Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“No structure, even an artificial one, enjoys the process of entropy. It is the ultimate fate of everything…”—Philip K. Dick
As I write this I’m sitting in my home office on Daisy Hill looking out the window waiting for some new SD memory cards to arrive. It’s really peaceful here but that wasn’t the case when I had an extended photo shoot with the amazing Internet model Maria Cedar. That particular shoot was on a warm day so we began at a couple of my favorite locations, McCabe Meadows and Hidden Mesa Open Space, where I made the featured image, before we moved into my home studio. And encountered some memory car problems.
When Good Memory Cards Go Bad, Part 2
Since this was a slightly different than a problem I had before, I contacted a friend at Panasonic who told me, “it sounds like a problem we’ve heard that happens to SD cards that have bad sectors.” How did my good SD cards suddenly go bad? According to the Complete Guide to Repair Bad Sectors on SD Cards, “SD cards are comprised of dedicated memory blocks that you can call ‘sectors.’ At times, while handling your SD cards, any sector can get damaged, which can make it inaccessible. This damaged or corrupt sector is often known as a “bad sector.”
How I made this photograph: No problems with this memory card. I photographed Maria Cedar on the porch of an historic farmhouse that’s located not far from Daisy Hill in the Hidden Mesa Open Space. The camera used was a Panasonic Lumix GH4 with Lumix G Vario 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens at 45mm. Exposure was 1/60 sec at f/5.6 and ISO 200 with a plus two-third stops exposure compensation. After a few quick test shots, I used the camera’s built-in flash as fill.
Some background on memory cards: The smallest unit of data storage in a flash memory chip is a single cell, which consists of an individual NAND (NOT-AND) or NOR transistor. A cell typically holds a single bit of data. In multi-level cells (MLC) one cell can contain two or three bits. This process doubles or triples the chip’s capacity without increasing its size or the amount of cells it contains. This design makes high-capacity flash devices cheap to produce and purchase but there’s no free lunch. MLC chips tend to wear out faster than SLC (single-level cell) chips. If enough flash memory cells become unreadable, the entire chip becomes corrupt. This happens not because of user mishandling but due to age because sooner or later all data storage devices break down.
While a memory card’s data storage capabilities can (theoretically) last for five years or even longer, there is enough empirical evidence to suggest that cards may only be reliable from a few weeks to around two years of actual use. I’ll bet that most of us don’t keep track of our memory card’s age but still expect them to last forever. They don’t. Some shooters write the dates they purchased the cards on the cards themselves. A good idea? I think so. Then there is the effect of “Stupid Photographer’s Tricks” (that I am an expert at) that photographers, in our own inimitable way, can mess with the cards too. I’ve written about ways to avoid memory card problems before and you might want to read about it by clicking that link when you have time.
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