Sony 4GB Memory Stick - PRO Duo Card - MSMT4GN

Product Information

If you want to prolong the life of your memory cards, always protect them from extreme weather conditions. Never leave out memory cards under direct sun – keep in mind that memory card shells are made out of plastic and plastic can easily melt when exposed to the sun. In addition, by leaving memory cards under direct sun, you might damage electrical components of the cards, which might cause them to fail. Another enemy of electronics is moisture and water containing minerals. While pure H2O is not harmful in any way, saltwater and drinking water with minerals can cause an electrical short, which will certainly cause the device to fail. Another obvious mistake to avoid, is unplugging a memory card while any read or write operations are taking place. While a read operation might do no damage to the card, an interrupted write operation often causes memory card corruption, as it happened in the above-mentioned situation. Ultra DMA Mode– Most cards will list their Ultra DMA Mode on the cover, which will give you a good indication of its potential. This particular CF card from SanDisk has Ultra DMA 7 mode, which is why it can reach top speeds of 160 MB/sec.

Even if you find a good deal on used or refurbished memory cards, I would highly discourage you from buying those. The problem with used and refurbished memory cards, is that you don’t know how frequently those cards were used before you. If the photographer used those cards heavily, it means that the memory card cells have less life left in them, so you might start encountering issues with those cards sooner than you would expect, especially if you are a busy photographer. Minimum Write Speed– This is the minimum sustained write speed the memory card can deliver. As you can see, this particular card is guaranteed to be able to write at least 65 MB/sec. Estimated delivery times are provided to us by the respective delivery companies. We pass this information onto you, the customer.If you are in a very dry environment and you wear clothes that gather a lot of static, you might want to avoid touching memory cards. While the exterior shell of most memory cards is made out of plastic, the pins that connect to devices are made from copper and other materials that conduct electricity. And since electrical components can easily get fried with a static charge, you want to avoid touching them. If I know that I might be carrying a static charge, I usually find a piece of metal, such as a doorknob, that I can use to discharge the built-up static before touching any electrical devices, including cameras and memory cards. 12. If a Memory Card Fails, Stop Shooting For SD cards, the much simpler and smaller Lexar Professional USB 3.0 Dual-Slot Reader is also superb and works very well for both laptop and desktop use. I usually take the latter when I travel with my laptop, since it does not have an SD card reader. But if your laptop already has an SD card reader, then you don’t need to get an external unit, unless your memory card reader is very old and it cannot support fast transfer speeds of the latest memory cards. 7. Properly Format Memory Cards The best course of action in such situations is to insert your memory card into a memory card reader as soon as possible and try to copy all the files. If the files are not corrupted and you are able to successfully copy all the files, you need to know whether it was a temporary failure on your camera, or the start of a memory card failure. Once the transfer is done, perform a low-level format of the memory card on your computer. If formatting fails or you see errors during the process, it is time to either send the memory card to the manufacturer for a replacement, or if you are outside the warranty period, it is time to trash it. If the low-level format completes and you see no errors, then you should be safe to use it again – just monitor the card and if you ever see another error, it might be safer to get rid of it than to continue using it.

CompactFlash cards are technically limited by the fastest Ultra DMA mode 7, so it is impossible to develop faster CompactFlash cards in the future – they will always be limited to a maximum throughput of 167 MB/sec. To understand this, one must understand how memory cards work. Put shortly, memory cards get “dirty” and fragmented over time. The SD Card Association came up with a way to define SD card speed through something called “Speed Class”, which defines minimum sequential writing speed a memory card can provide. In addition to that, there is also bus speed, which is typically defined as something like “UHS”, which shows the theoretical maximum a card can provide over the bus. There are also UHS Speed Class and Video Speed Class specifications, which define minimum sequential write speeds even further. Let’s start by looking into different bus interfaces and their limits. Below is a short table that summarizes different bus interfaces and their potential bus speeds: Bus Inteface The other reason why you might want to format memory cards in your camera, is because some camera brands like Sony create a small database / index of files on memory cards after formatting them, so if your memory card does not contain those files, the camera will complain that the database does not exist and it will attempt to create the file structure and the database before the memory card can be used. Instead of going through these hassles, I find it better to just format all the memory cards you have in the same camera you are planning to shoot with. This way, you just pop a new memory card in and you are ready to keep on shooting. Keeping your camera batteries charged is obviously a no-brainer. However, some of us are guilty of pushing cameras to their limits until batteries fully die. I never thought that a dead battery could cause a memory card to fail completely until I experienced it in the field. My camera battery died while recording a video, and after I popped a new battery in, I saw the dreaded “ERR” message. I knew something was going on with the memory card, so I took it out of the camera, put it on my computer and it was not recognized!

Now that you can read SD memory cards, let’s take a look at CompactFlash cards and how you can read them. CompactFlash Card Speed Classes Therefore, it is important to understand that a memory card is not just a simple storage accessory; its role as a reliable storage media tool should never be overlooked. Unfortunately, there is too much conflicting information on the Internet in regards to how one should use and treat memory cards, with very little evidence, which sadly leads to misunderstanding and misuse of memory cards in the field. Let’s explore some of these in greater detail and hopefully clear out some of the confusion. 1. Buy Reliable Brand Memory Cards Memory card failures are pretty random. Some failures are temporary, with your camera reporting an error but then allowing you to continue shooting, while other errors are permanent – when there is more serious damage to the memory card. If you ever see an error on your camera while shooting to a particular memory card, stop shooting! The last thing you want is make matters worse by adding more images to the card and potentially corrupting the card even more. The moment you see an error, replace the memory card with another one. If the error persists, it might not be related to the memory card. But if the error disappears, your card might be failing. There have been cases with some cameras being incompatible with particular memory cards and write operations would take excessively long as a result. Some photographers were not patient enough to wait for the light to turn off and they would take the battery out, which often resulted in memory card corruption. If you take a picture and it takes over 5 seconds for the memory light to go off, you might want to stop using that memory card and replace it with a different one.