I recently had my 40 gb ipod hard drive wear out in just over a year and I want to know what the average lifespan of a microdrive is before I buy one in an axim under normal conditions. Or if no one knows the lifespan then what is the longest you have had your microdrive working.
Edit
(I wasn't shure where to post this since I'm both a noob at forums and a x50v owner)
Last edited by sphericvigil; 02-26-05 at 10:17 PM.
Depends a lot on how often you write to it. If you rarely write to it, expect it to become long obsolete before it wears out. If you frequently write to it, it wouldn't last as long. It's almost always the writing that causes the wearout. (There's also heat accelerating wear, charge leaking off the floating gates, etc. but the oxide breakdown due to frequent writing is most common.)
The good news is that you can very easily replace your CF card.
For those who need more information, the floating gate is a very odd element indeed. It has a *very* thin layer of SiO2 (glass) that behaves in a very peculiar manner. If the voltage difference is high enough, the electrons tunnel through the oxide. It's actually very similar to the MOVs used in surge protectors. In essence, when you write to the card, you're applying carefully controlled electrical surges to the memory cells. The oxide acts as the switch for the capacitor. If a voltage is applied to the capacitor, the MOSFET will remain off at normal gate voltages. By applying high voltages to make the oxide switch turn on, a 0 or 1 can be programmed. But the oxide doesn't last forever (you know how those surge protectors become useless after awhile?); although the conditions inside the card can be carefully controlled, it still wears out.
__________________ To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
TCPA would take your freedom! Say NO! To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
HDTV the way it should be: To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
Originally Posted by A friend of mine who has a Linux kernel named after his girlfriend.
If I was VirtualBox, I could load my virtualization module into Hannah and boot up another kernel in the same address space.
It seems to me that under a year for your drive to crash seem's unrealistic as you could not have possibly wore it out in such a short time, there for i feel you have a manufacturer defect and should contact Apple for a replacement:approve:
__________________
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
Depends a lot on how often you write to it. If you rarely write to it, expect it to become long obsolete before it wears out. If you frequently write to it, it wouldn't last as long. It's almost always the writing that causes the wearout. (There's also heat accelerating wear, charge leaking off the floating gates, etc. but the oxide breakdown due to frequent writing is most common.)
The good news is that you can very easily replace your CF card.
For those who need more information, the floating gate is a very odd element indeed. It has a *very* thin layer of SiO2 (glass) that behaves in a very peculiar manner. If the voltage difference is high enough, the electrons tunnel through the oxide. It's actually very similar to the MOVs used in surge protectors. In essence, when you write to the card, you're applying carefully controlled electrical surges to the memory cells. The oxide acts as the switch for the capacitor. If a voltage is applied to the capacitor, the MOSFET will remain off at normal gate voltages. By applying high voltages to make the oxide switch turn on, a 0 or 1 can be programmed. But the oxide doesn't last forever (you know how those surge protectors become useless after awhile?); although the conditions inside the card can be carefully controlled, it still wears out.
How did you manage to wear out your iPod HD in one year? Are you sure it was the HD? I've only had mine for a year and a half but it still works as it did when it was brand new...
How did you manage to wear out your iPod HD in one year? Are you sure it was the HD? I've only had mine for a year and a half but it still works as it did when it was brand new...
Maybe he had it in his back pocket and sat on it one too many times.
It seems to me that under a year for your drive to crash seem's unrealistic as you could not have possibly wore it out in such a short time, there for i feel you have a manufacturer defect and should contact Apple for a replacement
If the system was misconfigured to use the ipod as a swap drive, the chips can be worn out in a matter of weeks.
Quote:
Also note that Hitachi's warranty is 1 year, so if anything happens in 1 year they will replace it
I can't say for sure, but that's evidence that Hitachi's CF cards are multi level. This means that writing is even more stressful and the card is slower than single level cards. I think my PQI SD and Sandisk CF cards (for a digital camera) have lifetime warranties. (I don't know for sure because I discarded the packaging.)
__________________ To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
TCPA would take your freedom! Say NO! To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
HDTV the way it should be: To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
Originally Posted by A friend of mine who has a Linux kernel named after his girlfriend.
If I was VirtualBox, I could load my virtualization module into Hannah and boot up another kernel in the same address space.
I recently had my 40 gb ipod hard drive wear out in just over a year and I want to know what the average lifespan of a microdrive is before I buy one in an axim under normal conditions. Or if no one knows the lifespan then what is the longest you have had your microdrive working.
