Life time of USB compact flash

satimis · 03-17-2006, 04:58 AM

Hi folks,

I'm aware the USB Flash Drive (pendrive) has life time. Each read/write is counted. Does USB compact flash also have life time?

TIA

B.R.
satimis

michaelk · 03-17-2006, 05:32 AM

Actually it is the number of erase/write cycles. There is no limit on reading the device. But the answer is yes.

satimis · 03-17-2006, 05:45 AM

Hi michaelk,

Tks for your advice.

Quote:

Actually it is the number of erase/write cycles. There is no limit on reading the device. But the answer is yes.

Noted with tks.

Is there way to check it, the life-time?

Tks

satimis

michaelk · 03-17-2006, 06:03 AM

I don't think so.

theNbomr · 03-17-2006, 02:19 PM

This is a fairly unscientific, but perhaps useful anecdote on the subject of flash memory aging. I once wrote some code to erase and re-write random patterns to a segment of flash memory. It was guaranteed for 2 million of such cycles. I stopped the test at around 20 million cycles, and had noted no failures to that point. This was a single test, on a single device, only, but there is clearly a degree of conservatism to the life expectancy guarantee from at least one manufacturer. This took place in about the mid 1990's. The device under test was an Intel product, and the code was run on an embedded 8051 CPU. It ran for a month or two before it was turned off.