"John" <zzzjoki@yahoo.com> wrote in message 1179440559.074502.195160@q23g2000hsg.googlegroups.com">news:1179440559.074502.195160@q23g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
: On May 17, 2:34 pm, "William Garber" <willy4...@garberstreet.com>
: wrote:
: > :
: > : Does the "set aside" area grow or change over time? Or is it finite
: > : and slowly consumed?
: > :
: > : For Apple users, what do you think a failing CF card behave like?
: > : For example, a gradual failure, or sudden catastrophic?
: > :
: > : People will be putting worn CF cards in their Apple 2s.
: >
: > Judging from my own use and those I've set-up for others,
: > out of more than, taking a guess, 70-80 CF cards, none of
: > the folks I've sent them to have reported a failure, and
: > only one has failed for me, a used one, and it was very
: > gradual, and limited to a single folder containing just
: > a few files. Figuring that this was due to no more bits
: > to use for recovery, I copied off the partitions using
: > Ciderpress, and wrote them to a new CF card, then trashed
: > that CF card. Since then I have had no problems at all.
:
: Thanks Bill.
:
: It sounds like you'd get a little time before everything went bad.
Yes, right. Keep a new CF card in the wings, and back it up
every so often, and you should have no problems whatsoever.
When it does finally go, which could be 10 years, being that
reading doesn't have any affect on it, just the writing,
simply write your backup images to the new card. Also, on
ProDOS volumes, Block 2 is the most vulnerable, since it is
written to each time a new folder or file is added or removed.