[Leica] Re: Flash memory storage

[lrzeitlin at optonline.net (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

On May 4, 2007, at 9:57 AM, Len wrote:

> I'm not too sure I would save everything on flash memory cards. Good,
> external hard drives are only $1.00 per Gig. And the standard seems
> to be fairly stable now.
>
> I'm pretty sure hard drives will be around for awhile. Not too sure
> about the current card readers and memory cards. ( In 10 years?)

When flash memories were invented 20 years ago, my tech oriented  
colleagues predicted the rapid demise of disc drives. After all, who  
would trust their valuable data to a magnetic disc spinning at 5400  
rpm. A head crash, a pass through a poorly adjusted airport scanner,  
or even a magnet on a flashlight could wipe out years of work. It was  
a truism in the computer industry that it's not IF your disc will  
fail but WHEN. (Still true, I'm afraid.) But flash memory prices  
stayed too high and capacities were too small. A 10 meg PCMCIA card  
cost more than $100 while disc prices were less than $1 per Mb.  
Still, there were a few computers that relied only on flash memories.  
I still have and use a HP LX100 and a LX200, handheld second  
generation IBM PC workalikes the size of a couple of packs of  
cigarettes. The OS and memory are all solid state. They run every  
program you could run on one of those old computers. One version of  
the HP Omnibook used a PCMCIA card for its working memory. Windows  
3.1, Word, data base and communications programs were in ROM.  
However, just about every computer since then has been disc based.  
It's all a question of capacity and cost although with memory prices  
rapidly falling, some computer manufacturers (Apple, Lenovo) are  
exploring fully solid state versions of their current laptops. It's  
not too far fetched. I configured an Apple 1400 laptop to boot OS 7.6  
and run software entirely from a 2 Gb Compact flash card. The new Mac  
OS is just too big but if card capacity continues to rise, I may try  
to do it on an iBook.

But I digress. Len is right. Some memory formats have gone the way of  
the dodo. The original Leica Digiflex and Digiflex Zoom cameras used  
SmartMedia memories, now almost impossible to find. The xD card  
espoused by Olympus and Fuji is on a rapid downhill slide. CF, one of  
the oldest and largest flash card formats, is still around primarily  
because of the demand from professionals who use large capacity cards  
in digital SLRs and computers. Also, it is the only format that  
supports microdisc. Twenty years from now, who knows? Sealed hard  
disc drives should last like the cockroach. As long as you can get an  
electrical signal from the drive you can write a software program to  
read it. But not so for removable disc drive media. I had to fold my  
8" floppies to shove them into my 5 1/4" drives and neither would fit  
my 3.5" drives. And does anyone know what happened to the 2" floppy?

Larry Z