Slashdot Mirror
Memory Card Torture Tests
saikatguha266 writes "BBC is reporting that five types of memory cards were dipped into cola, put through a washing machine, dunked in coffee, trampled by a skateboard, run over by a child's toy car, given to a six-year-old boy to destroy, smashed by a sledgehammer and nailed to a tree. It was still possible to retrieve photos from the xD and Smartmedia cards while the others didn't survive just the last two tests. "
To avoid damage to your retinas, click here
right, coz it happens to me all the time, to nail a memory card on a tree by accident...
:)
Note that I did had a PS2 memory card go to the washing machine, and it worked like a charm afterwards. Thank God, I was not going to start FF7 all over again
Je n'ai pas d'avenir Je n'ai qu'un destin Celui de n'être qu'un souvenir C'est pour demain
Sounds like these memory cards are about ready for use in the real world now that they've passed durability testing. Oh wait...
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
"Most of them did fail to get through two additional tests - being smashed by a sledgehammer and being nailed to a tree."
The number of times i've accidently nailed my high-tech electronics to a tree... anything that survives that most common of IT mishaps will be a real lifesaver.
you realy want to destroy one of those memory cards (compromising pics or whatever on it)... looks like your only chance is a sledgehammer.
At last, indestructible storage for my p0rn!!
no no no no. That was just your camera trying to honor the old 'what happens in vegas, stays in vegas' rule.
Although this only really applies to the nailed-to-a-tree test, where the nail goes through will matter. In DIL ICs, most of the area is taken up by connections to the pins. If these cards have the core close to the edge with the connectors, and a nail is put through the center, it could miss the core entirely. And if the nail went through the bridges, a data recovery person could wire a reader the the connectors inside the package.
is this a feature or a bug?
There's always the microwave in the employee breakroom. Guaranteed to destroy small electronics placed within - in a matter of seconds.
Besides the fact that "nailing to a tree" is something which is unlikely to happen to my memory cards, probably the outcome depends strongly is the nail goes trough the flash memory or only trough plastic. Furthermore "washing" should be carried out at temperatures from 30-90 degrees, and the results should be interpreted in terms of flipped bits. Hammering is a combination of mechanical stress and vibration, two things which can be separated (and are interestin separate- one tells you if you might put the memory card in your pocket, the other one if you should damp vibrations if you put it onto your bike). Running it over with a toy card after running it over wit h a skateboard (I suppose with sombody on it) will not do additional damage, i guess! And dipping into cola may oxidise the contacts......
So.... I think the test was not carried out correctly and scientifically......
While it is neat they held up to the test, I have had several just quit working and they had little to no abuse at all. One was for my wife's camera and one for my mp3 player...and neither one that went bad was probably much more than a year old.
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
They don't survive being submerged in molten steel either.
Whats the point of all this destructive testing? Do you really need your media to be THAT tough? (with the obvious exception of military applications but they can afford to pay for that.)
My parents have about 50 baby photo's of me. I have about 2000 digital baby photo's of my daughter. However, if I am lucky 25 of those are really worthy of printing. If 2 out of 10 digital pictures really make it to actual print, I consider that a great deal. I would say that translates to booming business for the printing services.
Most ICs are surprisingly resilient. I remember hearing about somebody testing an atari cartridge to see what it would take to break one. He was trying to see if the arguement for the legality of ROM dumping as a way to backup your games in case they become corrupt really had any merit. IIRC he through it a couple stories onto the sidewalk, rolled over one with his car, hit it with a sledgehammer, dumped soda in it, etc. The case cracked earlier on, but I think the cartridge didn't actually stop working until the actually IC broke after a couple hits with the sledgehammer, although it did continue to work after the circuit board was broken.
That will kill it....
Regardless of these tests, the fact still remains that the vast majority of friends that have had memory cards fail have been using SmartMedia. Practically every person I know with SmartMedia cameras have at least one card that isn't working.
I've been using CompactFlash for a long time, and have yet to have a failure. I have everything from 16M cards (used to carry files around) to 1GB cards (hundreds of photos, filled only on vacation). I don't know any of my friends with CF that have ever had a card fail, though a few of them have had filesystem corruption (I blame that mostly on the devices, not the card).
