Compact Flash vs. Microdrive

[cajenn]

If compact flash cards have a somewhat limited life, how does that compare to a microdrive? Does the microdrive have a longer lifespan than a cf?

Anxiously waiting.. Either that or I will probably use my IDE drive..

Thanks, Charles

[rich]

Charles,

I have not verified this yet, but I am assuming that the Microdrive will give you a much longer write life, in a heavy writing environment. If you do tons of writing, I would use the Microdrive over the CF card. I have tested them and they seem to work fine. (note: tests were not exhaustive)

[ncbill]

Any difference on speed?

I would think the Microdrive would be faster, but you might not be able to tell on an Apple // system!

[Andrew_Webber]

I just recieved my CCFA card and all works great. I am toying with the idea of using my microdrive over a 64MB Sandisk card, but I just want to confirm that the Sandisk card will read as many times as you want?

If the Sandisk CF has a life of 300,000 write cycles per sector is that 300,000 writes to a particular sector? So if i save to the same file 300,000 times then it would become an issue?

Just want to say thanks to Rich for all his hardwork, the board, manual are very professional! Also thanks to anyone who helped make it happen :smile:

[rich]

Andrew,

Indeed, the number of read cycles any CF card will endure in virtually unlimited.
The number of write cycles is not. The block that will be "Hit" the most is block 2 of each partition. I have just put a call into SanDisk to try to get a better understanding of their products behavior as the write limits are exceeded. In the mean time here is a excerpt from the SanDisk Product PDF file:

CompactFlash Memory Cards contain a sophisticated defect and error management system. This system is analogous to the systems found in magnetic disk drives and in many cases offers enhancements. If necessary, CompactFlash Memory Cards will reunite data from a defective sector to a good sector. This is completely transparent to the host and does not consume any user data space. The CompactFlash Memory Card soft error rate specification is much better than the magnetic disk drive specification. In the extremely rare case a read error does occur, CompactFlash Memory Cards have innovative algorithms to recover the data.
These defect and error management systems, coupled with the solid state construction, give CompactFlash Memory Cards unparalleled
reliability.
_________________
Thanks,
Rich


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: rich on 2002-05-30 14:34 ]</font>