FACT-N-FICTION

[matrix]

Did you see this before? Ran across an old PR. Check out what the editor wrote in his comment. Guess he's been playing around for almost four years.


ST. GEORGE, Utah - April 10, 2003 - CyberKey today claimed it is the first company to develop technology designed to overcome the issues inherent with "bad memory" blocks found on Flash-based storage devices, such as USB drives. With CyberKey's new patent-pending Dynamic Block Management technology, content and applications stored to a CyberKey avoid the issues common with Flash-based memory devices of corrupted storage blocks, maintaining data integrity and preventing altered data files.

CyberKeys are USB storage devices commonly categorized as USB drives that can be connected to personal computers or other electronics devices with a USB port. Such CyberKeys are roughly the size of an adult's "pinky" finger, range in storage capacities from 16MB to 1GB of solid state flash memory, and are designed to provide users with simple and secure application functionality and data portability, making the CyberKey the world's most secure USB storage device

"Dynamic Block Management makes it possible for a CyberKey to automatically detect and 'map around' bad or marginal data storage blocks in its flash memory," said Jim Plant, president and chief executive officer of CyberKey. "With this technology in place, data is only written into a CyberKey's data storage blocks which are known to be good. As a result, the level of data integrity for the device is not compromised."

Although flash memory is generally known for its reliability, there can be areas of flash memory that will not function properly, even factory-fresh chips have known bad blocks. ...CyberKey profile

Editor's comments:- CyberKey's "first" claim is without merit. Lots of flash storage manufacturers deal with this problem in their own unique ways. For example Ofer Tsur Marketing Manager of the Solid State Disk Business Unit at M-Systems commented "This problem of bad blocks was solved a decade ago both by M-Systems and other companies. M-Systems have been doing this for almost a decade with its patented TrueFFS (True flash Flike System)."

http://www.storagesearch.com/news2003-apr2.html