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I constantly delete and add data on my Memory Stick Duo because I watch movies on PSP.

  1. Does constantly deleting and adding movies on a Memory Stick Duo degrade its performance?
  2. Do the constant deletions and saves of movies on the Memory Stick Duo shorten its life span?
  3. How many deletes and adds can a SanDisk Memory Stick Duo sustain until it gets destroyed?
random
  • 15,201
Wern Ancheta
  • 6,620

2 Answers2

4
  1. Performance, as in drive read/write speed, will not be degraded over write cycles.
  2. Yes, flash memory (including that in SSDs) can only handle a certain number of writes.
  3. See the link in 2. It is about 100k, though for cheap chips it might be less.
marcusw
  • 1,768
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No, it does not have any impact. In fact, your SanDisk memory stick has a very generous warranty: a lifetime warranty. According to this (already outdated) article, modern durable memory has a "write endurance" of anywhere between 100,000 and 1,000,000 cycles. So, realistically, even if you manage to write to your card twice every day, it will last between 100 and 1000 years. It's no wonder you get a warranty like this.

So if you manage to live that long or manage to get that many I/O operations out of it and kill it: fear not. You can just get a new one.

That said, I'm unsure about fragmentation on devices such as these. If you regularly fill the stick to (near) full capacity, data could fragment fairly quickly. A regular formatting or disk defragmentation will resolve this, and has no ill effects on the stick. I stand corrected that defragmenting memory cards is indeed bad practice. If you run a defrag long enough, you might actually reach that write cycle limit. Just don't do it since it has no added performance benefit.

Paul Lammertsma
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