7 Advantages and Disadvantages of Memory Card | Drawbacks & Benefits of Memory Card

What is Memory Card ?

Memory cards are small storage medium that stores memory backup of photos, videos, music and other documents. It can come in various forms such as flash memory cards and of cards. But the most commonly used form is the Secure Digital (SD) Cards.

What is the use of Memory Card ?

 

Comparing to all other storage mediums, memory cards are usually much smaller. In today's technological life memory card plays an important role. Without them your mobile phones, digital cameras and MP3 players and other gadgets simply won't save anything. In the present world it is almost impossible to find a multimedia device that doesn't support this card. Particularly mobile devices today uses memory cards as a backup medium. 

 

Al through memory cards have many merits in terms of its size, it aren't flawless. Those who wish to use to memory card in their respective device must know the advantages and disadvantages.

 

In this article, I will be illustrating about 7 Advantages and Disadvantages of Memory Card | Drawbacks & Benefits of Memory Card. Through this post, you will know the pros and cons of using memory cards.

 

Let's get started,

 

 

Advantages of Memory Card

 

1. Reliability

 

Similar to Solid State Drives, a memory card is completely free from having any moving parts. Hence, they are not under the influence of magnetic fields. And also the genuine manufacturer of the card can be easily identified using the marks present on it. 

 

 

2. Physical Size

 

Memory cards can offer large amount of storage space while being small in size. Whatever the storage capacity it holds, the size remains the same. Moreover this tiny little card can be small enough to be fitted inside any device. 

 

 

3. Portability

 

Generally because of its size, memory cards are highly portable. Even if you remove the card from the devices, you can take it to the places you want without the burden of carrying a weight. This kind of freedom is not present in a hard disk drive.

 

 

4. Capacity

 

Another benefit of memory card is the storage space it offers. When smartphones and other devices comes with limited storage capacity, memory cards can be used to increase them. Memory cards are the best known ways to overcome the problem of limited storage space. Besides that they come in various sizes, even though 64 GB cards are the commonly used one.

 

 

5. Compatibility

 

Currently there are many devices which supports the use of memory cards. Some of them are the mobile phones, digital cameras and the computers. However for the computer there should be card reader that can be used to read the card and display the informations on the PC.

 

 

6. Stability

 

Just like you computer's hard disk drive, the memory cards too posses non-volatile memory. Which means that even in the state of power loss the data will remain stored. And also frequent refreshing is not advised here.

 

 

7. Power Consumption

 

Memory cards require very low amount of power for them to function. Simply using them will not waste the power of the device. This makes them ideal for most of the battery based devices those are small and light weighted.

Disadvantages of Memory Card

 

1. Speed

 

Al though memory cards are known to offer greater levels of storage space, it still lacks on the side of speed. Comparing to your phones internal memory, memory cards are small slower. There is a clear difference in speed when accessing the phones internal storage and the memory card.

 

 

2. Lifespan

 

Since memory card uses flash memory, they posses limited number of cycles. The number of times the information can be written and deleted is limited (roughly around 100,000 times). This means the lifespan is gradually decreasing  when the card is in use. 

 

 

3. Upgrading

 

Whenever there is a new model released with more storage space, the users may need to upgrade them. If done frequently there can be compatibility issues since some of the phones will have a problem supporting them. 

 

 

4. Physical Damages

 

The physical size of the memory card makes them easily vulnerable to physical damages. If handled without proper care they can be lost or smashed. In addition to that memory cards are also known to suffer from a problem known as Electronic corruption. This makes the card entirely unreadable.

 

 

5. File Deletion

 

Whenever the files are being transferred between a memory card and a PC, it is more prone to undergo deletion. This normally happens without the knowledge of the user. However there are popular file recovery tools, that can be used to retrieve these deleted files without much effort. 

 

 

6. Data Corruption

 

There are numerous reasons for a corrupted memory card. Let it be any, it won's simply make you to access them. When the user tries to open them, they will be greeted with an error message or else it won't get recognized by the computer.

 

 

7. Manufacturer Quality

 

Apart from some genuine brands there can be also low quality cards from unknown manufacturers. If you happen to buy and use them on the mobile device, you can notice that the phone's performance gradually decreases. One such instance is the apps running slow.