2024-04-20

Flash Memory

Data Storage: Flash Memory Devices

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM010 mins
  • Kingston Technology
    Making SIMM, DIMM and Flash memory for computers, digital cameras, PDAs, and other multimedia devices.
    www.kingston.com
  • SanDisk
    Supplier of flash data storage products in consumer, OEM, and industrial markets.
    www.sandisk.com
  • Maxtop Technology
    Manufactures metal, plastic, rubber, customized, novelty, and promotional USB flash drives.
    www.chinausbflashdrives.com
  • Transcend Information, Inc
    Manufactures memory upgrade products for PC, notebooks, printers, and servers.
    www.transcendusa.com
  • SimpleTech, Inc.
    Manufacturer of computer memory upgrades, flash cards, flash drives, external drives, NAS, and other storage products.
    www.simpletech.com
  • Pretec Electronics Corp.
    Designs, manufactures, and markets a complete line of PCMCIA cards, compact modem for handheld PDAs, and digital cameras.
    www.pretec.com
  • Spansion LLC
    Manufacturer of flash memory technology and NOR flash products, including MirrorBit, Floating Gate, and Multi Chip products.
    www.spansion.com
  • CompactFlash Association
    www.compactflash.org
  • Silicon Storage Technology
    Designs, manufactures, and markets single power supply, small erase-block flash memory components for the computer, communications, and consumer markets.
    www.sst.com
  • Delkin Devices
    Featuring eFilm digital memory cards, readers and adapters for digital cameras, PDAs, and more.
    www.delkin.com
  • Viking Components
    Offering memory for desktops, laptops, printers, enterprise systems, and a line of flash memory.
    www.vikingcomponents.com
  • mimoco
    Creators of designer toy flash memory drives.
    www.mimoco.com
  • Lexar Media
    Develops digital media and accessory products for the digital photography, consumer electronics, industrial, and communications markets.
    www.lexarmedia.com
  • ATP Electronics
    ISO 9001 manufacturer of MMC, RSMMC, SD, and MiniSD flash memory cards, as well as DDR333/400/II DRAM modules.
    www.atpinc.com
  • MultiMediaCard Association (MMCA)
    Founded in 1998 to promote the adoption of the MultiMediaCard as the global, open standard for removable, solid-state memory.
    www.mmca.org
  • easyreplication
    Provides CD, DVD, and CD audio replication, duplication, and manufacturing. Also offers CD and DVD business cards, custom shaped CD and DVD cards, and printed and duplicated compact flash cards, SD cards, mini-SD cards, and USB memory sticks.
    www.easyreplication.co.uk
  • Adtron Corporation
    Manufacturer of data storage solutions including solid state flash disks, in-chassis storage blades, and removable media drives for the defense, aerospace, automation, telecommunications, and transportation industries.
    www.adtron.com
  • My Digital Discount
    Offers compact flash cards, memory readers, and MP3 players.
    www.mydigitaldiscount.com
  • Carry Computer
    Specializes in USB2.0 flash memory card readers, SD, MMC, CF, MS, SM card adapters, media player, and storage devices.
    www.carry.com.tw
  • Centennial Technologies
    Provides custom and industry standard PC cards and memory modules.
    www.cent-tech.com
  • d-store
    Offering digital photography solutions including storage media, card readers, digital cameras, software, and more.
    www.d-store.com
  • Migo
    USB flash storage device with synchronization and data management software that displays the user’s Outlook email, bookmarks, and other files wherever they go. By Forward Solutions, Inc.
    www.4migo.com
  • CFGear.com
    Offering flash and USB drives, portable flash MP3 players, and custom logo USB flash drives for business promotion.
    www.cfgear.com
  • Digi4me.com
    Distributor of smartmedia, compactflash, multimedia, and secure digital flash memory cards. Rambus rdram and ddr sdram are also available.
    www.digi4me.com
  • K&C Technologies
    Offers the Universal Smart Drive flash memory drives in several capacities with features that include password protection and file encryption.
    www.universalsmartdrive.net
  • Solid State Floppy Disk Card (SSFDC) Forum
    Voluntary organization intended to promote SmartMedia, a small removable NAND flash memory card, as a de facto standard in the industry.
    www.ssfdc.or.jp/english
  • ZxPro
    Offers a range of brand name flash memory cards and peripherals including CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MMC, and Memory Stick.
    www.zxpro.com
  • BlockMaster
    Offers SafeStick USB flash drive that features mandatory password protection and always-on hardware encryption of all stored data.
    www.blockmastersecurity.com
  • Platinum USB Pen Drive
    The bottom half of the Executive Pen Drive from Platinum is a high quality ink pen or laser pointer, while the top half contains a USB memory stick.
    www.platinumpen.com/pendrive.html
  • FlashWholesaler.com
    Seller of custom logo imprinted flash memory jump drives. Order a corporate branded usb flash drive to market your company better.
    www.flashwholesaler.com
  • FlashFX
    From Datalight, a resident flash disk and flash media manager for NOR and NAND flash.
    www.flashfx.com
  • Flashcardz.com
    Offers discounted flash cards, USB drives, secure digital cards, hard drives.
    www.flashcardz.com
  • Azzurri Direct
    Provides USB Flash drives, Flash memory cards, Flash memory card readers, and other devices online.
    www.azzurri-direct.com
  • JMTekStore.com USB Flash Drives
    Direct sales for the USBDrive line of portable storage products. Store, transfer, and carry your data securely with JMKTek’s USB flash drives.
    www.jmtekstore.com/shop/portablestorage.asp
  • Princeton Disc Customized Flash Drive
    Offers promotional custom USB flash drive duplication, custom executive USB pen drives, mini USB drive, flash cards with imprinted logo, and data preloading.
    www.customized-flash-drive.com
  • Lexar USB Flash Drives
    Lexar offers the JumpDrive line of portable storage devices. Pocket-sized and lightweight USB flash drives for storing or transferring music, images, or computer files.
    www.lexar.com/jumpdrive
  • Amazon.com: USB Flash Drives
    Choose from a wide selection of USB flash drives at Amazon.com. Includes storage devices from Kingston, PNY, SanDisk, Lexar, and others.
    www.amazon.com/USB-Flash-Drives-Storage-Add-Ons/b/002-5064880-7985668?ie=UT…
  • Kodak Flash Memory Cards
    Information on memory for digital cameras including CompactFlash, multimedia cards, and SD cards in sizes up to 256MB. Also offers readers and writers.
    www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=230&pq-locale=en_US
  • Flash Dealer
    Offers industry information on customized promotional USB flash drives to help promote your company’s business services.
    www.customflashdriveblog.com
  • Feiya
    Designing memory controllers and their applications.
    www.feiya.com.tw
  • FlashDealer.com
    Offers custom flash drives in a variety of colors and materials (including wood, leather, and metal). Build a customized flash drive and market your company better.
    www.customflashdriveutility.com
  • Kuang Chien Industry Co., Ltd.
    Professional manufacturer and exporter specializing in various kinds of custom USB flash memory drives, such as wooden drives, pen drives, and more.
    www.kci-tech.com

