Dont miss MEMORY
                                             Play your CARDS 

Here you can find informations about Memory Cards types, Card reviews, Special purpose Cards (that also include 
memory if any) as well links to most important card producers. Also links to Cards' data recover program.

GENERAL (all formats below shown are commonly used with Pda when specifically supported) 

Use link to Card supporters' sites to get a lot of information that could be difficult to insert in this page.
For Memory Sticks, that have many sub-types, you can find HERE a full list and details 

SPECIAL CARD TYPES

The cards quoted are only the one that mix special features (WiFi,GPS...) along with some available Memory
The only exceptions are the Palm cards that are produced to meet the needs of some Palm device only and 
the SD Memory card with included USB plug. These cards do no include any additional available memory.

PALM Bluetooth card                          -   Review
PALM SD WiFi card                              -   Review
SanDisk Wi-Fi + 256MB SD Card         -   Review
SysOn GPS + 256Mb CF Card              -   Review
Double Standard SD-USB card           -    Review
Spectec MiniSD WiFi                            -   Presentation  Review Review
Spectec 802.11g SD card                   -   Presentation
802.11g SDIO Wi-Fi Card                    -    Review 
Spectec SDW-822 miniSD WLAN-11b  -   Review  
Spectec MiniSD GPS card                   -    Presentation 

COMMON CARD INFORMATIONS & PERFORMANCES

Capacity 

The common memory cards are the ones that you may use to add memory only to your unit.
When you need an extention memory card never forget that you will get always less available memory than the
nominal amount show on the case. (as happens with a PC hard disk). Here are some example:

For other cars instead of CF the problem is the same.  
There are two reasons for this space' reductions. First card manufacturers consider Mega = 1 milion Byte so
256Mb are equivalent to 256000000 Bytes but Windows (or other O.S.) consider 1 Mega as 1048576 Bytes
that reduce the equivalent available capacity. In addition there is the second reason due to the fact that the
card itself needs a management/spare area and that DOS (Windows) format needs further, even if very
small, space 

Form Factor / Short name / # Pins ---- Form Factor / Short name / # Pins 

                   CF            50 pins                          SD or MMC      9 pins or 7 pins       

                    RS-MMC       7 pins                               miniSD       11 pins(2 more for future use)

                   MS Duo      10 pins                         MS Pro      10 pins      

               MicroSD (T-Flash)  8 pins
Note that last SD cards use a slide command to lock the card against erasures    

If you wish to know the difference between SD and MMC that look similar read HERE  

Everything You Want To Know About SD... 

If you want to read Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) Explained go HERE...but
ATTENTION : This type of cards (as Transcend and Pretec 8gb are not compatible with any of the current pda
                     The only one that will support such card wil be FujitsuSiemens T830 when will be available


Performance and format

To fix a real range of performances for the memory cards is not so easy. It is true that you can find on line
many table and specification relating to card performances but note that in this field any time we can see
new versions of memory cards (and new types of solid memory also), so consider this data as always subject
to change.

Common performance

During this last time has been used also another way to identify the Memory Cards' performances. The X code.
Unfortunately there is no conformity in the way by which any producer test their card performance and also the
X code information does not specify the separate value for Read and Write.
This works as follows. Any X value is equivalent to 0.150 Mb/s speed so we can say that a card marked 
 35x = 5.25MB/s, 41x = 6.15MB/s and 60x= 9MB/s. 
With all this number it is easy to be confused so that the best suggestion is to not use high speed Cards if you
have an  old (or almost a recent Pda) because the speed is also subject to the driver and slot performance and
in some cases you will not reach the nominal speed if one or both these elements are not compatible. 
For the SDHC there is also another type of index use as alternative and based on a Class number (2,4 o 6)  that is
the minimum value of memory card's speed in Mb. As the indication is a minimum value you can easily find cards
SDHC able yo run at 15, 20 or more Mb.      
Here below you can find links to some memory cards producers/sellers' sites where you can find more updated
data concerning the item you need and/or you are searching for:
  
SANDISK   TOSHIBA   PANASONIC    KINGSTON   LEXAR    PQI   PRETEC   ATPINC  (more will follow)    

