Care for CF Cards

[ving]

1. do not bend your card
2. do not try to take your card apart
3. do not stir your coffee with your card
4. do not let your child, puppy or kitten chew your card
5. do not use your card as a toothpick
6. do not dry your card in a conventional oven (or a microwave for that matter)
7. do not let friends borrow your card (you know you wont get it back)
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

[Bax]

1. do not stir your coffee with your card

What else am I meant to use?

[lanegd01]

What else am I meant to use?

I only use mine to stir my tea and as a beer coaster

[Omytion]

There was a story not so long ago about someone finding a camera that had fallen down a cliff and was smashed beyond repair, or maybe even recognition and had been left behind. But the card was intact and the photos were accessible.

I did a quick google but couldn't find it.

[reaction]

1. do not try to take your card apart
   
   

yeh I should stop doing that

[PindanRose]

Never had a problem with memory cards but believe they shouldn't be stored anywhere near your mobile phone

[lanegd01]

Not sure why not. they go through airport xray with no problem

[joeyvaldezjr]

Hahaha! The toothpick tip made my day. CF card as a toothpick?!?

[ricktas]

Never had a problem with memory cards but believe they shouldn't be stored anywhere near your mobile phone

Like all storage (hard disks etc) memory cards can be influenced/affected by magnetic fields. And magnetic fields are produced by a lot of things these days.

[annainoz]

With my non DSLR cameras in the past, the when downloading onto the pc from the camera, the cord became unstable, the connection a little dodgy too .. so from then on it's a card reader for me and now it's built into the lappy so I have to remember to remove the darned thing and put it back in the camera.

[darkmerlin]

As CF cards can get very expensive is there any to tell if you've been supplied a genuine one as opposed to a fake when purchasing from the likes of ebay or computer fairs/markets?

[campo]

As CF cards can get very expensive is there any to tell if you've been supplied a genuine one as opposed to a fake when purchasing from the likes of ebay or computer fairs/markets?

The best way to be sure is to only buy from genuine retailers such as the likes of businesses that sponsor AP etc.

[Elogosha]

With the advent of video modes in digital SLRs, which one is faster or reliable to use - Compact Flash or SD cards given the same speed transmission?

[tcdev]

Like all storage (hard disks etc) memory cards can be influenced/affected by magnetic fields. And magnetic fields are produced by a lot of things these days.

Actually that's not quite true Rick, at least not to the extent that I suspect you believe. Memory cards are not magnetic media, but rather flash-based memory (electrical) devices. Like any electrical device, a strong enough field can be destructive but they're nowhere near as susceptible as magnetic media like hard disks. In everyday use, you'd be hard-pressed to come across a field strong enough to affect a memory card.

Apologies if I my assumptions about your understanding are incorrect.

[tcdev]

The file structure of the CF card just like a disk drive is fragmented and as it approaches 100% it has to look for open extents to write data blocks. At this point it becomes possible for data corruption to occur. This especially becomes potentially more problematic with deleted files on the card. This is something that is far better overcome with modern cards, hard drives and operating systems and so it is potentially less (or no longer) relevant.

Not sure where you read this, but I can assure you that it is simply not correct. In fact, any company trying to sell media with the problem you describe would have gone out of business a long, long time ago. It is untenable...

For starters, most CF cards in cameras would most likely NOT be fragmented. That is because they're generally wiped regularly and - relatively speaking - few files are deleted while they're being used. And even then, it's generally the last (few) photos. A FAT-based file system like those used in cameras will fill a device from start to finish, and most files under these conditions will occupy contiguous sectors on the device (wear-levelling ignored).

Secondly, deleted files can increase fragmentation but have no bearing on the reliability of subsequent file operations.

Thirdly, fragmentation on a FAT file system does NOT significantly complicate the process of writing a file to disk. At worst it adds a few extra sector accesses whilst searching for free blocks, and perhaps a couple when writing cluster allocation bits. Since this is a mechanism that is done whether a device is empty, half full, or completely full, it cannot affect the ability of the device to write files when "almost full".

Lastly, "modern operating systems" would only make this situation FAR, FAR worse, as any complex OS will constantly and sporadically read/write information to many parts of a storage device. Add file system caching and swap files, and your MTBF rates really need to be good.

[tcdev]

As CF cards can get very expensive is there any to tell if you've been supplied a genuine one as opposed to a fake when purchasing from the likes of ebay or computer fairs/markets?

eBay has (or at least had) information pages devoted specifically to the identification of real/fake memory cards. They at least had a Sony Memory Stick page a while back. So you could check that out?!?

But yeah, buying from a reputable dealer is *usually* safest. I say usually, because sometimes *they* get scammed. Even if they do, there's a chance you'll get your money back, as was the case when Deals Direct inadvertently sold fake Corsair USB drives (my colleague bought 3, and was then refunded without having to return them. No use, they didn't work at all!)

Rule of thumb - if the price seems too good to be true, then that's because it is (too good to be true).

[tcdev]

Formatting also leaves data on card as you can still recover images from a formatted card the only thing that removes data is overwriting it with new images or using a program to overwrite the data making it impossible to recover.

Depends on the camera, actually. I had a Canon P&S that did a low-level format (by default) when you formatted your card. Found out the hard way when I inadvertently formatted a card on holidays without transferring the day's photo to my USB drive. After swapping cards and not using that again until I got home, the unfortunate fact was revealed to me when I looked at the contents. My wife was very unimpressed - a day's hiking in Yosemite. Luckily she also had her camera that day...

[tcdev]

I would suggest one very important thing is to format whenever you clear the card, instead of just pressing 'delete all'.

I used to work in a Kodak store, and we'd often get people coming into the store with cards of all type displaying errors. More often than not a reformat would get the card going again - usually the customer hasn't even heard of 'format'. Without doing this, the card can develop errors in the file structure over time.

This behaviour is indicative of either (1) bugs in the camera FAT file system implementation, (2) someone removed the card whilst writing, or (3) formatting merely temporarily masked faulty media.

[Analog6]

I have never had a card go bad or lost an image in 5 years of using CF, and 2 years or so of xD, and a few years of memory sticks before that.

I always store them in their cases, and handle with care
I always use a card reader
I only reformat every so often, about once every 10 or so deletes I guess
I have often taken them out with the camera on, but only when it is not actively writing, of course

I think if normal common sense is used in their handling they are as durable as any other recording medium. You had to be careful storing and (to a lesser degree) handling film too. And at least the 'developed' images can't get scratched!

[LJG]

I've never actually filled a card.

I have 2 Extreme cards, an 8 gig SD in the 450D & a 16 gig CF in the 50D.

I've never had a card issue, now, I may be completely wrong on this but one thing I don't do is take the cards out of the cameras. I use the USB cable to download straight into my computer, then delete the images on the card through EOS Utility.

I was told once that constantly taking the cards out to download images is one of the reasons they fail. So far it has worked for me.