To add your Flash Memory Devices Link here, please feel free to contact us!

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Hard Drives: Yesterday to Today

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM03 mins

flash ssdHard Drives Versus Solid State Drives

The most recent solid state drives, which are referred to as flash SSDs, have reached capacities of up to 256 GB, and their performance often exceeds 200 MB/s with extremely short latencies. However, only a few of them are truly worth the several hundred dollar investment they demand, as flash SSDs require intelligent, multi-channel configurations with smart controllers and cache memory. The cache is required to enable command queuing, in an effort to maximize wear leveling and performance with changing performance loads. But we’ll stop talking about flash storage, as it is only interesting in the very high-end and the very low-end. Hard drives will continue to dominate the storage market for several years.

Capacities of up to 2 TB cannot yet be realized on flash memory; and if it were possible, it would cost thousands. The cost advantage in the mainstream is even more significant, as terabyte hard drives are available at only $100, while you have to spend three times as much for only 10-20% of the capacity on flash SSDs. And finally, the flash market could not even supply sufficient flash memory to saturate the storage demands of today (and tomorrow). 

Desktop Hard Drive Analysis

We will look at some notebook hard drives in a future article, as these HDD types will dominate the storage market in coming years, due to the shift from stationary to mobile computing. Today we’ll look at three hard drive generations by Samsung: the Spinpoint T166 at 500 GB, the Spinpoint F1 EcoGreen 1000 GB, and the Spinpoint F2 EcoGreen 1500 GB. These represent Samsung’s last three product lines, and they serve as perfect examples to pinpoint where storage is heading.

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Data recovery apparatus and method used for flash memory

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM08 mins

Flash data recovery1. A data recovery apparatus used for a flash memory that includes data areas and index areas in which values indicating whether data stored in the respective data areas are valid are recorded, comprising: a controller that performs a data operation at each of a plurality of logical addresses, and if the data operations performed at the plurality of logical addresses are successful, records a mark value in a last index area of a plurality of index areas respectively corresponding to the plurality of logical addresses.

2. The data recovery apparatus of claim 1, wherein the data operation is first performed on a middle portion of the flash memory and then on other portions of the flash memory, and the mark value is recorded in one of the index areas corresponding to the middle portion of the flash memory.

3. The data recovery apparatus of claim 1, wherein said plurality of logical addresses are consecutive logical addresses.

4. A data recovery apparatus used for a flash memory that includes data areas and index areas in which values indicating whether data stored in the respective data areas are valid are recorded, comprising: a controller that determines whether data respectively stored at a plurality of logical addresses prior to a predetermined logical address, through a data operation, are valid based on a mark value recorded in an index area corresponding to the predetermined logical address.

