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SanDisk Launches SD Media with WORM (Write Once Read Many)

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Usually when a company releases a product containing with a worm, it's not a good thing. But when that WORM comes in all caps, the nomenclature takes a whole different meaning. In this case, SanDisk has developed a card that can be written to only one time, after which it becomes a read-only card. That's not something that will appeal to home users, but SanDisk's WORM (Write Once Read Many) media means police and courtrooms no longer need to reject SD cards as evidence for fear of tampering.

Potential uses for WORM cards include police witness and suspect interviews, cash registers, electronic voting, security cameras, in-flight 'black boxes,' medical devices containing patient information, and anything else where a permanent one-time write would be desirable. Once written to, SanDisk claims the new cards will retain the data for up to 100 years. "As digital media volume has grown and surpassed traditional analogue media such as film and audio cassettes in the consumer market, law enforcement agencies and other professionals are facing rising costs and lack of supply," said Christopher Moore, director of product marketing for OEM memory cards at SanDisk.

The SD cards currently come in 128MB versions, but beefier WORMs are expected later this year. Yummy.

 

Image Credit: Seawear.com and SanDisk

COMMENTS
avatarUm, I don't see how this

Um, I don't see how this prevents tampering.  Couldn't you just read the data, copy it to a PC, adjust the data, and rewrite it to a separate SD card? Anyone?  As far as didgital evidence is concerend, there will never be a guarantee against tampering. 

 

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avatarcould'nt you do that with a

could'nt you do that with a cd or hard drive or anything? even a ROM chip you could technically alter the way you're saying with a worm

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avatarworms

More marketing hype... total crap.

 

Acer Aspire 5610z,Vista HP, No problems with Vista... so far, but I'm learning Linux, just in case.

Acer Aspire 5315-2153, $348 Walmart Special,Mandriva Linux 2008.1 Spring Edition

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avataryeah, when's a 4 GB worm

yeah, when's a 4 GB worm going to be cheaper than a dvd-r? anybody smell a new way to sell software?

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avatarMuch better for software distribution

This would be a lot better for software distribution than DVD, especially since flash memory increases a lot faster than optical disk sizes increase. I really think this is the beginning of the end for optical disks. If this can reach cost levels around that of optical disks soon, there will be no more reason to use them anymore, just put software on WORM USB flash drives, and we can use optical disks only for backup, and eventually phase them out for good.

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avataryeah and if these "worm"s

yeah and if these "worm"s actually do last 100 years, that's alot more than optical media. maybe discs are the new tapes 0_o

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