SMC cards...limited life?

[bannanapie]

Do SMC cards have a limited life of reading and writing? I know static electricity can kill SMC cards like any other electronic component, and I know dropping them from high up can damage, and possible destroy the SMC card, but I only know this from digital photography. Do SMC cards have a limited reading and writing life? Post any comments and ifo related to SMC cards even if you don't wan't to answer the question.

 

[Cpt_Kirks]

IIRC, the limit is something like 50,000 writes per sector. So, if you wrote to a particular sector 27 times a day, your SMC would last 5 years.

 

[T°y°T]

As for all flash memory support (compact flash, MultiMedia Card, etc...), SMC have "normaly" no-life time (when i say "normaly" it's just for reason like usure of time), you can "infinetely" read and write on it (same reason...)... It's like the bios of your computer's motherboard...
Hope to be helpfull...

 

[The Wub]

SMC cards do have a "saving lifetime". Each small cluster of memory on the card can be written to about 1000 times before it becomes unusable and your card becomes a little bit smaller.

Not worth worrying about then.

 

[bannanapie]

wow, quick reply's, and a good coverage of area, I love this forum anyways, thx for the quick reply's helps a lot.

 

[esoteric_]

Bit of a discrepency though...

One person says 50,000 writes and another says 1,000. The second figure sounds incredibly small to me as the cards wouldn't be useful for anything if you could only write to it 1,000 times, but.... does anybody know of an official site that actually states it?

 

[The Wub]

hmm... yeah, it's a good point...

I was on the Wind-Ups site and I saw their warning about the "saving lifetime". I couldn't find much out about this searching in google so I 'mailed the Wind-ups authors and asked if they could explain.

What I wrote up here is what they told me....

I wonder if I missed a zero..?

 

[MrT]

Probably of more concern is the rumour that I have heard is the SMC are being phased out, hence the huge reduction in price over the last few months, better stock up then! Unless this is a Red Herring.

MrT

 

[timthepig]

Well - I'm English, I live in Sheffield, And I don't support Wednesday or United - How about that then(I live down the road from Bramall lane)

 

[Swiss_Cheeseman]

its 50 000 writes. Saw it on a few SMC websites.

 

[The Wub]

All these people from Sheffield...

Anyone for a pajama jump?