Cleaning your CompactFlash Card
Filed Under (Gadgets, Hardware) by cranst on 16-04-2006
The other day I thought it necessary to pack an extra CompactFlash card in the event my current one would fill up while on the road. I didn’t ever need the extra, so I left it tucked away in the pocket of my jeans. Today, I began to wonder what I ever did with that card because it was now needed. I searched high and low and then it occurred to me that it may be in the pocket of my pants, but which pants? I looked through all of the pairs I could find before my wife suggested looking in the clothes dryer. There was my CF Card right where I left it in its little plastic case in my jeans. By that time, it had gone through an entire wash and dry cycle. I had no faith in the card ever functioning at that point. I tested it and not only did it work, but it maintained the 2 photos I had stored on there already. I’m not sure it would have worked had it been completely submerged. My washer is a front loading Whirlpool which only fills about 1/3 of the way with water and tosses the clothing through the soapy water.
Lessons Learned:
- Empty pockets before removing pants
- CompactFlash cards are water-resistant
Did something similar to several of my son’s gameboy advance games. They went through the wash and the dryer at high heat. The cartridges were slightly warped, but the games played fine and he didn’t lose any of his saved games. Of course if I were to do that with the SD card containing the back up of my entire PDA, it would instantly fall apart, and quite possibly explode taking out the cat.