maemo.org - Talk - If flash memory doesnt last very long

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- - If flash memory doesnt last very long - how long will my n900? (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=48192)

Re: If flash memory doesnt last very long - how long will my n900?

This is getting silly! Stop being so paranoid and enjoy your phone people.

The number of moaning threads around here worrying about the n900 is crazy! it seems as if there's a pessimist attack

Re: If flash memory doesnt last very long - how long will my n900?

Quote:

Originally Posted by di1in (Post 580706)

This is getting silly! Stop being so paranoid and enjoy your phone people.

Wait until the PR1.2 is out and everyone is starting to cry that they didn't get everything they expected... things like "WHAT? No MMS?"

Re: If flash memory doesnt last very long - how long will my n900?

Quote:

Originally Posted by extent (Post 580237)

lol, thanks. haha-my last phone was a sony cybershot k800, it lasted a fair while (almost 4 yrs), it still works but Im certain the memory it uses is starting to go/just about completely gone. It can take a long time to start up, and even trailing through the menus to play, say, an mp3, can take aeons... !!! thats why ive replaced it with this n900 (not out of choice, was a present-a hint from a member of the family that I really needed to be up to date, haha). Im just hoping it will last a fair while in comparison

The longs start time has nothing with flash memory wear - if flash has a read error it has it and phone can't start or it could start without some functions or files. It is not CD which tries to re-read with long mechanical movement.

I can't say for sure for unknown phone model but I suspect the reason is in the LARGE memory sizes since you started with this phone. Phone software may have a difficulty to handle a long list of files in your today's big SD card.

Re: If flash memory doesnt last very long - how long will my n900?

Quote:

Originally Posted by TA-t3 (Post 580310)

extent: No, reading doesn't wear it out the way writing does.
Whenever a file is updated the card will write the new content back to another set of blocks, not the original ones. Each block has a limited number of writes before it wears out, so by moving data around that like it distributes the writes around the card. Reading by itself doesn't wear out the card the same way.

EDIT: The 'short article' about flash on wikipedia (there are longe ones too), says "The main weakness of flash memory is the number of times that data can be written to it. Data can be read from flash as many times as desired, but after a certain number of "write" operations, it will stop working. Most flash devices are designed for about 100,000 - 1,000,000 write operations (or "write cycles")."

Not a full truth. Flash random read actually sometime updates memory NOW. Moreover, a modern flash chips require a periodic connection to power because it auto-refreshes the written data. It means that just keeping SD in memory slot of any device is much safer for data. But please take in mind that degradation period can be actually measured in years without power and don't worry about it until you try to put your data in mountain bank vault.

Repeated reads of the same block in short time doesn't produce any wear effect in many chips - it reads it from some chip cache. The same is for sequential data read because chip actually reads BIG block and responds the computer with small requested amount and continues from that buffer.

However, writes does a little more degradation to chip structures but that is greatly decreased with latest chip generation. Of course, the brand name has toll but I am sure Nokia did a good job here.

Re: If flash memory doesnt last very long - how long will my n900?

Quote:

Originally Posted by TA-t3 (Post 580433)

That's the built-in flash, not an SD card. Different rules apply. The eMMC is a different story again.

still flash memory though...
________
Vaporizer review

Re: If flash memory doesnt last very long - how long will my n900?

Quote:

Originally Posted by cashclientel (Post 580442)

@TA-t3 - It's SD and I'm sure of the behaviour as I've performed data recovery on the space and tested it.

You've misquoted Wikipedia there as well (outrageous behavior)

I most CERTAINLY did not! How dare you.
What you quoted above is about flash memory _in general_.
Just read on from there and downwards. Until you get to NAND, and SD in particular.

Re: If flash memory doesnt last very long - how long will my n900?

I used to have a Canon Powershot S40 with a small CF card that eventually had a few "sectors" go bad. But it was a first gen flash card, in an early camera, that got a lot of heavy use. Chkdisk'ing the card mapped out the bad part and I could continue using it, although it would only hold about 70 images instead of the 100 or so prior to the failure. Had I kept using the card in the camera I'm sure the degradation would have continued. The only way I noticed it was the reduced capacity. In fact I don't recall loosing any data, just that Windows didn't want to read it until I did a chkdisk on it.