On Dec 4, 2006, at 10:23 AM, Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote: > another reason why you want to do formats with the camera is that > with flash media you want to avoid writing to media needlessly ... it > has a finite lifespan. This is why formatters for flash media > typically do not zero the files, just replace the directory tables. > they also reposition the directory tables as time goes on if the > media is used a lot, again to preserve and extend the media's > lifespan.
The number of times you can flip a bit on a modern NAND cell is supposed to be somewhere around 1,000,000 times. My understanding is that the wear-level functionality of a flash device is internal to the flash device itself; when the flash device tries to write to a bad block and fails, it automatically allocates a different block and marks the bad block as unavailable. The electronic device accessing the flash chip is unaware that this happens. According to the device, whether it be a camera or otherwise, it appears to be a FAT disk, when actually there is a translation layer in the flash device that handles the lifting behind the scenes. Michael -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