Edit
(I wasn't shure where to post this since I'm both a noob at forums and a x50v owner)
I seriously doubt that it's wore out but more likely experienced a mechanical failure. Usually hard drives are catagorized by a MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) rating. The manufacture assumes a continuous read/write duty cycle and converts this into hours before failure. I don't think that a consumer would put enough hours of use in a year to explain the drive failing this soon. I would guess at least a 5,000 to 10,000 hr MTBF rating. Most likely there was some congenital flaw in the hard drive or it was damaged by handling and/or exposure to detrimental conditions.
My Hitachi 4gb microdrive, pulled out of an mp3 player, has been going strong for over 1.5 years now. A couple of weeks ago it started being slow reading and writing, I thought it was dying. I did a reformat, and it is working as normal now (at least I hope it is). If it dies, I will buy another 4gb md or cf card.
If the system was misconfigured to use the ipod as a swap drive, the chips can be worn out in a matter of weeks.
I can't say for sure, but that's evidence that Hitachi's CF cards are multi level. This means that writing is even more stressful and the card is slower than single level cards. I think my PQI SD and Sandisk CF cards (for a digital camera) have lifetime warranties. (I don't know for sure because I discarded the packaging.)
Well, SD and CF cards are solid state (no moving parts) so many have lifetime warranties like all the Kingston Cards :approve:
First of all my ipod wasn't crushed but I used it as a portable hard drive so I wrote data on it alot and I dropped it a couple times which probably accelerated the decay of the hard drive, but since my warranty expired and I was foolish enough not to renew the warranty so I'm SOL.
But nonetheless thank you for all the help about the lifespan of a microdrve.
Now the only question I have is weither to get another ipod or a microdrive and put my music on my axim but that is a discussion for another time and thread.
Depends a lot on how often you write to it. If you rarely write to it, expect it to become long obsolete before it wears out. If you frequently write to it, it wouldn't last as long. It's almost always the writing that causes the wearout. (There's also heat accelerating wear, charge leaking off the floating gates, etc. but the oxide breakdown due to frequent writing is most common.)
The good news is that you can very easily replace your CF card.
For those who need more information, the floating gate is a very odd element indeed. It has a *very* thin layer of SiO2 (glass) that behaves in a very peculiar manner. If the voltage difference is high enough, the electrons tunnel through the oxide. It's actually very similar to the MOVs used in surge protectors. In essence, when you write to the card, you're applying carefully controlled electrical surges to the memory cells. The oxide acts as the switch for the capacitor. If a voltage is applied to the capacitor, the MOSFET will remain off at normal gate voltages. By applying high voltages to make the oxide switch turn on, a 0 or 1 can be programmed. But the oxide doesn't last forever (you know how those surge protectors become useless after awhile?); although the conditions inside the card can be carefully controlled, it still wears out.
Uhh, the original post asked about microdrives, i.e. miniature hard drives, but your description is for flash memory.
Two things... Unlike flash memory, microdrive reliability is essentially unrelated to the number of times you read or write data to it. By far the most common failure mode for a microdrive is going to be a scratched platter when the read/write head is positioned over the disk surface and the unit is dropped or bumped. I'm sure that microdrives have all sorts of fancy mechanisms to reduce the possibility of mechanical failure (e.g. automatic head parking and various self monitoring and analysis programs in the disk bios), but the bottom line is that you have to be much more careful with microdrives, and any hard drive period, compared to solid state memory. I don't have statistics, but it's unlikely that a microdrive can even begin to approach the reliability of solid-state flash memory in real-world usage. This is not to say, however, that microdrives aren't reliable... They are just less reliable than the flash-based alternatives.
As for flash memory, for all intents and purposes, you don't have to worry about the bit error rate reliability of flash memory. No, "the oxide doesn't last forever," but these days NAND and NOR flash memory bits can be written & erased millions of times (for each bit) before failure, and read essentially an unlimited number of times. This translates to decades of use for most users, even if used every day, and the flash memory is more likely to fail in other ways (e.g. physically damaged). Plus, by the time you start destroying bits from too many writes, it will probably become obsolete... Who carries around their old 4 megabyte smartmedia cards anymore? Similarly, nobody is going to be carrying around their 512MB SD cards when 250GB SD cards become commonplace (in a few years, of course)!
Follow Us
RSS Feed
Follow on Twitter
Facebook
YouTube
MIcrodive lifespan??
and I want to know what the average lifespan of a microdrive is before I buy one in an axim under normal conditions. Or if no one knows the lifespan then what is the longest you have had your microdrive working.
Uber Member
