Japanese CompactFlash card promises file mirroring storage — but would that help?

 

 

Many higher-end DSLRs feature multiple memory card slots, so that you can record files to both cards in case anything happens to one or the other. Now a new CompactFlash (CF) card from Wise is going to attempt to offer that same protection in a single card, but we don't know how exactly it'll work.

Revealed on Japanese site DC Watch, when used normally, the Wise CompactFlash will have 64GB of storage, and 60MB/50MB read/write speeds. But switch it to mirroring mode, and those numbers drop to 32GB and 30MB/25MB, but all your photos will be mirrored for redundant storage, so two copies of the image will be saved on the card.

Unfortunately, there's still a lot we don't know about how this works, and that's partly due to a lack of information, and partly due to questionable machine translations of the original news. Since the mirroring seems to be done using some sort of internal partitioning in the CF card, that still means that if the card were to die, you'd lose both copies of the work. What's also not clear is how the mirroring is achieved.

Is the photo sent twice from the camera, once to each partition? Or is it sent to one partition, then mirrored to the other? If the latter, then if the image is corrupted, the mirror will be corrupt too, which doesn't serve to help at all.

The CF card is set to launch in Japan in June. There's no indication of if and when it'll be found on other shores, but you can buy Wise products in the USA, so it just might.

(via DPReview)