I think it's odd that with all the things they did to these cards, they did not put them through a microwave. It's not like that would have been hard to do and should happen more often to cards than being nailed to a tree.
http://nyamenation.org/
CF cards usually stand a trip through the washer. Just let it dry (no, don't use the dryer.) If you use a liquid fabric softner, it might not work. The advice I got from a Canon rep was to wash it again, but don't add softner.
DB26
The dustbunnies are under your bed.....
... for something from these guys to handle these.
Anything containing sugar and phosphoric acid will cause damage over a period of time.
There.
To destroy your flash card:
Install a small httpd server on flash card and get it \.ed.
For an extra five (5) points, install Java (Sun) at the same time.
Still, those two cards are a bit out of style, since SM is REALLY old, and xDs are only used by digital cameras made by Fuji and Olympus, so I dont think they will find a great audience.
Black holes were created when god tried to divide by zero
No matter what I used to give one of our CEO's, no matter how hard I'd tested it first, he found new and unusual ways to kill it.
That's the test I want to see: Can it survive a week at home with a mining company CEO?
The same kind of CEO who's password was always "password"....
This message brought to you by Fuji Inc.
C-x C-s C-x k
Its good to know that if Hillbillies steal my memory card and nail it to a tree to worship as a god, I will still be able to get back my precious pictures of last years Christmas party!
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
... of a letter I read in a now long-defunct weekly computer magazine in the UK called New Computer Express. Printed on cheap paper, it attempted to cover all available platforms in one 80-page weekly magazine. This included everything from ZX Spectrums to the then quite new 486 PCs. Macs, Amigas, Ataris, Amstrad CPCs, you name it, they all had their corner in there. Great magazine. Only problem was, their letters page looked like the flamewar from hell...
One guy wrote in saying he had got fed of up how his friend was always boasting about his Amiga 500 and how it was vastly superior to any other machine on the planet, especially this individual's ZX81 Spectrum. So convinced was he, he proposed a test. He offered the letter-writer his Amiga 500 for free if he could come up with one test, any test of his choice, where the ZX81 outperformed the Amiga.
The Speccy-owner, sat down, had a think, realised what to do and called his friend over with his Amiga for the test to begin. The friend arrived, and was summoned to the back garden. The Speccy-owner took his ZX81 frisbee-style and flung it across the garden, landing it perfectly in a compost heap.
The Amiga owner stared at him, spun around with his Amiga, tried throwing it, fell over under the weight, the machine smashing into several pieces. The speccy owner picked up, cleaned off and plugged in his ZX81, and was playing Manic Miner in minutes. The Amiga owner was told to take his trash and go home, which he did, crying...
When it comes to destruction tests, you have to ask "what's the point?". My media cards are normally well protected inside cameras or PCs and are unlikely to be dipped in cola or nailed to trees. However, it's always interesting to see how things work outside of the environment for which they were designed, just like that ZX81 and Amiga 500.
shuffle your feet thru carpet with nylon footwear and pick up a memory card (in Minnesota in February).
Have my cat determine the memory card is alive and subsequently attack the memory card
Have a dog carry the memory card in it's mouth for a couple of hours; then bury the memory card in the back yard.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
Much more real-world than even the dog chewing on your memory card.
:-(
Just insert the card the wrong way up into your card reader. Our Compact Flash card reader is not well keyed and allows this.
Instant card death on powerup
Notice there aren't any brands mentioned (don't know about the magazine article it came from though). I'd bet anything that they bought the pricey stuff. Try those tests with PNY CrapMedia cards and see how long they last.
The earlier versions of their FinePix line used Smartmedia and now the newer ones use xD cards, so they must know what they're doing. Fuji makes awesome cameras for not too much $$$ also!
xD-Picture Card was developed by Fujifilm and Olympus, and for years there's been evidence of SmartMedia phasing out of the market.
After reading a lot of reviews, I bought a FinePix A105 at a low price. While shopping around, however, I counted the xD format as a strike against the FinePix because xD is expensive and isn't widely supported--not even by most multi-card readers. It's good to know that xD performs well, but it still makes me feel somewhat like a Betamax user. Ergonomically, I think Memory Stick (PRO) is what appeals to people most, both for its design and the way in which it's installed/removed; but both xD and Memory Stick demonstrate a conflict of interests: the card size that human hands like best is greater than the card size optimal for installation in digital cameras.
