Monday, December 01, 2008
Types of Memory Cards
CompactFlash (CF)





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- CF cards are very robust and industrially proven to be reliable.
- There are two main subdivisions of CF cards, Type I (3.3 mm thick) and the thicker Type II (CF2) cards (5 mm thick)
- Card speed is usually specified in "x" ratings, e.g. 8x, 20x, 133x. The base rate is 150kB/s, so for example, 20x = 20 * 150 kB/s = 3.0 MB/s
- As of 2008, CompactFlash cards are generally available in capacities from about 512MB to 100GB
Memory Stick
- Unlike the othermemory card types, the Memory Stick is a proprietary standard invented by Sony
- the originalMemory Stick design also has a 128 MB limitation; Memory Stick PROs have a marginally higher transfer speed and a maximum theoretical capacity of 32 GB.
- The Memory Stick Duo was developed in response to Sony's need for a smaller flash memory card for pocket-sized digital cameras and cell phones.
- The Memory Stick Micro (M2) measures 15 × 12.5 × 1.2 mm—roughly one-quarter the size of the Duo
MultiMediaCard (MMC)
- They have been more or less superseded by Secure Digital cards (SD card), but still see significant use because MMCs can be used in most devices which support SD cards.
Secure Digital Card (SD card)
- Standard SD card capacities range from 4 MB to 8 GB, and for high capacity SDHC cards from 4 GB to 64 GB as of 2008.
- SD is less open than CompactFlash or USB flash memory drives, However, SD is much more open than Memory Stick.
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