Have You Ever Wondered How Safe A Memory Card Really Is?

In our fast-lane technological development I often re-evaluate the technology I use. Today I asked myself: “How safe memory card really are?” and, I’d like to share my thoughts with you.

First let me tell you a bit more about these little Memory Cards...

In the above picture you can see an SD card, actually most of you already know that, but I am sure some people in some parts of the World don't. It all started many, many galactic years ago… In 1990 a smart human being, called Ian Cullimore, decided to invent some kind of storage device, which had to be smaller than a floppy drive or a hard disk. That's how "PC Card" or PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) was born.

In 2003 came ExpressCard and it just killed PC Card. Today the most common memory cads are Secure Digital cards (SD). You probably use one in your phone, tablet or digital camera. In an SD card you can store files up to 2 GB, SDHC – between 4 GB and 32 GB and SDXC up to 2 TB (theoritically). SD and SDHC would not work together, but if your device supports SDHC, you don't have to worry! The same is with the SDXC.

If you have an older device, you may have troubles though, because your hardware supports only 2 GB SD cards and SDHC could fit like a glove, that is fitting physically, but won't work. When you look closer at your memory card you will notice the message "class" and some digit right? Greater is better, because that means the exact read and write speed.

OK, enough is enough! No more history, no more facts! Have you ever lost your data from your memory card? If not, you're lucky. I've personally done it twice (not a good feeling to be honest)! There are several ways for your memory card to get corrupt. The first one is physical damage. You can break a card (not easy, but possible) or bend it. Like any electronic device, memory cards can't be put on extreme cold or heat conditions, they don't like water or dust and an electric discharge could be lethal.

The next bump on the road for our memory card are file system and corruption failures. These can lead to corruption and data loss… Just checking if you're following me ;-) The firmware (that is the software or mini-os that runs on your device) sometimes makes mistakes and can be caught in situations that can't be solved.

The most common mistake that can lead to a corrupted file system, is when using the memory and writing information on it, you just pull the memory card out. But you forgot about caching which can take quite a while after you think the data transfer is done. You have to be extremely cautious with xD cards.

Another possible scenario is that a bug (I meant file system, not a bug in your card) could happen when you delete files or the card fills up. It's possible to have problems with formatting the card. The good news is, these issues are not very common.

There is a chance that you could loose your data on transfer. That can be either a bad cable, bad USB or some problem in the computer configuration itself. To save the card from file system or corruption failure just format it and you're ready to go. The problem is that you loose your data, but you can try to avert it with some programs for file recovery.

The worst case is when your card has bad blocks. That means it's really corrupted. There are two reasons for that: manufacturing defects and accumulation failure. Most manufacturing companies in the world focus on keeping expenses low and at the same time increase net profits, am I right? So instead of spending money on high quality products, memory card producers ship devices with 2 to 5 percent bad blocks, straight out of the factory. These bad blocks are masked out and they shouldn't affect operations at all, but this is short term only. Memory card works just like your USB flash drive or your solid state disk (SSD) – flash memory has a limited number of write/erase cycles.

Manufacturer of the storage device gives some average number of cycles before failure, but the truth is that this is a random process and you can face the problem earlier.

Bad blocks are inevitable, but there is a copying mechanism which is designed to minimize the damage. It detects and conceals out new bad blocks as they appear. When blocks wear out, spare blocks are transparently substituted and the memory card keeps working. The flash card's built-in controller will use error correction to prevent the errors from corrupting data as they occur. There is a chance of failure in the controller and then your card gets completely inaccessible.

Memory cards can boost your device and you can store tons of mp3s, pictures or whatever you want on them, but, be careful, if not handled cautiously you might loose your data forever.

What to do to protect from a corrupted Memory Card?

You really can't do much. Handle them with care and backup your data frequently. The best I came up with is to use cloud storage to have all my data transferred to the cloud without doing the backup myself. This automated process takes all the hassle of manually doing it :-) and frees your mind to think about the important things in live!