Media can get expensive. Especially when you're using larger and larger media files, requiring more storage. And when a card goes bad, it does so at the worst of times. But what if you could give your media cards a check-up and know when it's time to replace them? That's the idea behind ProGrade's New Refresh Pro Software. But there is a catch.
ProGrade Digital's Refresh Pro is the best tool available to check your card's health and refresh its performance to factory fresh condition. Refresh Pro checks key attributes of the memory card’s use history to determine how much life is remaining, (and) also cleans the way data is stored to the memory card to ensure it is optimized for the highest performance.
Credit: Prograde Digital
The ProGrade Refresh Pro Software will read ProGrade's new line of Refresh compatible media cards to give them an overall health rating compared to factory design specs. The health check will grade the media card as either "confidently use," "cautiously use" or replace completely. When it determines that a media card has fallen below a 10 percent reliability rating, the camera operator will be advised to replace it. Users can also use the Refresh Pro software to reformat and defrag the media card and return it to a "factory new state." Users must also have a ProGrade memory card reader.
Credit: ProGrade Digital
There is a downside, however. ProGrade's Refresh Pro software will set users back $30 and the software is Windows only. So macOS users are out of luck, for now. The software also cannot test older ProGrade media cards, or third party media card brands. This may be due to some firmware architecture written on the Refresh compatible cards that enable it to report wear data on the card to the software itself.
ProGrade seems to be playing this feature very proprietarily, so I'm guessing that shooters have to buy into the entire ProGrade environment in order to take full advantage of those features.
That's a pity because providing this kind of benefit to all camera users would create a ton of good will that would make users want to use ProGrade products, rather than have to. But if you are a regular ProGrade user, then upgrading to the Recovery version of their media cards will certainly buy you some peace of mind.
Available for Windows 10 only. For more information, visit ProGradeDigital.com.
So what do you think? Does this make you want to try ProGrade's media cards?
Source: PetaPixel
