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1GB CompactFlash Roundup

Posted by Zonk on from the tiny-bits-of-memory-in-our-things dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In an article from AnandTech, Purav Sanghani focuses on the most widely used flash media, the 1GB CompactFlash cards. AnandTech has taken ten of the most well-known and unknown brands and put them through three tests: real world file system task test, HDTach 3 RW and SiSoft Sandra's File System Benchmark." From the article: "All of these cards are standard CompactFlash Type I media cards with varying speeds with exception of the Lexar Professional series media, which features its 'Write Acceleration Technology', said to improve image write speeds by up to 23% with compatible cameras. This is done with the aid of special firmware on the media as well as the cameras themselves, which allow them to work together to improve the write algorithms. However, we have also seen an improvement in write speeds in our benchmarks as well, but we'll let you see for yourself."

5 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Link. by ScaryFroMan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The link provided is to the single-page, non-ad filled "print version." Good move. Very un-slashdot like.

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    1. Re:Link. by DrXym · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Why is it a good move from Anandtech's perspective. They get slashdotted and don't even get to recoup that expense through advertising views / clicks.

  2. Lexar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The fastest is $65.95 for Lexar Professional series media, but lasts 5 times less than the slowest ones.... price wise, I'd go with Viking, but how often do people go through these cards?

    Would you actually need one for longer than how long Lexar's will last?

    1. Re:Lexar by Gubbe · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I would think that by the time the card dies, new 1 gig cards cost $5 and are as useful as 16MB cards today. I've never heard anyone say that their flash card died of old age. Those endurance numbers weren't discovered by throwing data at each card until they died. They were obtained by calculating the average amount of writes per allocation unit or something like that.

      When taking pictures or storing music, you're not overwriting any allocation unit more than once. Considering any allocation unit in flash memory can endure hundreds of thousands of writes, you can, in theory anyway, fill the card with pictures at least 100k times before it fails. This means millions of pictures.

      My semi-educated hunch is that flash endurance is a moot point when using the memory for storage. It only matters when using the drive as swap space where it's written to and read from constantly.

      If there are flaws in my reasoning, please do point them out. This is just my current understanding regarding this issue.

  3. Endurance Factor is a total BS by citizenr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Kingston is MLC based and has the WORST life cycle,
    Fast cards are SLC based are and on average ~10 times better.

    Here is a proof : http://www.achieva.com.au/news_slcvsmlc.htm

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