Worsening the ergonomics issue, some cameras place the xD slot inconveniently behind a door on the bottom of the camera; so if the camera is mounted on a tripod or other stand, you have to detach it before you can access the xD door.
These guys have just such imagination. How about some real-life tests, like static electricity, X-ray machine, being left on the dashboard on a sunny day, being brought in on a cold winter day..
And if you are going to drop it in water, use salty water. After all, there are those things called "sea" and "ocean" and people get their cameras splashed when they play near them. Probably no less often then they spill soda on them.
Oh, and when you precious memory card falls out of your pocket while you are crossing the street, there are going to be tons of toy cars running over it.
Sorry, but: yawn.
Real tests would've included rewriting until the flash would die and counting the rewrites.
I think they didn't have enough real material to fill their papers (much of a recent syndrome).
And there are x-ray scanners for the radiation stuff... speakers for the magnetic fields... etc
... they do nothing!
It may have been the USB controller that was damaged. The way that these drives were designed was that the connector was attached directly to the circuit board, without anything else holding it in place. Or, perhaps it may have been the flash memory that was faulty, like in your circumstance.
I nail my memory cards to trees all of the time.
So most memory cards are just as powerful, if not more so, than Jesus. Hmm.
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
Just use such a card as Knoppix home directory, work on it intensively for a month or two. You'll exceed write cycle limit of the flash memory and it will die without a squeak. That's how I busted my Nokia 5510 flash memory. First sectors are corrupted and unwritable.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
maybe mel gibson can direct it.
scott king
Nice to know these cards are so tough. I've been struggling to think of some conceivable situations which might actually cause accidental damage. 1) Trip to beach (Lots of salt and sandy bits) 2) Immersion under pressure (dropped in swimming pool) 3) Magnetic fields (accidentally taken for an MRI scan) 4) Ionizing radiation (Multiple airport X-rays) 5) Extremes of temperature (left in car in winter)
X-ray scanners are quite weak and will do nothing. You get more problems with the background radiation which can be more ionizing to RAM. Things like muons (heavy electrons) can flip a gate or two if lucky. X-ray will do nothing. At least at the levels that people survive.
As to magnetic fields, well, check out the MRI machines. Those have a huge magnetic field and there is the ramp (magnetic field getting changed type of ramp) in the scan area of a quite large amount.
Giving the card to a six year old kid to trash is all very well, but what about a _really_ destructive force like a four year old? There's a good reason why the nearly indestructible Pelican protective cases are guaranteed against everything except shark bite, bear attack and children under five.
My dad dropped his camera in the lake while fishing. The camera was fubar, the XD memory cards still worked and I retreived the photos off them. I use them even today in my own digital camera, he hasn't got one now!
Jonathanjk.com
I'm not worried about the nail-to-a-tree test, but I am worried about the staple-through test. I've only rarely seen a tree in an office, but I've seen many lUsers who are given to some strange behaviors. I've seen them staple through a 5.25" to attach it to a document. What would come of a staple-to-docuemnt for these media? Why didn't they test that?!
Now I'm going worry so much that I'll have problems sleeping, followed by curling up into the fetal position in a dark corner, rocking myself back and forth whispering "Rosbud," until they give me my Thorazine.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Circuit boards are washed during manufacture in something closely resembling a dishwasher, using orange oil. Puting them through a home dish washer is nothing special.
Oh well, what the hell...
I had a compact flash survive the washing machine and drier (permanent press cycle)! The Yellowstone photos came out okay in the end, and that flash card still works. The labels got a little rubbed off though.
These are the cards that you use in your camera, non-volatile flash memory cards, not RAM. Your standard RAM card would certainly not survive jack. But then, RAM is normally confined to the inside of your case, which is generally too large to stick in coffee.
hand card over to TSA (Transportation Safety Administration) and ask them to "be careful -- it's fragile"
pass card over retail store checkout counter magnetic pad
microwave card for 10 secs
feed card to puppy (slather with peanut butter if necessary)
bury card in dust
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)