Digital Photography

What Is Flash Memory, And How Is It Used?

Many camcorders, PDAs, memory sticks and digital cameras use flash memory in order to save images, video, and information in a portable manner. Of course if you have never heard of it before, you are probably wondering just what is flash memory.

Flash memory is a type of non-volatile data storage. This means that you don't need to use power in order to keep the data from being lost. Sometimes this type of memory is used to replace a hard drive, but it is also used a lot as a form of portable memory. A lot of people have memory sticks that connect via the USB port, these are one form of flash memory.

You can get this type of memory from all sorts of different manufacturers, including Sandisk and Toshiba. There are a number of different cards or sticks available that hold varying amounts of data. Sizes include 1 gigabit, 2 GB, 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB and even 32 GB. These cards can be purchased in many different types of stores, including discount stores like Costco.

If your memory card or stick should get full, you can normally download it to your computer's hard drive if you would like to continue saving all of the data. You can also erase the contents in order to make room for new data to be stored.

Many people carry multiple memory cards or memory sticks. For example, if you plan to take a lot of pictures and don't have time to download them for a while, you might carry two different memory cards for your camera so you can switch the memory card when the one in the camera gets full.

This is probably even more important in the case of a video camera, since videos take up a lot more memory than still pictures do. You want to make sure you have enough storage capacity for the job you are planning to do.

Memory sticks are also very useful since it can make it very easy for you to carry important data with you when you frequently need to use it on different computers, for example, if you bring work home and want to easily transfer the updated version to your work computer when you go back to the office.