Greetings, distinguished users of this forum! And a big wave of the paw to the talented staff who makes this all possible. This web resource has been invaluable as I move into digital photography.

The question: when using SmartMedia in my Olympus D-220L, does it make a difference if I fill the card completely before deleting all pictures, compared to always using it to half capacity and starting over?

I'm not sure if I'm "wearing out" the first half of memory, or if it would be better to fill the card first before deleting all and starting over.

(Under what circumstances would one want to reformat the card, if one can simply delete all pictures and have an equally blank card?)

Thanks for your consideration!

-- Ramrod Bear (ramrodbear@hotmail.com), January 16, 1999

Answers

There's been some discussion on the 'net lately about differences between SmartMedia and CompactFlash. One of the claims made for CF is that it's more robust, with greater numbers of write cycles possible. Since both media types use the same basic technologies underneath (Flash EPROMs), where's the difference? Bottom line, much of it comes down to the fact that the CF cards have a controller that spreads around the write cycles, so that no location "wears out" faster than any other.

Technically yes, if you "fill up" the card each time, it will last longer. This is almost certainly a non-consideration for any realistic use though: Suppose a SmartMedia card is "only" rated for 10,000 write cycles. If you rewrote the card almost every day (333 times a year), it would last for about 30 years. 'Nuff said? about

-- Dave Etchells (web@imaging-resource.com), January 18, 1999.