies were apparently a bit low, so it metamorphosed into a 512MB effort on the way. It a

Way back when ...

[corngrower]

I remember back when cameras didn't have built-in flash. Cameras for the masses used flash cubes or flash strips. The flash units for SLRs were separate items that attached to the hot shoe.

Can't Live without Flash Memory

[denverradiosucks]

I got my first flash memory drive about two years ago. For me, its the best thing to happen to storage in years.

With that said, I am still surprised by the large number of floppies used by students and teachers in our education system (K-12). I did IT consulting work at a charter school for two years (just left for a higher paying job), and I had numerous cases where students (and even teachers) were saving documents directly to floppy disks! They would be distraught beyond description when they found out the disk went bad as it was crushed and pounded inside of a backpack, and the data was destroyed. I told everyone that had this happen to them to switch to usb flash drives and it has made the biggest difference.

My usb drive has been through the washing machine, dropped, stepped on, and plugged into hundreds of machines over the last two years with no data integrity loss. It holds all my software utilities for my job, and two years worth of school work. I've had hard drives fail, CD that stopped reading, and the aforementioned floppy disks. I would say that flash memory has been the most reliable form of data storage I have used in my 20 years of using computers.

Re:Can't Live without Flash Memory

[jcgf]

I can second this. I once swallowed mine and it went right through my digestive system and kept working. I was even able to was it with bleach to get the shit stink off it without harm.

Removeable media only makes sense..

[Inoshiro]

if you don't have an end-to-end network. Or if you are dealing with prohibitively large file sizes (more than 512mb usually).

Because my computer(s) at home is(are) connected to the internet, I never need not have access to them. I can freely open up my laptop at the University and access my home resources, much as I can from a University terminal.

Flash media makes sense when you go somewhere where there isn't nice packet switched network joining things, but I haven't run across that yet. The only flash m

Lack of "nice packet switched network"

[tepples]

Flash media makes sense when you go somewhere where there isn't nice packet switched network joining things, but I haven't run across that yet.

I have seen such situations:

1. Mobile use outside free 802.11 hotspots
2. Rural residences, which often can't get anything higher than dial-up (be it POTS or ISDN)
3. Residences period, given anti-server provisions in the terms of most residential Internet access services provided by cable companies or phone companies
4. Computers that run a free software operating system

Maybe you didn't understand my comment.

[Inoshiro]

I'm talking about the common case I see on my campus -- people have small files they want to transfer between school and home (like a document file), which fits into the model of those people the original poster mentioned. This works great with Gmail and Hotmail and Yahoo mail, because all provide very ample temp storage compared to a removeable media device (after all, 2gb of flash is still over 100$ Canadian vs. the free email accounts).

And, of course, when I say "I haven't run across it", I mean I perso

Re:Maybe you didn't understand my comment.

[tepples]

The majority of people [can get and afford broadband because they] live in large economic centres, etc.

Any argument centred solely around the majority is like 2 wolves and 1 sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

when they could easily use a USB 2.5" or 3.5" external drive

Which is still "removable media". I agree that at this stage of network development, video should be moved around on a USB hard disk drive. But the first sentence of your comment was "Removable media only makes sense if you don'

networks go down

[barutanseijin]

The free wireless internet at the local cafe was down today. The baristas do not know what do when this happens, so it stays down until the right person comes through the rotation.

The network is not always available, or using it imposes some non-trivial costs. For example, at my previous job, I used to do a lot of my most critical work in the morning at a cafe w/o wireless. Yes, I could have gone to another cafe, but this one was right above the train platform at the station where I had to transfer,

No disagreement there.

[Inoshiro]

My point, though, was that many people could be easily using the internet instead of using floppy disks, let alone USB memory keys! If you want to live the most inexpensive lifestyle possible, it's best to save the money you would've spent on the USB memory key. Free Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo makes this possible even for the least capable people (in terms of having their own servers on a 24/7 fast connection, not intelligence).

Of course, my iPod Shuffle is also a USB memory key. Or, if I have my PSP on me, I s

Re:Maybe you didn't understand my comment.

[ShakaUVM]

Life on a campus is like an Oasis of technology. I loved my time at UC San Diego.