Here you can find instead some test/reviews of SD/CF/miniSD Cards:    
Panasonic 512 MB and PNY (Toshiba) 256 MB SD       
Kingston Elite Pro High Speed SD and CF Cards  
ATP SD and Mini SD Memory Cards        
SanDisk 1GB Extreme CompactFlash  
1GB RS-MMC & MiniSD Released      (goods capacity for the HP hw6500 that uses miniSD)    
PRETEC Announces 133X SD Card 
Kingstone launches 133x SD Ultimate Card    
MiniSD Card Data Sheet (PQI)  
2Gb MMC plus by Transcend  
SanDisk New High Capacity miniSD and microSD 
Dust-waterproof news USB-SD cards   
Samsung MMCMicro da 2GB
Sandisk's 1GB microSD card review
Sandisk's 4GB micro SDHC launched  
Sandisk's 12GB micro SDHC launched  
32,16,8GB Ultra II last SanDisk generation
   
Formatting 

Even if a Pdas, usually, see a Memory Card as a Directory (Folder) the card is similar to a little HD so that you
need to format it sometime (the new Cards are commonly already formatted). 
If you are forced (for any reason) to reformat your card there are some thing to consider.
The card, as any disk, use the FAT (file allocation table) to allocate, find and handle the files.
You can use to format it FAT16 or FAT32. 
Usually FAT16 is the most compatible if you wish to use the card with different devices (Camera and Pda for
example) even if this solution has a limitation. This is that the root of the Memory Disk has a fixed dimension.
This means that you can store as many files as you like but some of these could not be handled when you look
the card content. This does not mean that your card is damaged but only that you reached the root's limit.
(put the excess of files into some subdir and you will be able to see and handle your files again).
FAT32 does not have this limitation but may be not supported by all the device you use, Pda included (while
a Pda with an O.S. based on 32 can easily handle a Fat16 card).
Anyway take note that for GPS use TomTom suggest to format SD of their standalone unit using FAT32. 
The best thing you can do, if you have to format your card, is to use, (if available) the format function of your
device directly so you can be sure that the card will be correctly formatted.
(if you use XP for example the O.S. could use a default type of Fat not compatible with your Pda and not forget
  that ntfs fat is not compatible with Memory Cards ) 

Here you can read a good article about the matter:
So should I FAT32 my memory card? or not? 

TO DEFRAGMENT THE FLASH CARDS

In addition to format the item (if we see the memory cards as solid miniHD) we may perform on them also the
defragmentation. This is a method commonly used to optimize the PC hardisks to get better performance letting them
to find sequential data instead of random data. The above is necessary because an 'HD uses disk to memorize data
and during the rotation it is better to find data easily instead of search randomly any information.
For the memory cards we may think that to defragment them may be useless as they do not use moving parts, but
if you read this article we may, perhaps, change our opinion.

PROBLEMS & TROUBLESHOOTING

The Memory Card are really very strong. Many shocks that can destroy your Pda have no effect on your cards
They can also be damaged but, anyway, it is always possible to recover files and data.
Obviously the above does not happen with the usual use of a Memory card but you can experience software
problems instead. These problems are due, in many cases, to the Fat corruption.
First step to avoid problems is to not extract the Card while a writing process is in execution. Commonly the
memory cards do not require to power down your Pda to extract the card but if you do this while writing on
the card the same can be damaged. The following are some possible problems using a memory card and
common signs of a problem include: 
1-Your device or reader won't work with the card but thet work with other cards. 
2-You can't turn off your device. 
3-You have less space available on your card than usual 
  (for example 20MB on a 32MB card), but you can't see any files on the card. 
4-You receive an error message or an error indication from your device
All the above case do not mean that the Card is strongly damaged. It may be that reformatting the card could
solve the problem. Obviously formatting the card all its data are lost.
Well, before reformatting your unit you can use some program to try to recover the missing data. Some of the
programs that can do the job are linked below and other are available on line: 

smart recovery (free)   ImageRecall (com)    Flash Recovery (com)    PhotoRescue  (com)  Rescue Pro (working demo)

Not dedicated specifically to the Pda world but this program FREE allows you to recover files on memory cards also
UNDELETE Plus

LAST NEWS  
Fastest 802.11g Wireless LAN Card  
SanDisk Introduces New High Capacity miniSD and microSD Cards   
PQI U510 the worlds thinnest flash drive 
Eye-Fi : SD 1 o 2 Gb con Wifi 802.11g integrata 
The XXL (Extra Large) cards by Toshiba (SD and microSD)   
SanDisk's 6 GB microSD, for many Pdas but not for all 
 SanDisk 8GB microSDHC Card 

HAMA: a global Card reader 25 in 1 

(UNDER CONSTRUCTION)   

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