Can compact Flash memory cards have bad sectors??

[PremiumG]

I have two 64 meg CF memory cards.. One formats FAT at 61.1 megs total. The other formats FAT to 60.8 megs.

The one that formats to 60.8 (PNY brand) doesn't work on my digicam. The other one formats to 61.1 (Mr Flash brand) works great on my digicam. I've tried reformatting the PNY brand many times but it doesn't work!!!

What's up with this?!!

 

[islandtechengineers]

this reply is in relation to your topic
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yes it is possible, physical memory in your pc is capable of having bad physical sectors (happened to me after a long while of mis usage) and flash cards do have physical memory chips in them. same as video cards and even the bios is a small memory chip. If a physical ram chip can have bad sectors why not a flash card.

 

[beatle]

If you want to be really technical, flash memory and physical memory do not have "sectors." A sector is part of a track, which is part of a platter on a hard drive. You could have bad sectors on a microdrive since it's just a baby hard drive.

That's not to say that part of a flash card couldn't be corrupted like physical memory. Just because it's non-volatile doesn't mean that gates don't break down over time. In fact, CF cards have a documented lifespan of 100,000 read/writes. This is why people don't recommend benchmarking CF cards as it shortens their life.

 

[TechnoPro]

Sometimes the device requires that you use some proprietary flash formatting utility that will then magically enable the card to play nice with the device. Check to see if the digicam manufacturer offers such a utility.