Smart Card/Thumbdrive life

In talking with Gary he mentioned he thought he read somewhere that thumbc drives (stick drives, etc) may only permit 10,000 accesses before giving out. I think I read something similar about smart cards. Does anyone know for sure?

Eddie

It is correct that flash memory has a limit to how many times each physical location can be written, but there is no limit to the number of reads. Most modern thumb drives and flash cards have intelligent controllers that will relocate memory as needed so that the limit is never exceeded. However Smart Media is an older standard without an internal controller. In this case it is up to the device (keyboard, camera etc.) to assure that the write limit is not exceeded. This makes Smart Media a little more unreliable than other types of memory cards. Always back up your flash memory!

Kind regards,
Tommy

[This message has been edited by TommyF (edited 07-16-2007).]