20050708

Takes A Lickin' and Keeps the Data Safe



I don't seem to have the same luck with memory cards, but these students seem to have done well.
University of California-Santa Cruz students launched an atmospheric research balloon with a transmitter, digital camera, and data recorder on board back in March. The plan was to fly the balloon, record environmental data, and then have the balloon deploy a parachute to land. Things didn't go as planned, though, and the balloon headed out to sea, where it blew up and crashed into the ocean. A beachcomber found the balloon 20 miles away, and found that the loaded SanDisk SD cards used in the now-shattered camera and recorder were soaked by saltwater. After drying out, the camera's SD card worked perfectly, but the data recorder card was unreadable. The university sent the card to SanDisk, which was able to extract all the data. Bob sent a link to the press release, which discusses all the details and shows photos of the case study


I'm not sure that the damaged card would even fit in my memory card's reader slot!

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