The Future of flash memory

[Ryvax]

What do you think we will be using in 5 years from now? I think SDHC will stick around and get faster. Hope so, don't like the size of the CF cards.

 

[NateS]

What do you think we will be using in 5 years from now? I think SDHC will stick around and get faster. Hope so, don't like the size of the CF cards.

Speed isn't the only thing that gives CF cards an advantage. Durability and increased size for ease of use. A lot of pros out in the field prefer the larger size of the CF card and the added durability. I don't think we'll see a walk away from them in the pro setups, but taking two cards of different types seems to be becoming a trend.

 

[JamesMason]

I like CF cards, nice and rugged, always feel as tho i feel as tho my sdhc cards are gonna fail on me. As far as the future goes, gotta be direct to hdd via web.

 

[Ryvax]

Good points. Ever have a card fail on you? I always hear about people being paranoid about it but never have had it happen to me.

 

[Dwig]

Good points. Ever have a card fail on you? I always hear about people being paranoid about it but never have had it happen to me.

I've never had a single failure with a CF card and I've read of very, very few that weren't IO errors (IO as in Idiot Operator). On the other hand, I've heard of many many failures with SD cards on the various forums I've read over the years. Only in the last couple of years have the SD cards seemed to have approached the reliability of CF. Most of what I read now with SD and all that I've read involving SD/HC, have been IO errors.

Personally, the old card failure I've encountered was with a SmartMedia card some 8 years ago. It was somewhat of an IO error. The camera didn't mention limitations but couldn't handle anything larger than a 32meg card. It ate the data on a 64meg card just after if filled the first 32meg of the card.

Some of the early SD card failures are likely similar. The early firmware in the reader/writers (computer attached and in-camera) had limits on card size and would sometime freak when they encountered larger cards. Most of that is past history. The firmware developers plan better for the future these days.

 

[DennyCrane]

SSHD, Solid State Hard Drives, are the future. Prohibitively expensive for camera use now at the speeds necessary, but they're shrinking and they're getting cheaper and faster. I expect some unitized format that will replace pretty much all flash cards within 5 years. These things are writing at over 500mb/sec in the higher dollar range. It's still early in their development, but in a very short time, they've come down in price and have gotten much much faster.

The question is, will these be in the format of a pop in/pop out card, or will they be like a built in, but replaceable hard drive?