Now I travel all over the country doing tech stuff. And I use a 1GB Lexar JumpDrive as my baby. Yes, I have an FTP with all my necessary files on it, yes I email my files to myself as a backup. Yes, my cell phone doubles as a 128kpbs through Verizon. But when you're in a hotel and you need to work on your files and then go to a Kinko's to print em out, you had better have a USB drive.

Seriously, whenever I book a hotel I always

Useless Statistics

[inio]

Pretty much every single measurement they do is useless for the #1 use of compact flash cards: higher end point&shoot and low-end DSLRs cameras. Why do I care how much CPU my computer takes to read data off a card, or how fast it can read the data? Those are both offline processes that happen while I'm shooting more pictures my the other card. The only statistic that matters to the primary customer use is the sustained write rate, which this page completely ignores.

Not just for cameras!

[MikeFM]

Ahh but some clever people use flash memory for more interesting things like their server's base filesystem. For us this kind of comparison is very useful so that we can see which CF cards are going to give us the best results. Flash-based computing is only going to grow as prices go down and sizes go up. It's fast, small, low power, low heat, quiet, and hard to break. Much better than a hdd for many uses.

READ vs WRITE and Power consumption

[Sosarian]

Rob Galbraith has a long more comprehensive list of CF cards rated by transfer to computer performance here:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=6007-6133 [robgalbraith.com]

The Sandisk Extreme III 1G vs Sandisk Standard 1G on the CF to computer test scores 12.859MB/sec vs 2.377MB/sec

In my Canon 10D
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=6007-6111 [robgalbraith.com]
1.387MB/sec vs 806K/sec (sorry slower older camera that can't reach the speeds of the newer DSLRs)

READ and WRITE speeds may be different. I'm more concerned with how quick the camera writes to the card (Galbraith's numbers) than how quick I can read the data off the card (XYZs numbers)

However...for my money battery life is more important. I'm more concerned with how much battery life the Extreme III vs the Standard card consumes.

I have a 128Mb Sandisk Standard and it drains the battery on my Canon 10D much more quickly than the 512Mb Extreme III that I have. And when the battery gets low on the camera I get an "Error #2" very quickly when using the standard card.

Unfortunately neither Galbraith or XYZ give any numbers on power consumption.

Galbraith goes into more detail on how to compare and review cards here:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=6007 [robgalbraith.com]

SD cards are still faster

[jonr]

The CF standard is beginning to show its age. SD cards are close in capacity, and definitly faster. You also don't have any pins to bend in your camera.

Advantages of CF

[tepples]

The CF standard is beginning to show its age.

CompactFlash is merely another form factor of parallel ATA, meaning that in a pinch or as a boot drive, a CF medium can be connected to a PC's ATA cable through a pin adapter, unlike SD. Free software also supports all features of CF, unlike SD that has built-in support for digital restrictions management.

Re:Advantages of CF

[tlhIngan]

Actually, CompactFlash is another formfactor for PCMCIA (not CardBus, mind you). In fact, it's not too far removed from PCMCIA, lacking only a couple of very infrequently used lines (a few upper address bits, battery voltage detects, +12V, +5V support). The missing upper address lines aren't a big deal, since linear flash cards are very rare (only Newton and Cisco used them, I believe).

Most PCMCIA cards were I/O cards, and need very few address lines, especially true of storage media. Most storage media fol

The standard SanDisk benchmark can not be correct

[jurt1235]

I used that card, and the Apacer PhotoSteno Pro II, and the apacer scored 50% faster in random use, and about 100% faster in linear read/write actions (dd). Luckily I already used the Apacer before, and noticed the huge difference. Since the apacer has a theoretical speed of ~14MB/s, I really can not believe that the standard Sandisk (2003 model) scores this high in the test.

Lifetime?

[JoeD]

Has anyone done any studies on the lifetime of flash memory?

They have a limited number of times they can be rewritten, and it'd be interesting if someone has ever hooked one up and had a PC repeatedly rewrite a sector until it failed.

Re:Lifetime?

[psergiu]

Yep. Tried to install Debian on one CF card and had the bad ideea to setup a 4 mb swap partition. The machine had little RAM and it swapped a lot.
It finished installing but it began spewing I/O errors
I tried to format the CF in the camera - bad ideea number 2. The "uniform wearing" algorythm spreaded the bad sectors everywhere - the card became absolutelly unusable.

Nice article.

[pcraven]

That was a great flash-back. A real trip down memory lane.