5. The data recovery apparatus of claim 4, wherein the mark value is recorded in index areas respectively corresponding to first and last logical addresses of the plurality of logical addresses when performing the data operation first on a middle portion of the flash memory and then on other portions of the flash memory, and determining whether data respectively stored at at least one of the plurality of logical addresses between the first and last logical addresses are valid based on the index areas in which the mark value is stored.

6. The data recovery apparatus of claim 5, wherein it is determined whether data stored at the predetermined logical address is valid based on whether data exists at a logical address subsequent to the predetermined logical address.

7. The data recovery method of claim 4, wherein said plurality of logical addresses are a plurality of consecutive logical addresses.

8. A data recovery method used for a flash memory that includes data areas and index areas in which values indicating whether data stored in the respective data areas are valid are recorded, the data recovery method comprising: performing a data operation at each of a plurality of logical addresses; and recording a mark value in a last index area of a plurality of index areas respectively corresponding to the plurality of logical addresses.

9. The data recovery method of claim 8, wherein, in the recording of the mark value, if the data operation is performed first on a middle portion of the flash memory and then on other portions of the flash memory, the mark value is recorded in an index area corresponding to the middle portion of the flash memory.

10. The data recovery method of claim 8, wherein said plurality of logical addresses are a plurality of consecutive logical addresses.

11. A data recovery method used for a flash memory that includes data areas and index areas in which values indicating whether data stored in the respective data areas are valid are recorded, the data recovery method comprising: identifying a mark value recorded in an index area corresponding to a predetermined logical address; and determining whether data respectively stored at a plurality of logical addresses prior to the predetermined logical address, through a data operation, are valid based on the mark value.

12. The data recovery method of claim 11, wherein in the determining operation, it is determined whether the data respectively stored at the plurality of logical addresses are valid based on a mark value recorded in an index area corresponding to one of the plurality of logical addresses where the data operation has performed most recently.

13. The data recovery method of claim 12, wherein, in the determining operation, if the data operation is performed first on a middle portion of the flash memory and then on other portions of the flash memory, it is determined whether data stored in the flash memory are valid based on the mark value recorded in the index area corresponding to the middle portion of the flash memory.

14. The data recovery method of claim 12, wherein it is determined whether data stored at a predetermined logical address is valid based on whether data exists at a logical address subsequent to the predetermined logical address.

15. The data recovery method of claim 13, wherein it is determined whether data stored at a predetermined logical address is valid based on whether data exists at a logical address subsequent to the predetermined logical address.

16. The data recovery method of claim 12, wherein said plurality of logical addresses are a plurality of consecutive logical addresses.

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Flash Memory

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM05 mins

Flash memory is a form of non-volatile memory that can be electrically erased and rewrite, which means that it does not need power to maintain the data stored in the chip. In addition, flash memory offers fast read access times and better shock resistance than hard disks. These characteristics explain the popularity of flash memory for applications such as storage on battery-powered devices.

Flash memory is advance from of EEPROM (Electrically-Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) that allows multiple memory locations to be erased or written in one programming operation. Unlike an EPROM (Electrically Programmable Read-Only Memory) an EEPROM can be programmed and erased multiple times electrically. Normal EEPROM only allows one location at a time to be erased or written, meaning that flash can operate at higher effective speeds when the systems using; it read and write to different locations at the same time. Referring to the type of logic gate used in each storage cell, Flash memory is built in two varieties and named as, NOR flash and NAND flash.

Flash memory stores one bit of information in an array of transistors, called “cells”, however recent flash memory devices referred as multi-level cell devices, can store more than 1 bit per cell depending on amount of electrons placed on the Floating Gate of a cell. NOR flash cell looks similar to semiconductor device like transistors, but it has two gates. First one is the control gate (CG) and the second one is a floating gate (FG) that is shield or insulated all around by an oxide layer. Because the FG is secluded by its shield oxide layer, electrons placed on it get trapped and data is stored within. On the other hand NAND Flash uses tunnel injection for writing and tunnel release for erasing.

Although it can be read or write a byte at a time in a random access fashion, limitation of flash memory is, it must be erased a “block” at a time. Starting with a freshly erased block, any byte within that block can be programmed. However, once a byte has been programmed, it cannot be changed again until the entire block is erased. In other words, flash memory (specifically NOR flash) offers random-access read and programming operations, but cannot offer random-access rewrite or erase operations.

This effect is partially offset by some chip firmware or file system drivers by counting the writes and dynamically remapping the blocks in order to spread the write operations between the sectors, or by write verification and remapping to spare sectors in case of write failure.

Due to wear and tear on the insulating oxide layer around the charge storage mechanism, all types of flash memory erode after a certain number of erase functions ranging from 100,000 to 1,000,000, but it can be read an unlimited number of times.

Flash Card is easily rewritable memory and overwrites without warning with a high probability of data being overwritten and hence lost.

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