Re: CF cards

On 26 Nov 2008, at 21:09, Alexander Frolkin wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 11:16:06PM +0300, Valeriy E. Ushakov wrote:
>> On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 20:58:23 +0100, Hauke Fath wrote:
>>> The former, I think. I saw the same issues until I switched to a  
>>> sandisk
>>> card. Some CF cards are more equal than others, it seems.
>> I once bought a 1GB Kingston CF card that my LOOX 720 (with WinCE)
>> just refused to recognize at all.
>
> So how long does a typical CF card last when used in such a way?  I'm
> expecting my cheap Kingston to die in the near future (but I might be
> wrong) and I'm wondering whether it's worth spending the extra money
> on an industrial grade CF card.

Older cards - from the 8-16Mbyte era - will simply die when left in RW  
without noatime mounts within a few weeks (www.wirelessleiden.nl).  
I've not seen differences between brand - but submit that virtually  
all have a tiny 'sandisk' marker on them in the plastic itself -  
regardless of actual brand on the sticker. The number of writes (e.g.  
in /tmp) according to io/stat is in the high 10k's; low 100k's.

My experience with the 48Mb cards is more mixed; and I am not seeing a  
pattern. Some die; some are still fine. I've now got several 1Gb cards  
of various random brands bought in 2004-2005 which seem to survive  
many 100's of kWrites without much ado - some in the 10's of M's now.  
And with that - their failure in my situation is just as likely from  
the weather, mechanical/temperatuer stress, rust, etc - as those are  
outdoor units.

Thanks,

Dw