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Memory Cards & Xrays
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The previous thread on film and Xrays has got me thinking.
Whats the story with Memory Cards & Xrays. Can a strong Airport Xray erase a memory card?
I know some of the memory we used into the mid 80’s on the mainframes would get erased by an Xray or
a magnetic field and ultra voilet light erased some more also.Whats the story on modern CF or SD Cards?
Well, let me preface this by saying “never say never!” Now with that caveat out of the way, I can’t think of any reason why x-rays would harm CF cards. Granted, if you subject a card to enough x-ray photons, there may be enough energy to release electrons in the semiconductor material. But even then, the chances of these electrons changing the state of a gate in a circuit are probably quite small.
A magnetic field is a different kettle of fish. If the magnetic field is strong enough it could cause data corruption on something like a micro-drive which is essentially a tiny hard disk and hard disks operate on the principle of magnetic fields. But there shouldn’t be any problem with solid state electronics such as is used in CF cards, except that magnetic fields can set up electric currents if the conditions are favourable (that is, after all, how we generate electricity) and such a current might affect the contents of a CF card, although I’d say the chances of this happening are very slim indeed.
I know Thorsten said “Never Say Never” but I during a recent trip my camera went through four different airport scanners with no “known” ill effects. If the scanning equipment affected a memory stick it may also affect Laptops which would cause mayhem all over the place.
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